AO1: Social Influence

Question 1

Conformity

Answer 1

A change in behaviour or positions due to influence from a majority position

Question 2

Compliance

Answer 2

• A person changes their behaviours/publicly but doesn’t do so in private
• A weak and temporary form of conformity
• Only lasts as long as we feel we are being monitored by a group

Question 3

Internalization

Answer 3

• Most powerful type of conformity
• Beliefs and actions change both privately and publicly

Question 4

Identification

Answer 4

• A person changes their behaviour/opinions to fit in with a group or maintain a positive relationship with that group
• Midway between internalization and compliance

Question 5

Normative Social Influence (NSI)

Answer 5

• The idea that a person conforms as they desire to be liked
• Results in compliance
• Produces a weak, temporary conformity
• Most likely to occur when a person feels like they are being monitored by a group

Question 6

Informational Social Influence (ISI)

Answer 6

• The idea that a person conforms as they desire to be right
• Results in internalization
• Produces a strong, long-lasting conformity
• Happens in new/ambiguous situations or crisis situations where decisions need to be made quickly

Question 7

Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Procedure

Answer 7

• Participants looked at a line and compare it to a group of 3 other lines
• They had to decide which of the 3 lines were closest in length to the original line
• In the control condition, participants did the task by themself
• In the experiment condition they completed the task with 7 other ‘participants’ (confederates) who purposefully said the wrong answer

Question 8

Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Findings

Answer 8

• In the control condition, conformity was less than 1%
• In the experiment condition this rose to 36.8%

Question 9

Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Group Size

Answer 9

• Group size of the confederates was varied between 1-15 confederates
• Conformity rose to 31.8% with 3 confederates
• After this, the number of confederates had little impact on the results

Question 10

Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Unanimity

Answer 10

• Asch had some confederates give the right answer and disagree with the majority of the other confederates
• Conformity dropped to 25%

Question 11

Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Task Difficulty

Answer 11

• Asch made it less clear which of the 3 lines was closest in length to the original line (more ambiguous answer)
• Conformity increased

Question 12

Zimbardo’s Aim

Answer 12

• Investigate whether people conform to social roles due to their disposition or their situation
• Tasked by the US military to find the cause of violence in prisons

Question 13

Zimbardo’s Sampling Technique and Sample

Answer 13

• Volunteer sampling
• Selected participants deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after extensive psychological testing
• Sample: 24 American Male Undergraduate Students

Question 14

Zimbardo’s Conditions (and how he made them more realistic)

Answer 14

• Randomly allocated participants to the social role of a guard or a prisoner
• Built a realistic prison in the basement of Stanford University with prison cells
• Had prisoners actually arrested, strip searched and given uniforms and prison numbers
• Guards were given uniforms, clubs, handcuffs and keys

Question 15

Zimbardo’s Findings

Answer 15

• Only ⅓ of the guards conformed and were brutal to prisoners (force fed prisoner on hunger strike, harassing prisoners)
• Prisoners conformed at first (swore at guards, tore their uniform)
• After guards put down the rebellion, prisoners subdued
• Many prisoners has to leave the experiment due to psychological distress and one of them went on hunger strike

Question 16

Zimbardo’s Conclusions

Answer 16

• The participants conformed to their social roles meaning that the situation is what influenced their behaviour, not their disposition
• Conformed to social roles even though they were randomly allocated to conditions

Question 17

Obedience

Answer 17

A person complies with an instruction/order delivered by an authority figure

Question 18

Destructive Obedience

Answer 18

A person complies with an instruction/order delivered by an authority figure that will ultimately cause harm

Question 19

Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Procedure

Answer 19

• Participants are instructed by an experimenter to take on a ‘teacher’ role and administer an electric shock to another ‘participant’ who is the ‘learner’
• The shocks start at 15 volts and increase to a maximum of 450 volts
• The ‘learner’ is actually a confederate
• The shocks are fake
• The experimenter would deliver a series of prompts to encourage the ‘teacher’ to keep shocking the learner

Question 20

Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Findings

Answer 20

• 100% of participants issued up to 300 volts (12.5% stopped atp)
• 65% of participants were obedient and issued the full 450 volts

Question 21

Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Conclusion

Answer 21

Destructive Obedience is well within the behavioural repertoire of most people

Question 22

Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Proximity 1

Answer 22

• Baseline: experimenter and teacher were in the same room
• Manipulation: Experimenter instructed the teacher over the phone
• Obedience dropped to 20.5%

Question 23

Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Proximity 2

Answer 23

• Baseline: Teacher and learner were in different rooms
• Manipulation: Teacher and learner in the same room
• Obedience dropped to 40%

Question 24

Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Location

Answer 24

• Baseline: Experiment was carried out in the labs at Yale University
• Manipulation: Experiment was carried out in a run-down building
• Obedience dropped to 47.5%

Question 25

Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Uniform

Answer 25

• Baseline: Experimenter wore a grey lab coat
• Manipulation: Another ‘participant’ took over the experimenter role and wore casual clothes
• Obedience fell to 20%

Question 26

Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Conclusion

Answer 26

Aspects of the social situation have a powerful impact on the extent to which a person obeys or disobeys a destructive order

Question 27

Agentic State

Answer 27

• People perceive themselves as an instrument that carries out other people’s instructions/orders
• They follow instructions (obedience)

Question 28

Autonomous State

Answer 28

• People see themselves as free to act according to their own principles
• They have free will over their actions and decisions

Question 29

Agentic Shift

Answer 29

The shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state

Question 30

Binding Factors

Answer 30

• Social pressures that act as subtle barriers to disobedience
• Cause people to stay in the agentic state

Question 31

Examples of Binding Factors

Answer 31

• Not taking responsibility for actions (the person who gave the order does)
• The guilt of not completing something all the way through
• Making a commitment to being obedient which creates pressure to actually do it

Question 32

How does someone enter the Agentic State (according to Milgram?)

Answer 32

• They have to view the person giving the instruction as a figure of legitimate authority
• This means they are seen as having higher status based on the situation and the setting they are in

Question 33

Legitimate Authority Figure

Answer 33

A person who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a particular setting/situation

Question 34

Why is Legitimacy of Authority seen as a Sociocultural Explanation of Obedience?

Answer 34

• The legitimacy of an authority figure is based on the shared assumptions within a society
• E.g. Police have authority in dangerous situations and teachers have authority in schools