Chapter 1: Social Influece Flashcards
What is conformity?
A type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group.
List the 3 types of conformity.
Compliance
Identification
Internalisation
Define Compliance
Lowest level of conformity.
A person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs.
Define ‘Identification’
Middle level of conformity.
A person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs but only in the presence of the group they are identifying with.
Define ‘Internalisation’
Deepest level of conformity.
A person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs.
A long term change, often the result of informational social influence (ISI).
Name the theory behind the explanation for conformity. (Incl. date)
Deutch’s and Gerard’s Two Process Theory (1955)
List the two explanations for conformity given from the theory.
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
Define Informational Social Influence (ISI).
Where a person conforms to gain knowledge or because they believe that someone else is ‘right’.
Define Normative Social Influence (NSI)
Where a person conforms in order to be accepted and belong to a group.
Why does ISI occur? (3 reasons)
When the situation is ambiguous.
When they are in a crisis.
If experts are present.
Why does NSI occur? (2 reasons)
To avoid social rejection.
If a person would like to fit in with the ‘norm’.
What are the three variables Asch investigated?
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
What was the procedure that Asch used in the baseline study?
- Asch showed participants two large white cards at a time, one card was a ‘standard line’ while the other card had 3 ‘comparison lines.’
- One of the 3 lines were the same length as the ‘standard line’ and the other two were substantially different (clearly wrong).
- The participants were asked which of the three lines matched the standard.
- The participants were 123 American undergraduates and a naïve participant was tested with 6-8 confederates, where the naïve didn’t know they were confederates.
- On the first few trials, the confederates gave the right answers but then started making errors and were instructed to give the same wrong answer to see if the naïve participant would conform.
What were Asch’s findings in the baseline study? (3 findings)
- Naïve participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time.
- Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials which means 75% conformed at least once.
- When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI).
How did Asch test group size and what effect did it have on conformity?
Test: Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group.
Therefore, he tested a group with only 3 confederates and found that the wrong answer rose to 31.8%.
When Asch added additional confederates the conformity percentage rarely increased.
Effect: A small majority is not sufficient for an influence to be exerted but, at other extremes, there is no need for a majority of more than 3.
How did Asch test unanimity of the majority and what effect did it have in conformity?
Test: Asch wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the naïve participants conformity. Therefore he added a confederate whom would disagree with the rest of the group with the right answer but also agree with them on the wrong answer.
Effect: Conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the naïve participant to behave more independently.
How did the Asch test difficulty of the task and what effect did it have on conformity?
Test: Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the ‘standard line’ and ‘comparison lines’ more similar in length.
Effect: Asch found out ISI plays a greater role when a task becomes harder. He also found out that conformity increased under these conditions.
What are social roles?
Social roles are the part people play as members of a social group. With each social role you adopt, your behaviour changes to fit the expectations both you and others have of that role.
List a few examples of social roles, just to get an idea of what it is.
Daughter
Boss
Coach
Sister
Mum
What does it mean to have a social role?
It means you have an expected behaviour that people know of.
Like if you are a mother, then you look after your kids and you act that way around your kids.
You have an expected behaviour to abide by which is the norm for you.
What was the aim of the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment 1971?
The aim of the experiment was to see whether prison guards were originally sadistic and got the prison guard job to fuel their sadistic tendencies or because their job as prison guard in a prison environment had conformed them to be sadisitic.
Who created the Zimbardo Prison Experiment (1971)?
Robert Zimbardo with the help of other psychologists and an ex-convict.
Who were the participants in the experiment and how were they recruited?
The participants were 24 men who were judged to be the most physically and mentally stable, the most mature and the least involved in anti social behaviour.
These men were recruited through an ad in the newspaper and had to complete diagnostic interviews, personality tests etc. The men would also be getting paid $15 a day.
Why did Zimbardo have all 75 applicants complete diagnostic interviews and psychological tests?
This was to eliminate any candidates with psychological problems, medical disabilities or a history of crime or drug abuse.
This was to take away the idea that another factor may have been involved in the results of the experiment.
How long was the experiment meant to last for?
And how long did it take and why?
The experiment was meant to last for 2 weeks.
However, instead it lasted for 6 days due to an undergraduate in the study who had watched over the clips from the experiment and realised that what was happening to the men was horrible.
Why couldn’t Zimbardo see that the experience the was affecting the men in the study mentally?
Zimbardo took part in experiment as a superintendent and got too invested in his role and therefore wasn’t able to see the effect the experiment had on the men.
What were the criticisms of Zimbardo’s SPE?
Lack of fully informed consent by participants
Deception
How does Abu Ghraib add applicability to Zimbardo’s SPE?
The guards conformed to their social role like Zimbardo’s SPE but in this case they weren’t given instructions on what not to do but were given this power which they heavily abused.
The guards can argue that as prison guards, they have the capability to be able to use their superiority as a prison guard would.
They can conform to that social role.
What is obedience?
A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order.
The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
What was the aim of Milgram’s Study?
To see how willing people were to obey authority. Milgram sought an answer to the question of why the German population had followed the orders of Hitler and slaughtered over 10 million Jews.
Eichmann whom was a Nazi under Hitler’s command had used, as his defence, that because Hitler was a high authoritive figure, he had no choice to obey him.
What was the procedure in Milgram’s Study?
Milgram recruited 40 male participants through newspaper adverts. The ad stated that he was looking for participants for a study about memory.
The age range was between 20-50 while their job range was unskilled to professional.
A confederate, ‘Mr Wallace’, always ended up as the ‘learner’ while the true participant was the ‘teacher’.
Learner was strapped in a chair in another room with an electric shock attached to them.
The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly sever shock each time the learner made a mistake on the learning task.
However, the teacher did not know that the shocks were not real.
