Chapter 7 Lecture Flashcards
Social psychology
how other people affect your thoughts, feelings and beahviours
social influence
any actions performed by one or more others that change the attitudes, behaviours or thoughts of one or more others.
3 main types of social influence
1) CONFORMITY
2) compliance
3) obedeience
define conformity
tendency to go along with a group, OR a situation in which individuals change their behaviour in order to adhere to or go along with widely accepted beliefs or standards.
most stubtle form of influence
conformity; because no one is generally directly pressuring you to do that. You’re the one who makes the decision to go along with whatever trend.
Compliance
changing your behaviour because of a direct request
obedience
changing your behaviour because of a direct order from an authoritative figure usually
Explain the original line study conducted by solomon and asc. Why did they do it? Outline steps and findings
- wanted to see how much pressure we need in order to conform with other people
- its were shown a card with a line on it, and asked to match it to one of the three lines on a different card.
- there were 5 confederates in the group. the 6Th person was the real participant.
- each person would give their answer one at a time about which line (a,B or C) matched their given card.
- confederates ALL gave answers that were wrong, and wanted to see if the actual participant would go along.
- overall, around 76% of the people conformed at least once, indicating that the conformity pressure was real and strong.
5 factors that influence if we are going to conform or not
1) nature of the task: the more difficult the task is, the harder it is to know the correct answer–> the more likely people are to go along with the grope and conform
2) nature of response
less conformity when people can respond privately
3) nature of the group
- conformity increases as group number increases, but plateaus at 3-4. We feel maximum conformity pressure after 3-4 people.
- Also, the more we value the group, or like the members of the group, then the more likely we are able to conform with the group
4) status of individual: lower status members conform more than higher status members
5) similarity: the greater the similarity between us and he member of the group, the more likely we are to go along with the group than if they were different.
Explain Newcomb et al.s study on conformity about views in a university.
- Wanted to see if liberal peers around conservative students would influence them to conform
- observed 1st year students coming in, and they tended to be more conservative– had the same attitudes their parents did.
- tracked the first years over time and found out by their 4th year, the conservative 1st years had more liberal views and attitudes.
Therefore, it was seen that attitudes had conformed to their peers over time.
Effects of a social supporter in Asch’s line study
in ascots study, out of the 5 confederates giving a wrong answer, 1 of them gives the correct answer (they are the social supporter)
- when there is a social supporter, conformity drops dramatically, and the actual participant is MORE LIKELY TO NOT CONFORM
Study by Allen and Levine : effects of a social supporter
- wanted to see the effects of a social supporter on conformity
- repeated a line experiment like Asch with 3 CONDITIONS:
1) no social supporter (all confederates will give the wrong answer)
2) incompetent social supporter (gives right answer but has poor eye site and looks extremely unsure)
3) competent social supporter: one person who gives the correct answer and when he does the vision test, he had perfect eye sight.
- Findings: found that by simply having a social supporter, participants are more likely to say the right answer/ not conform, even if their social supporter appears “incompetent”
- 97% conformity for no social supporter
- 64% conformity for incompetent social supporter
- 37% for competent social supporter.
Explain the sistrunk + mcdavid study about gender and conformity
- they wanted to see if there was actually a gender difference in the amount of conformity, or if women were just conforming more in previous studies because they were being assessed by measures that they felt less competent then males. There are also neutral tasks.
- varied conformity tasks where men would have more knowledge (mechanical knowledge), and other tasks where women would have more knowledge (ex/ shopping)
Findings: when it came to masculine tasks, women conformed more than men. But for feminine tasks, men are more conforming than women.
- On the neutral tasks, there were no sex differences in conformity.
- Basically, there are no gender differences in conformity, but the effect is actually COMPETANCY
Explain the moscovici (1969( study about minority influence?
- wanted to see if the minority group could sway/influence the majority group.
- was done with all female participants
- study was done by judging colours so men might not be included because they could be colorblind
- had 2 confederates try to sway 4 participants
- he believed that if the minority group was CONSISTENT and tried too tick to their argument, they could swing the majority.
- the slides were differing intensities and shades of blues. They had the confederates say that the slides are green consistently through the trials.
- all the slides were blue, but the researchers looked at how many times the patients said the slide was green (indicating conformity to the minority)
Findings:
ControlL: all participants with no confederates said all the sides were blue
manipulated: 1/3 of participants responded green at least once and were thus affected by the minority confederates. Overall, 8% of the trials the participants called the sides green.
Minority groups thus had a significant effect even if they were not as huge as the majority effect.
Explain the Moscovici FOLLOW UP study to minority-influenced conformity
after the experimental session in which confederate minorities tried to influence participants to call a square green instead of blue, the participants were taken into a different room they were shown different swabs of colour. (very blue, blue-green, very green)
- its were asked “is this colour swatch blue or green”
- the participants were hearing green being said by the confederates in the PREVIOUS STUDY were more likely than the controls to say the colour “green”
- this data suggests that people in the minority can actually influence the majority.
