evaluation : social influence

Question 1

What is a strength of social change ?

Answer 1

Strength : Research support for normative influences

• Nolan et al (2008) aimed to see if they could change people’s energy use habits. The researchers hung messages on the front doors of peoples houses in San Diego, California every week for a month.
• The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy use. As a control, some residents had a different message asking them to save energy but with no reference to other peoples behaviour.
• It was shown that there were significant decreases in energy usage in the first group compared to the second.

This shows that conformity (majority influence) can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence meaning it’s a valid explanation.

Question 2

What is the counterpoint to this strength? ( social change nsi)

Answer 2

counterpoint : research support

• Foxcroft et al (2015) reviewed social norms as part of the ‘gold standard’ cochrane collaboration.
• This review included 70 studies where the soical norms approach was used to reduce student alchol use.
• The researcher found only a small reduction in drinking quanitity and no effect in drinking frequency

Therefore it seems that using normative influence does not always produce long term social change

Question 3

What is a strength of minority influence in terms of social change?

Answer 3

It allows Psychologists to explain how social change occurs

• Nemeth(2009) claims social change is due to the type of thinking that minorities inspire. When people consider minority arguments, they engage in divergent thinking. This type of thinking is broad rather than narrow, in which the thinker actively searchers for information and weighs up more options.
• Nemeth argues this leads to better descisons and more creative solutions to social issues
  This shows why dissenting minorities are valuble- they stimulate new ideas and open minds in a way that majorities cannot

Question 4

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What is a limitation of deeper processing in terms of social change?

Answer 4

Limitation : Deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change

• Mackie(1987) disagrees with the idea that some people are converted because they think about the minorities views. She has presented evidence to show that it is the majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their view.
• This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same way as us. When we find out that a majority believe something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguements and reasoning.
  This means that the central element of minority influence has beem challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation for social change

Question 5

What is a limitation of Moscovicic research?

Answer 5

Lacks External Validity

• Identifying the colour of slides is very removed from our minorities try to influence the majorities in the real world

No consequences

• Minorities are often at the heart of important choices/changes where the outcomes are much more important

Question 6

What is a strength Mosocovici research?

Answer 6

Research support for consistency

• Moscovici et al’s blue slide green slide study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on changing the views of other people than an inconsistent opinion
• Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential

This suggests that presenting a consistent view is a minimum requirement for a minority trying to influence a majority

Question 7

What is a strength for deeper processing?

Answer 7

A change in the majority’s position does involve deeper processing of the minorities ideas

• Martin et al (2003) presented participants with a message supporting a particular veiwpoint and measured their agreement. One group then heard a minority group agree with the initial view while another group heard a majority agree with it. Participants were finall exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again.
• It was found that people were less willing to chnage their options if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group.

This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and has more enduring effect, supporting the central argument about how minority influence works

Question 8

What is the counterpoint to studies such as Martin et al’s?

Answer 8

Limitation : Research studies such as Martin et al’s make a clear distinction between the majority and minority

• Doing this in a controlled way is a strength of minority influence research but in real-world social influence situations are much more complicated
• For exmaple majorities usually have more power and status than minorities. Minorties are very commited to their cause- they often have to face very hostile opposition.
• These features are usually absent from the minority influence research- the minority is simply the smallest group

Therefore Martin et al’s findings are very limited in what they can tell us about minority influence in the real world

Question 9

What is a strength of social support?

Answer 9

Strentgh : real world application

• Albrecht et al (2006) evaluted an 8-week programme designed to help pregnant tees to resist peer pressure to smoke and found that when social support was provided by a slighly older buddy the preganant teens were signficanlty less likely to smoke.
• Furthermore this has important implications in society as stopping teesn from smoking whilst pregnant means that a child born with health problems is also reduced.

This ensures that money is not being used on something that could have been prevented and will not have to expand their resources as well as being able to focus more of theit attention on peoole that have diseases and sicknesses that are beyond their control.

Question 10

What is a strength regarding social support?

Answer 10

Strength : Research support

• Gamson et all - asked participants to work in groups to gather evidence to run a smear campaign for an oil company.

Found higher levels of resistance in this study than Milgram- probably because they were in groups. 88% rebelled showing that peer support linked to greater resistannce

Question 11

What is a strength of Locus of control?

Answer 11

Holland ( 1987) repeated Milgram’s study and measured whether particpants were internals or externals

• 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level whereas only 27% of externals did not continue

Question 12

What is a limiation of the Locus of control?

Answer 12

Limitation: Locus of control may only be present in novel situations

• When people are in situations in which they have conformed or obeyed in the past, they are likely to repeat this behavuiour the next time the situation comes around. This means that LoC may only be in effect when the situation is unclear, making LoC a limited explanation.
• This suggest that although it can explain individual instance in resistance in reserarch, there may be an influence of other factors alongside a person’s LOC

Question 13

What is a strength of the expalanation of an authoritarian personality?

Answer 13

Strength: Research support as an explanation for obedience

• Milgram and Elms (1966) conductd post-experimental interviews with 20 particpants who were fully obedient in Milgrams original study, to see if there was a link between high levels of obedience and an authoritarian personality
• It was found that the obedient particpants socred higher on F scale in comparison to the 20 disobedient participants that were also interviewed. It was concluded that the obedient partcipants in Milgrams original research displayed more charcteristics of the auhtouritarian personality

This finding supports Adorno et al’s view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian personality

Question 14

What is the counterpoint to this stregnth of the F-scale?

Answer 14

Counterpoint: Individual differences

• However when researchers analysed the individual susbscales on the F-scale, they found that the obedient particpants had a number of charcteristics which were unusual for authoritarians
• For example, unlike authouritarians, Milgrams partcipants didn’t glorify their fathers, did not experience unsual levels of punishement in childhood.
• This means that the link between obedience and authouritariansm is complex

The obedient particpants were unlike authourtarians in so many ways that authoritariansm is unlikely to be a predictor of obedience

Question 15

What is the limiation for the explanation of the authouritarian personality?

Answer 15

Limitation: Limited explanation

• It cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a countries population
• For example. in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient, racist and anti-semitic behaviour. This was despite the fact they must have differed personalities in all sorts of ways. It seems extremely unlikely that they could all posess an authouritarian personality
• An Alternative view is that the majority of the Gemans people identifies with the anti-semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the “outgroup” of jews- an approach more in line with social identity theory.

Therefore Adorno et al’s theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic

Question 16

What is a limiation of the auhthoritarian persoanlity?

Answer 16

Limiation: F-scale represents political bias

• Christie and Jahoda (1954) highlight a weakenss in the F-scale for only measuring extreme right-wing ideologies, thus ignoring the role that authoritariansim has also played in left-wing poltics such as Chinese Maosim and Russian Bolshevism, for example.

This identifies a bias in what is believed to be the at the core of the authoritarian personality and theorfore poses a limitation of Adorno’s theory, since the F-scale cannot account for obedience across the diverse political range

Question 17

What is the limitation of the F-scale?

Answer 17

Limiation : Methodological Issues

• • The Fscale may suffer from response bias or social desirabilty bias, where particpants provide answers which are socially accpetable.

This therefore reduces the internal validty of the questionaire research method used in determinning the degree of authoritariansm

Question 18

What is the strength for the social and psychological factors affecting obedience?

Answer 18

Research support

• When Blass and Schmit (2001) asked students to watch the original footage an suggest who was responsible for causing ‘harm’ to the learner, they named the experimenter, rather than the participants.
• The students also identified that as the experimenrter was not onlyat the top of the social hierarchy, but the assumed ‘expert’ in the room as they look like a scientist

Question 19

What is strength for the explanations of social and pscyhcological factors in obedience?

Answer 19

Strength: Research support for the agentic state

• This comes from Milgrams own study into obedience.
• Most of Milgram’s particpants resisted giving shocks at some point and often asked the experimenter questions about the procedure.
• For example one question whas ‘‘Who is responsible if the learner is harmed’’ the experimeter would reply ‘‘I’m responsible’’ and the particpants often went through the procdure quickly with no objections

This shows that once the particpants percieved they were no longer responsibe for their own behaviour they acted more easily as the experimeter’s agent, as Milgram suggested

Question 20

Whar is the strength of the explnations for social and pscyhological reasons for obedience?

Answer 20

Strength: Real world application

• Tarnow (2000) found excessive depedance on the captains authourity and expertise- one second officer claimed that, although he noticed of the caption taking a particualrly risky approach, he said nothing as he assumed the capatin must know what he is doing.
• This offers support for the impact of the presence of a legitamate authority figure and overall increase the credibilty of the theory

Question 21

What is the limitation of the social and psychological expalanations for obedience?

Answer 21

Limitation : Limited explanation

• The legitamacy of authority explanations doesn’t explain Rank and Jacobson’s findings.
• 16/18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer excessive drug does to a patient, when they were familiar witht the drug and the same for the other nurses
• The doctor was an ovbious authourity figure, but almost all the nurses remained autonomous, as did many of milgrams particpants.

At best the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience and there are many factors that could lead to disobedience in the real world

Question 22

What is the strength for the situational variables that explain obedience?

Answer 22

Strength : Research support

Bickman (1974) conducted a field experiment where confderates stood on the street and asked members of the public who were passing by to perform a small task

• The outfit that the confederate was wearing varied from a smart suit jacked and tie, a milkmans’s outfit or a security guard’s uniform.
• Members of the public were twice as likely to obey the order given by the ‘security guard’.

This supports Milgrams idea that a uniform adds to the legitamacy of the authourity figure and is a situational varibale which increases obedience levels

Question 23

What is the strength for the situational variables that explain obedience?

Answer 23

Strength : Milgram’s research has been replicated in other cultures (cross cultural repliaction)

• For example, in a Dutch study, Meeus and Raajimakers (1986) ordered partcipants to say stressful things in an interview to someone ( a confederate desperate for a job - 90% of the particpants obeyed
• Milgrams findings concerning proximity were also replicated. When the person giving orders was not present, obedience decreased dramatically.

This suggests that Milgrams fiding’s about obedience are no just limited to Americans or males, but are valid across cultures and apply to females too.

Question 24

What is the counterpoint to milgram’s study

Answer 24

Counterpoint: Milgram’s research are actually not very cross cultural

• • Smith and Bond (1998) identified just two replications between 1968 and 1985 that took place in non-western countries, India and Jordan.
• • Other countries involved( Spain, Austrailia and Scotland) are not that culturally different from the united states. For example they have similar notions about the role of authourity.

Therefore it may not be appropiate to conclude that Milgram’s findings(including those about proximity, location and uniform) apply to people in all or most cultures

Question 25

What is the weakness of the situational variables involved in Milgram’s research?.

Answer 25

Limitation: Low external validity
* Orne and Holland (1968) made this critism of Milgram’s baseline study. They even more likely in his variations because of the extra manipulation of variables

• A good example in the variation when the experimenter is replaced by a ‘member of the public’. Even Milgram recognised that this situation was so contrived particpants may well have worked out the truth.

Therefore, in all of Milgrams’ study is it unclear whether the findings are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the participants saw through deception and just responded to demand characteristics

Question 26

What is the limitation of the situational variables in Milgram’s research?

Answer 26

Limitation: Milgram’s research supports a situational perspective in obedience

• However, Mandel(1998) argues that this perspective provieds an excuse for destructive obedience, as people excuse the antisocial behaviour because it isn’t their fault.
• Furthermore, Milgram’s perspective overlooks the role of dispostional factors ( your personality characteristics) Some people may be more obedient because of genetics or because of their upbringing. This may be just as important in determining whether people obey authourity.

This suggests that Milgrams’ explanation based soley on situational factors is likely to oversimplify the causes of obedience, and Mandel further argues that ultimately attributing the Holocaust to situational pressures while ignoring the role of dispostion is offesnsive to survivors

Question 27

What is a strength of Milgram’s research?

Answer 27

Strength: Research support

• Milgram’s findings were replicated in a French documentary that was made about reality TV (Beauvois et al. 20|2).
• Participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new gameshow called Le Jeu de la Mort.
• They were paid to give (fake) electric shocks (ordered by the presenter) to other participants, who were actually actors in front of a studio audience.
• 80% of participants gave the maximum shock of 460v to an apparently unconscious man.
• Their behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s participants.

Question 28

What is a limitation of Milgram’s research?

Answer 28

Limitation : Lack of external validity

• Milgram reported that 75% of participants said they believed the shocks were genuine.
• However, Orne and Holland (1968) suggests participants didn’t really believe in the set-up and were play-acting.
• Perry (2013) confirmed this after listening to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that only about half of them believed the shocks were real and two-thirds of these participants were disobedient.

This means that participants may have just been going along with the study, and not behaving naturally, which would suggest that Milgram’s was not testing what he said he was testing, this lowering the external validity of his findings

Question 29

What is a strength of Milgram’s research?

Answer 29

Strength : research support

• Sheridan & King (1972) did a Milgram-like study, but with one difference, the participants believed they were delivering a shock to puppies!
• 54% of males and 100% of females delivered what they thought to be a fatal shock
• So maybe Milgram’s results were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real

Question 30

What is the limitation of Milgram’s research?

Answer 30

Limiation : Alternative Interpretation

• Haslam (2014) that participants obeyed when they received the first 3 verbal prods, but every participant who was given the 4th prompt (“you have no choice, you must go on”) disobeyed
• Social Identity Theory suggests that when participants identified with the scientific aims
  “The experiment requires you to continue”

Question 31

What is a limitation of Milgram’s research?

Answer 31

Limitation : Ethical Issues

• Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment affects learning, rather than on obedience.
• They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that was in fact pre-determined.
• Furthermore, due to the nature of the task Milgram did not protect the participants from psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during experiment and may have continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human being

Some critics of Milgram believed that these breaches could have severe damage to the reputation of psychology and jeopardise future research .

Question 32

What is the strength of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 32

Strength : Real world application
Abu Gharib
Zimbardo argued that the same conformity to social role effect that was evident in the SPE was also present in Abu Ghraib.
• Factors such as lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority were present in the SPE and at Abu Ghraib.
• These combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned roles of ‘guard’, led to the prisoner abuses in both situations.

Question 33

What is a limitation of the Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 33

Limitation : Individual differences

• From (1973) accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour, minimising the role of personality.
• In Zimbardo’s original experiment the behaviour of the guards varied dramatically,
  There was extremely sadistic behaviour displayed by around one third of the participants in that role, but also a few guards who actually helped the prisoners by offering support, sympathy, offering them cigarettes and reinstating any privileges lost.

This suggests that situational factors are not the only cause of conformity to social roles, and dispositional factors such as personality also play a role, implying that Zimbardo’s conclusion could have been overstated.

Question 34

What is the Limitation of Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 34

Limitation : Ethical issues*

• A major limitation of the Stanford Prison Experiment was the fact that it breached many ethical guidelines, such as protection from harm and the right to withdraw.
• For example, on one occasion a student spoke to Zimbardo and asked if he could leave the study-
• However, due to Zimbardo’s dual roles within the experiment, he responded to the request like a prison superintendent would respond to a prisoner - denying the request and thereby subjecting the participant to further psychological and physical harm.

Zimbardo was also conforming to the social role of prison superintendent, and he was not able to fulfil his main ethical responsibility, which should have been for the welfare of his participants, making this a clear limitation of the research.

Question 35

What is the strength of the Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 35

Strength : Zimbardo had control variables

• The most obvious example of this was the selection of participants. Emotionally stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of guard and and prisoners.
• This was one way in which the researchers tried to rule out individual personality differences as an explanation for the findings.
• If guards and prisoners behaved very differently, but were in those roles only by chance, then their behaviour must have been due to the pressures of the situation.

Having such control over the variables is a strength because it increases the internal validity of the study, so we can be much more confident in drawing conclusions about the influence of roles on behaviour.

Question 36

What is the strength for the types and explanations of conformity?

Answer 36

Strength: Research support for NSI

• Asch’s (1951) study into conformity (see below) provides research support for normative social influence.
• When asked to judge the lengths of lines and match them to a standard line, he found that many of the participants went along with the obviously wrong answers of the other group members.

*When asked by Asch in post-experimental interviews why they did this, participants said that they changed their answer to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group, which clearly shows that compliance had occurred as the participants conformed in order to ‘fit in’.

• Further to this, Asch demonstrated in a later variation (1955) that when the pressure to publicly conform is removed by asking participants to write down their answers on a piece of paper, rather than say them aloud the conformily rates fell to 12.5% as the fear of rejection became far less.

This shows that at least some conformity is due to a desire not to be rejected by the group for disagreeing with them (le. N5l).

Question 37

What is the strength for the types and explanations of conformity?

Answer 37

Strength : Research support for informational social influence

• Research support lor informational social influence was provided by Lucas et al. (2006)
• Students were asked to choose the correct answer to mathematical problem that were easy or more difficult.
  Greater conformity to incorrect answers was found when the questions were difficult rather than easy.
• This is because when the problems were easy participants “knew their own minds , but when the problems were hard the situation became ambiguous (unclear). The participants did not want to be wrong, so they relied on the answers they were given.

This shows that ISI is a valid explanation of conformity because the results are what ISI would predict

Question 38

What is a limitation of types and explanations of conformity?

Answer 38

Limitation : Lack of clarity

• However, it is often unclear whether it is NSI or ISI at work in research studies (or in real life.)
• For example, Asch (1955) found that conformity is reduced when there is one other dissenting participant present.
• The dissenter may reduce the power of NSI by providing social support, or they may reduce the power of ISI because they provide an alternative source of information. Both interpretations are possible.

Therefore, it is hard to separate ISI and NSI and both processes probably operate together in most real-world conformity situations.

Question 39

What is a limitation of types and explanations of conformity?

Answer 39

Limitation : Individual differences

• One limitation is that NSI does not predict conformity in every case.
• Some people are more concerned with being liked than others, these people are called nAffiliators - they have a strong need for ‘affiliation’ (i.e. they want to relate to other people).
  McGhee & Teevan (1967) found that students who were nAffiliators were significantly more likely to conform than others.

This shows that NSI underlies conformity for some people more than it does for others. There are individual differences to conformity that cannot be fully explained by one general theory of situational pressures.

Question 40

What is strength of Asch’s research?

Answer 40

Strength : Research support

• One strength of Asch’s research is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty.
• For example, Lucas et al. (2006) asked their participants to solve ‘easy and ‘hard’ maths problems. Participants were given answers from three other students and it was found that the participants agreed with the wrong answers more often when the problems were harder.

This show’s Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity and therefore supports his findings.

Question 41

What is the counterpoint to the strength of Ash’s study?

Answer 41

Limitation : Limited explanation

• However, Lucas et al’s study also found that conformity is more complex than Asch first suggested.
• Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities were found to conform less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.

This shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables (e.g. task difficulty), which is something that Asch did not take into account.

Question 42

What is a limitation of Asch’s research?

Answer 42

Limitation : Artificial

• A limitation of Asch’s research is that the task and situation were very artificial.
• Due to the fact that the set up was unbelievable participants may have been very aware that they were being deceived about the nature of the study, and guessed the real aim.
• Therefore Asch’s results may actually be due to people guessing what is expected of them and going along with it (demand characteristics).
• Furthermore, because the task was trivial Fisk (2014) argues that there was no real reason to conform, as there were no perceived consequences of getting the answer wrong. It is argued therefore that this artificial task and lack of repercussion makes very different to a real world group scenario (e.g. a jury in a trial).

This suggests that conformity levels in Asch’s research may be exaggerated because of the possibility of demand characteristics and lack of external validity.

Question 43

What is a limitation of Asch’s research?

Answer 43

Limitation : Findings may not be universally applicable

• A limitation of Asch’s research is his sample of 123 male students from colleges in America.
• Other research suggests that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationship than men (Neto, 1995).
• Furthermore, Asch’s study was conducted in the United States, an individualist culture, where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group. Studies done in collectivist cultures, where the social group is more important than the individual have found that conformity rates are higher (Bond and Smith, 1996)

This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than the Asch found and Asch’s findings actually tell us very little about conformity in women or in other cultures.

Question 44

What is a limitation of Asch’s research?

Answer 44

Limitation: Asch’s research may be a ‘child of its time’

• There is the issue of Asch’s research being called a ‘child of its time’ as the research took place within a particular time in history.
• Due to the fact that the research was conducted in 1950’s America means it was in the grip of ‘McCarthyism’ - a strong anti-communist period where people were scared to go against majority view for fear of being labelled a communist.
• When Perrin & Spencer (1980) attempted to recreate Asch’s research in the UK, they only found 1 conforming response out of 396 trials where a majority gave a unanimously wrong response.
• However research performed on youths on probation in the US in the 1950’s found similar results to Asch’s original research.

This suggests that there was something unique about the culture in the US during this time period questioning whether Asch’s findings may be generalisable to different time/cultures.