Locus Of Control and minority influence

Question 1

What is LOC

Answer 1

It refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour

Question 2

What is internal LOC

Answer 2

People who believes their life is determined by their own decisions and efforts

Question 3

What is external LOC

Answer 3

An individual who believes their life is determined by fate, luck and external factors

Question 4

How does Internal LOC relate to social influence

Answer 4

High Internals are less likely to rely on others. They can resist pressure from others so conform less

Question 5

How does External LOC relate to Social Influence

Answer 5

High externals are more likely to be influenced by others as they don’t believe they exercise personal control over their lives

Question 6

What is the test called to measure LOC

Answer 6

The rotter scale

Question 7

What are the Strengths of the LOC measure

Answer 7

Quantitative data meaning it is easy to measure and replicate, filler questions reduce chance of Ps showing demand characteristics

Question 8

What are the weaknesses of LOC measure

Answer 8

Closed questionnaire leads to DC, Questions are extreme opposites and therefore cannot be directly applied to real world(not relatable)

Question 9

What is social support

Answer 9

The presence of people who resist to conform or obey and thus can help others to do the same

Question 10

What happens if a non-conforming person starts to conform again and what does this tell us about social support

Answer 10

Asch’s participants see the dissenter as social support. When the dissenter conforms again, the participant also conforms again as without social support they cannot resist social influence

Question 11

Strengths of social support explanation

Answer 11

Good real world application as it can be generalised to London Riots in 2011 and Asch’s and Milgram’s studies, Research support by Holland in 1967 increases external validity and credibility of explanation

Question 12

Weakness of Social support explanation

Answer 12

Contradictory research found by Tweng et al showed between 1960 and 2002, people had become more obedient

Question 13

What is minority influence

Answer 13

People with minority views who creates a conversion whereby people consider the message itself and people want to understand why the minority holds this position leading to internalisation

Question 14

Examples of minority influence

Answer 14

NHS strikes for better pay, Clare’s law(the right to ask police for someone’s criminal record if it puts you in danger) and teacher’s union

Question 15

What is consistency

Answer 15

The minority must be consistent with their views

Question 16

What is Synchronic consistency

Answer 16

They all say the same thing

Question 17

What is Diachronic consistency

Answer 17

They have all been saying the same thing for some time now

Question 18

What is commitment

Answer 18

The minority must demonstrate commitment to their views by engaging in extreme activities that present some risk to the minority to make sure the majority pay attention(augmentation principle)

Question 19

What is flexibility

Answer 19

Accepting what someone else is saying and changing and adapting to it

Question 20

What is the snowball effect

Answer 20

Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from a majority position to the minority position. They have become ‘converted’. The more that this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. Eg. Vegetarianism or LGBTQ acceptance

Question 21

What was the aim of the Moscovici study

Answer 21

To see if minority could influence the majority when choosing between different colours of slides

Question 22

What was the method of Moscovici’s study

Answer 22

Participants were given eye tests to check to see if they were colour blind. They were then placed in a group of 3 other participants and 2 confederates.

They were shown 36 slides which were clearly different shades of blue and asked to state the colour of each slide out loud. The 2 confederates answered green for each of the 36 slides in the initial experiment(consistent) but answered blue 12 out of 36 in a second experiment(inconsistent)

Question 23

What were the results of Moscovici’s study

Answer 23

When the confederates were consistent, 32% of participants conformed at least once but when inconsistent, participants only conformed to 1.25% of slides

Question 24

Strengths of Moscovici’s experiment

Answer 24

Artificial environment, ethical, replication, eye tests remove DC

Question 25

Weaknesses of Moscovici’s study

Answer 25

Individual characteristics, lab experiment, only used female participants so cannot generalise