Locus Of Control and minority influence Flashcards
What is LOC
It refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour
What is internal LOC
People who believes their life is determined by their own decisions and efforts
What is external LOC
An individual who believes their life is determined by fate, luck and external factors
How does Internal LOC relate to social influence
High Internals are less likely to rely on others. They can resist pressure from others so conform less
How does External LOC relate to Social Influence
High externals are more likely to be influenced by others as they don’t believe they exercise personal control over their lives
What is the test called to measure LOC
The rotter scale
What are the Strengths of the LOC measure
Quantitative data meaning it is easy to measure and replicate, filler questions reduce chance of Ps showing demand characteristics
What are the weaknesses of LOC measure
Closed questionnaire leads to DC, Questions are extreme opposites and therefore cannot be directly applied to real world(not relatable)
What is social support
The presence of people who resist to conform or obey and thus can help others to do the same
What happens if a non-conforming person starts to conform again and what does this tell us about social support
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
Strengths of social support explanation
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
Weakness of Social support explanation
Contradictory research found by Tweng et al showed between 1960 and 2002, people had become more obedient
What is minority influence
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
Examples of minority influence
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
What is consistency
The minority must be consistent with their views
What is Synchronic consistency
They all say the same thing
What is Diachronic consistency
They have all been saying the same thing for some time now
What is commitment
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)
What is flexibility
Accepting what someone else is saying and changing and adapting to it
What is the snowball effect
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
What was the aim of the Moscovici study
To see if minority could influence the majority when choosing between different colours of slides
What was the method of Moscovici’s study
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)
What were the results of Moscovici’s study
When the confederates were consistent, 32% of participants conformed at least once but when inconsistent, participants only conformed to 1.25% of slides
Strengths of Moscovici’s experiment
Artificial environment, ethical, replication, eye tests remove DC
Weaknesses of Moscovici’s study
Individual characteristics, lab experiment, only used female participants so cannot generalise
