Majority Influence Flashcards
What do we mean by social influence?
- Other people make deliberate attempts to persuade us
- But we are susceptible to social influence even when others are not necessarily trying to influence us.
Majority Influence
(conformity)
“Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a majority or the majority of one’s group” (Hewstone, Stroebe & Jonas, 2015, p. 247)
Minority influence
(Innovation)
“Situation in which either an individual or a group in a numerical minority can influence the majority” (Hewstone, Stroebe & Jonas, 2015, p. 247)
Classical studies on majority influence
Solomon Asch -> the Asch experiments often referred to his studies on conformity.
Muzafer Sherif -> Asch’s work central and influential -> Asch’s work stimulated by the work of Sherif on social norm formation and transmission
Social norms are “belief systems about how (not) to behave, that guide behaviour, but without the force of laws, and reflect group members’ shared expectations about typical or desirable activities” (Hewstone, Stroebe & Jonas, 2015, p. 238).
Muzafer Sherif (1936)
* Used autokinetic effect (ambiguous stimuli) and asked groups of male participants to determine how much the point of light had moved.
* The point of light never moved.
Sherif (1936) influence of others on our behaviour when faced with ambiguous stimuli.
Asch (1951, 1955, 1956) -> influence of others on our behaviour when faced with unambiguous stimuli.
Asch’s line study
18 trials -> Differing number of confederates (e.g., 9) -> Naïve participant last but one to call out -> Correct responses on 6/18 trials (1/3rd of trials) -> Confederates made errors on 12/18 trials (2/3rds of trials), starting trial 3 -> Unanimous majority
Basic findings -> 37% of responses were incorrect, 75% of participants made at least one error (compared to almost 0% when doing task alone), 5% of participants yielded (conformed) all the time.
Independence -> 63% of responses were correct. -> 95% of participants gave correct responses at least once, almost all ps resisted majority pressure at least once. -> 25% of participants never yielded. -> 65% of participants gave correct answers most or all of the time. Tells us most ps resist the group pressure.
Asch’s take on his result -> “Despite this large effect, the preponderance of judgments was independent, evidence that under the present conditions the force of the perceived data far exceeded that of the majority. (Asch, 1956, p. 10).”
When do we conform?
Group size, unanimity, culture.
Group size -> Inconsistent -> levelling off (e.g. majority of 3 in Asch, 1951) vs linear increase (Gerard et al., 1968) (see meta-analysis by Bond, 2005, suggesting inconclusive findings!). only up until a certain point. When one person gives wrong answer – less conformity etc.
Bonds table -> meta-analysis -> found data inconclusive.
What is unamitity?
Unanimity -> variation where confederate gives a deviate but wrong answer decreases conformity. Dissent in Asch’s paradigm, regardless of accuracy, decreases conformity. Dramatic drop-in rate of conformity during dissent from confederate -> when you dissent against the majority it makes it easier for others to dissent too.
Culture -> effect replicated across various cultures, but conformity degrees vary – collectivist cultures show greater conformity.
133 Asch Replications ->
More conformity in collectivist cultures, than these individualistic cultures.
How do we conform?
Stated reasons for independence and yielding based on post-experimental interviews.
Independent participants -> confident (the others are wrong)
Tension and doubt -> feeling of discomfort and feeling incorrect but obligation to respond truthfully) -> from asch (1956) “Only rarely did we find an independent subject completely free of doubt”.
Yielding participants
- Distortion of perception
- Distortion of judgment
- Distortion of action
Participants in reality fell into more than one group (contradictory motives) - Distortion of perception -> yielding without awareness, rare
- Distortion of judgement -> One participant: In those four to six cases I agreed because I figured they were right. […] I only assumed my answers to be wrong, because I disagreed with everyone else”.
- Distortion of action -> One participant: “I might be alienating a few people. Here was a group; they had a definite idea; my idea disagreed; this might arouse anger.”
Why do we conform?
Informational social influence, normative social influence, referent informational influence.
Informational social influence
Deutsch & Gerard (1955) -> “Accept information as evidence of reality” -> Goal to make accurate and valid judgments.
Evidence: -> Sherif’s 1936 autokinetic study on norm formation (ambiguous stimuli)
Meta-analysis on Ash-like experiments found that conformity was significantly higher the more ambiguous the stimulus (Bond & Smith, 1996).
Normative social influence
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) -> “To conform with the positive expectations of another” -> Need for social approval or harmony -> compliance (public) without acceptance (private)
Evidence -> Asch variation on original experiment -> When naïve participants write down their answers instead of saying them out loud, conformity rates drop from 37% to 12.5%.
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) experiment -> judging lines directly as they see them. High uncertainty in line tasks increase conformity and highest during ftf group goals rather than face-to-face and private/anonymous. Shows there’s fear of not fitting in -> present with others increase conformity during high uncertainty line tasks.
Both informational and normative social influence both interplay to increase conformity.
Referent informational influence
Adopt the norms, beliefs and behaviours of the prototypical ingroup member -> Maximises similarities between ingroup members and differences between ingroup and outgroup members. Are the others ingroup members? If yes, conformity should increase! If the others are outgroup members, conformity should decrease!
Abrams et al., (1990) -> Conformity increases when they have to give their answers in public ->however outgroup members ps conform less during public! And vise-versa. Perhaps to prevent public dissentation.
Meta-analysis by Bond & Smith (1996): lower conformity when the majority consist of out-group members.
