- To act appropriately - To avoid standing out

- Socially rewarding - Avoid punishment

October Test Flashcards by LJ Messer

What are the three types of CONFORMITY?

Compliance
Identification
Internalisation

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Define COMPLIANCE

Publicly conforming to the behaviours or views of others, but privately maintaining one’s own views.

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Deine IDENTIFICATION

Adopting the behaviors or views of a group both publicly and privately as you value group membership (identify with them).
HOWEVER, this is only temporary and is not maintained on leaving the group.

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Define INTERNALISATION

A real change of private views to match those of the group.

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What are the two explanations of CONFORMITY?

Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Normative Social Influence (NSI)

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What is ISI?

Conforming to gain knowledge or be ‘right’.

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Why does ISI happen?

To act appropriately
To avoid standing out

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What is NSI?

Conforming to be accepted and belong to a group.

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Why does NSI happen?

Socially rewarding
Avoid punishment

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Compliance results from ISI/NSI?

NSI

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Internalisation results from ISI/NSI?

ISI

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What research supports ISI?

Sherif’s study/ experiment

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What research supports NSI?

Asch’s study/ experiment

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What were the three variations of Asch’s research?

Group size
Unanimity
Task Difficulty

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Give three evaluation points of Asch’s research:

-> Lacks ecological validity (not so realistic of real-world conformity)
-> White American male sample (ethnocentric and culture biased)
-> Beta bias (androcentric and gender-biased)
-> Unethical (level of deception)
-> Low % of conformity… good evidence?

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What were Asch’s results?

6 control, 12 critical, 18 altogether.

Control = confederates gave correct answers = 0.7% error rate.
Critical = confederates gave wrong answers = 32% error rate.

74% of participants conformed at least once on the 12 critical trials.
26% never conformed.

What experiment showed conformity to social roles?

Zimbardo’s (1973) Stanford Prison Experiment

What did Zimbardo want to investigate?

How readily people conform to the expectations they have about social roles.

Give 3 evaluation points about Zimbardo’s research:

-> Individual personality differences were helped to rule out (eg. mental health + random allocation)
-> High internal validity (90% prisoner’s conversations about prison life)
-> Zimbardo exaggeration? Minimizing personality factors?
-> Reliable? The replication of Zimbardo’s experiment found other results.
-> Unethical, psychological distress.

What did Milgram want to find out?

Obedience
Whether ordinary Americans would obey an unjust order from an authoritary figure, and to discover whether it was situational or dispositional factors that led them to obey.

What were Milgram’s results?

100% went to 300V
65% went to 450V

Give 3/5 variations of Milgram’s procedure:

-> Venue moved to seedy offices in nearby town (47.5%)
-> Teacher and learner in the same room (40%)
-> Teacher had to force learner’s hand onto electric plate to receive shock (30%)
-> Teacher given support from two other ‘teachers’ (confederates) who refuse to continue (10%)
-> Teacher paired with an assistant (confederate) who threw the switches (92.5%)
-> Experimenter instructs and prods teacher by telephone from another room (20.5%)

Give 3 evaluation points of Milgram’s work:

-> Lacks internal validity (unbelievable?)
-> Lacking ecological validity (artificial nature of experiment)
-> Lacking population validity (eg. original research was only males, so ungeneralizable to females)
-> Volunteer sample was used, so a certain ‘type’ could have come forward.
-> Unethical = protection from harm, deception, informed consent, right to withdraw

Give the 2 explanations for obedience:

1) Legitimacy of Authority
2) The Agentic State

Give the 3 situational variables (external factors) affecting/ influencing obedience:

1) Proximity 2) Location 3) Uniform

What is the Authoritarian Personality? Where deos Adorno say it stems from?

Adorno (1950) claimed people obey due to this personality. They have extreme respect for those in authority, and are submissive to it. They are hostile to those they consider inferior to them. Adorno believed this personality started from childhood, as a result of harsh parenting. The child becomes resentful, directing their feelings onto society.

How did Adorno investigate the Authoritarian Personality?

Used 2,000 middle-class, white Americans. He used the F (Facism)-scale, with those scoring highly tending to have the personality.

Give 2 points of evaluation for the Authoritarian Personality:

-> Milgram found the most obedient in is study had the personality = reliable? -> Milgram's findings could be correlational, so conclusion cannot be made. -> The Authoritarian Personality cannot explain why SO MANY German WW2 soldiers were prejudiced and obedient. -> Adorno's research based on correlations between F-scale scores and obedient behavior. Not causation.

Give 2 explanations of resistance to social influence:

Social support Locus of Control

What is Internal Locus of Control?

People feel they have control over their life events. Tend to have more confidence and need little approval from others. They're less likely to conform/ obey.

What is External Locus of Control?

People feel they have little control over their lives and often believe in 'luck' or 'fate'. They're more likely to conform/ obey. They believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors.

What are the 4 experimental methods?

Laboratory Field Quasi Natural

What are the 3 experimental designs?

Independent Groups (measures) design Repeated measures design Matched pairs/ participant design

Give an example where The Snowball Effect has occurred:

MLK continued to press for changes, gradually getting the attention of the US government. 1964 - Civil rights act passed, prohibiting discrimination. Minority to majority support

Give 3 of 7 ways of social change:

1) Drawing attention 2) Consistency 3) Deeper processing 4) Augmentation Principle 5) The Snowball effects 6) Social cryptomnesia

What is social cryptoamnesia?

People have a memory that change has occurred but don't remember how it happened.

What research was done into Minority Influence? Give basic written result.

Moscovici et al (1969) Supported view that consistency helps to persuade others. Coloured tiles.

Minority Influence happens in 3 ways. Name them:

1) Consistency (continuing) 2) Commitment (committing) 3) Flexibility (compromising)

What research was done into social influence?

Nolan et al (2008) -> social processes leading to reduction of community energy usage.