P1: Social Influence

Question 1

AO1: What are the 3 types of conformity and who proposed them?

Answer 1

Kelman:
1. compliance
2. internalisation
3. identification

Question 2

AO1: what is compliance?

Answer 2

Going with other people’s ideas/to go along with the group to gain their approval or avoid disapproval.

-Results in public compliance, with little or no private attitude change - an individual’s change of view is temporary.
-Likely to occur as a result of NSI

Question 3

AO1: What is internalisation?

Answer 3

Going along with others because you’ve accepted their point of view because it’s consistent with your own.
- Often occurs as a result of ISI
- Close examination of the groups position may convince the individual that they are wrong and the group is right.
- Leads to acceptance of the groups POV both publically and privately

Question 4

AO1: What is identification?

Answer 4

Individual adopts attitude or behaviour because they want to be associated with a particular group or person.
- Feel more part of it
-Has elements of both compliance and internalisation (accepts attitudes theyre adopting as correct, internalisation, but purpose it to be accepted as a member of the group,compliance.)

Question 5

AO3: For types of conformity

Answer 5

-Difficulties distringuishing between compliance and internalisation
-Relationship is complicated by how we define and measure public compliance and private acceptance
-Possible that acceptance has occurred in public, but the individual has forgotten the info or learned new info so it dissipates in private

Question 6

AO1: What are the two explanations for conformity?

Answer 6

Informational and normative social influence

Question 7

AO1: What is informational social influence?

Answer 7

-Result of desire to be right - looking to others as a way of gaining evidence about reality
- believe others know better than what they do, and what is appropriate behaviour in a certain situation
- most likely when: situation is ambiguous, a crisis, believe others to be experts

Question 8

AO1: What is normative social influence?

Answer 8

-Conforming in order to be liked/fit in, fear of rejection. Usually leads to compliance
-People dont want to appear to be foolish and prefer to gain social approval rather than be rejected.
-Emotional rather than cognitive process

Question 9

AO3: research support for normative influence

Answer 9

Linkenbach and Perkins
-US research - relationship between normative beliefs and likelihood of taking up smoking
-Found adolescents exposed to the message that their peers did not smoke were less likely to take it up

RLA - Shultz et al.
- NSI been used successfully to manipulate people to behave more responsibly when it comes to energy consumption
-Hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day reduced their own towel use by 25% which suggests people shape their behaviour out of desire to fit in with their reference group.

Question 10

AO3: research support for informational social influence

Answer 10

Wittenbrink and Henley
- Exposure to other peoples beliefs has an important influence on social stereotypes
- Found participants exposed to negative info about African Americans (which they were led to believe wasd the view of the majority) later reported more negative beliefs about a black indiviudal
- Can also shape political opinion

Question 11

AO3: How can ISI explain how we form public opinions

Answer 11

Fein et al
Demonstrated how judgements of candidate performance in US presidential debates could be influenced by knowledge of others reactions.
- Participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of their fellow participants on screen during the debate
- Produced large shifts in participants judgements of the candidates performance

Question 12

AO1: Who investigated variables affecting conformity

Answer 12

Asch (1956)

Question 13

ao1: Outline Asch’s Study

Answer 13

Aim: explore how/why individuals are influenced by a larger group to behave in a certain way, even when a situation is unambiguous.
Procedure: 123 american male undergraduates
Shown 2 cards, a standard line card and 3 comparison line card
Asked to match one of the lines from comparison chart to standard line.
Apart from naive participant, all other students were working with Asch and responded incorrectly on 12/18 trials
Naive participant was always last or second to last to answer.
Findings: Average conformity rate was 33% on 12 critical trials
75% conformed at least once
25% never conformed
Conc: Theyd conformed as they didnt want to stand out and look different. Those who conformed continued to privately trust their own perceptions and judgements but changed public behaviour
- low self esteem = more likely to conform
- increasing size = increased conformity affect

Question 14

AO1: 3 variables affecting conformity

Answer 14

1. group size
2. unanimity
3. task difficulty

Question 15

Ao1: How does group size affect conformity

Answer 15

Asch found with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to about 30%
Additions of confederates made little difference
Suggests a small majority is sufficient for influence to be exerted, no need for a majority of 3+

Question 16

Ao1: how does unanimity affect conformity

Answer 16

Asch wanted to test if the presence of another non-conforming person would affect the naive participants conformity
- He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others - sometimes correct, sometimes wrong
- This reduced conformity from 33% to 5%
-Enabled naive participant to behave more independently
-Suggests influence of majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous

Question 17

ao1: how does task difficulty affect conformity

Answer 17

Asch made the line judging task more difficult by making the lines more similar in length
- Conformity increased
-Suggests ISI plays a greater role when task is harder
- Because its more ambiguous, more likely to look to others for guidance assuming theyre correct

Lucas et al
-Increasing task difficulty was influenced by the confidence of the individuals. Those who are more confident in abilities = less likely to conform, even when task difficulty was high (participants were exposed to math problems in a similar experiment)
-Concluded that majority influence is dependant upon situational factors and individual differences

Question 18

Ao3: Asch - child of its time

Answer 18

-research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was high- in 1956, the uS was in the grip of McCarthyism

Smith and Bond (1996) performed a meta-analysis of 134 Asch replications across cultures and found that a steady decline in conformity was found in the USA and other independent cultures compared to collectivist ones.

However in a subsequent study, they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as the confederates. This time they found similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch back in the 1950s. This confirmed that conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high (Perrin and Spencer, 1980)

Question 19

Ao3: asch - unconvincing confederates?

Answer 19

-would have been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer = validity problems
-Mori and Arai (2010) overcame the confederate problem by using a technique where participants wore glasses with special polarising filters. Three participants in each group wore identical glasses and a fourth wore a different set with a different filter. This meant that each participant viewed the same stimuli but one participant saw them differently. This had the effect of causing them to judge that a different (to the rest of the group) comparison line matched the standard line. For female participants, the results closely matched those of the original Asch study, although not for the male participants.

Question 20

ao3: cultural differences in conformity

Answer 20

Smith et al (2006) analysed the results of Asch-type studies across a number of different cultures. The average conformity rate across the different cultures was 31.2%. What was interesting was that the average conformity rate for individualist cultures (e.g. in Europe and the US) was about 25%, whereas for collectivist cultures in Africa, Asia and South America it was much higher at 37%.

Markus and Kitayama (1991) suggest that a higher level of conformity arises in collectivist cultures because it is viewed more favourably, as a form of ‘social glue’ that binds communities together.

Question 21

Ao1: Conformity to social roles: Outline the procedure of Zimbardo’s experiment

Answer 21

Stanford Prison Experiment
-Zimbardo and his colleagues (Haney et al. 1973)
-Mock prison set up at Stanford Uni
-Male student volunteers, psychologically and physically screened, 24 most stable assigned prisoner or guard.
-Prisoners unexpectedly arrested at home, given ID numbers, uniform. Only known for their Id’s. Allowed certain rights, 3 meals, 3 toilet trips supervised, 2 visits per week
-Guards - uniform, clubs, whistles, reflective sunglasses
-Zimbardo= prison superintendent
-planned to last 2 weeks

Question 22

Ao1: Outline the findings of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment

Answer 22

-first few days, guards grew increasingly abusive
-woke them in the night, forced to clean toilets with bare hands, other degrading activities
-some guards so enthusiastic, volunteered to do extra hours without pay
-appeared to forget at times this was only a study and they were acting
-even when unaware of being watched, they still conformed to role of prisoner or guard
-when one had enough he asked for parole instead of withdrawing from the study
-5 prisoners had to be released early (extreme reactions, crying, rage, anxiety) - appeared after 2 days
-study terminated after 6 days, intervention of Maslach, who reminded the researchers this was a study and didnt justify the abuse

Question 23

Ao3: Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo - conformity to roles was not automatic

Answer 23

Zimbardo believed that the guards drift into sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role, which in turn suppressed their ability to engage with the fact that what they were doing was wrong. However in the SPE guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic to a few ‘good’ guards. These guards did not degrade or harass the prisoners, and even did small favours for them. Haslam and Reicher (2012) suggest that this shows the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role.

Question 24

ao3: Zimbardo - problem of demand characteristics

Answer 24

Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners was not due to their response to a ‘compelling prison environment’, but rather it was a response to powerful demand characteristics in the experimental situation itself. These refer to the characteristics of a study that let research participants guess what experimenters expect or want them to behave like. Banuazizi and Movahedi presented some of the details of the SPE experimental procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The vast majority of these students correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, and they predicted that guards would act in a hostile, domineering way and the prisoners would react in a passive way.

Question 25

Ao3: Zimbardos study can explain real world behaviour

Answer 25

Zimbardo believes that the same conformity to social role effect in the Stanford Prison Experiment was evident in Abu Graib. He believed that the guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely. These situational factors include lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority – these were present both in the SPE and Abu Graib. These situational factors combined with the opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned role led to the prisoner abuses in both situations.

Question 26

ao1: what are the 2 reasons people resist social influence

Answer 26

1. social support
2. locus of control

Question 27

ao1: outline social support in resistance to social influence

Answer 27

-The perception that an individual has assistance available from other people, and that they are part of a supportive network.
-Outline Asch’s study of conformity - presence of an ally
-Outline Milgrams study of obedience - presence of disobedient confederate

Question 28

ao3: Resistance to social influence: Importance of response order

Answer 28

Allen and Levine (1969) studied whether the response position of the person providing social support made any difference to a participant resisting the majority. Condition 1: a confederate answered first, giving the right answer, while other confederates all gave the same wrong answer. The real participant always answered 5th (last). Condition 2: the confederate answered 4th – i.e. after the confederates. Support was significantly more effective in position 1 than position 4. The researchers suggest that a correct first answer, in confirming the participants own judgement, produces an initial commitment to the correct response that endures even though other group members disagree

Question 29

ao3: Resistance to social influence; RLA

Answer 29

Rosenstrasse protest - 1943 a group of German women protested in the Rosenstrasse in Berlin, where Gestapo (Nazi secret police) were holding 2000 Jewish men. The Gestapo threatened to open fire if they did not disperse, despite the threats the women’s courage eventually prevailed and the Jews were set free. The Rosenstrasse protest is an illustration of Milgram’s research in real life, presence of disobedient peers gave the participant the confidence and courage to resist the authorities orders

Question 30

ao1: outline locus of control

Answer 30

The term locus of control refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour. It is measured along a dimension of ‘high external to high internal’. High externals perceive their behaviour as being caused by luck or external influences (more likely to accept the influence of others), whereas high internals perceive themselves to be in control of their behaviour and are more likely to take personal responsibility for it (better able to resist social influence).

Question 31

ao3: locus of control - people are more external than they used to be

Answer 31

A meta-analysis by Twenge et al. (2004) found that young Americans increasingly believed that their fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions. Researchers found that LOC scores had become substantially more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002. Twenge interprets this trend towards an increasing externality in terms of the alienation experienced by young people and the tendency to explain misfortunes on outside forces.

Question 32

ao3 for locus of control: LOC is related to normative but not informational influence

Answer 32

Spector (1983) measured LOC and predisposition to normative and informational influence in 157 undergraduate students. He found a significant correlation between LOC and predisposition to normative social influence – with externals more likely to conform to this form of influence than internals. However, no such relationship was found for predisposition to informational social influence, with LOC not appearing to be a significant factor in this type of conformity.

Question 33

ao1: outline social change through minority influence

Answer 33

Social change occurs when a society as a whole adopts a new belief or way of behaving which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’
-If an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to match those of the minority. Moscovici (1980) referred to this process as ‘conversion’ a necessary prerequisite for social change.
1. Drawing attention to an issue - Minorities can bring about social change by drawing attention to an issue. The suffragettes used educational, political and militant tactics to draw attention to the fact that women were denied the same voting rights as men.
2. Cognitive conflict – the minority creates a conflict between what group members currently believe and what the minority believe. It doesn’t necessarily result in a move towards the minority position, but it does mean that the majority group members think more deeply about the issues being challenged. The suffragettes created a conflict for majority group members between existing status quo (only men allowed to vote) and the position advocated by the suffragettes (votes for women).
3. Consistency of position - Social change is more likely when the minority is consistent in their position, taken more seriously. The suffragettes were consistent in their views regardless of those around them.
4. The augmentation principle - If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are taken more seriously. Because the suffragettes were willing to risk imprisonment or even death from hunger strike, their influence became more powerful (i.e. it was augmented).
5. The snowball effect - Minority influence initially has a small effect but this spreads more widely ‘ until it eventually leads to large scale social change. Universal suffrage was finally accepted by the majority of people in the UK.

Question 34

ao3 for social influence and social change: social change through minoriy influence may be very gradual

Answer 34

Social changes happen slowly when they happen at all. For example, it has taken decades for attitudes against drink-driving and smoking to shift. Do minorities really have much of an influence? Because there is a strong tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position, groups are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than engage in social change. The influence of a minority, therefore, is frequently more latent (indirect) than direct (i.e. it creates the potential for change rather than actual social change). This could be considered a limitation of using minority influence to explain social change because it shows that its effects are fragile and its role in social influence very limited.

Question 35

ao3 for social influence/change: Being perceived as ‘deviant’ limits the influence of minorities

Answer 35

The potential for minorities to influence social change is often limited because they are seen as ‘deviant’ in the eyes of the majority. Members of the majority may avoid aligning themselves with the minority position because they do not want to be seen as deviant themselves. The message of the minority would then have very little impact because the focus of the majority’s attention would be the source of the message (i.e. the deviant minority) rather than the message itself. In trying to bring about social change, minorities face the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviants and also making people directly embrace their position.

Question 36

ao1: outline social changes through majority influence (conformity)

Answer 36

Research has consistently demonstrated that behavioural choices are often related to group norms, i.e. they are the subject of normative influence. The social norms approach (Perkins and Berkowitz, 1986) holds that if people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behaviour to fit that norm. For example, if university students think that heavy drinking is the norm, they’ll drink more. If they think responsible drinking is the norm, then they’ll drink less (i.e. they conform). Behaviour, therefore, is based more on what people think others believe and do (the ‘perceived norm’) than on their real beliefs and actions (the ‘actual norm’).

Social Norms Interventions start by identifying a widespread misperception elating to a specified risky behaviour within a target population. For example, heavy drinking. Perception correction strategies can then be used in media campaigns, promotional material and through other routes. The aim of these strategies is to communicate to the target population the actual norm concerning that particular behaviour. By advertising these actual norms, researchers hope that recipients will moderate their own behaviour to bring it in line with the behaviour of their peers.

Question 37

ao1: rla of social changes through majority influence

Answer 37

An example: ’Most of Us don’t drink and drive’
This social norms intervention was designed to reduce drinking and driving among young adults (aged 21-34) in Montana, USA. This age group had been over-represented in alcohol-related crashes state-wide. An initial survey found that while only 20.4% of Montana young adults reported having driven within one hour of consuming two or more drinks in the previous month, 92% of respondents believed that the majority of their peers had done so. By correcting this misperception with the simple message that ‘MOST Montana Young Adults (4 out of 5) Don’t Drink and Drive’, the researchers found that the prevalence of reported driving after drinking was reduced by 13.7%, compared to counties that did not run the campaign..

Question 38

ao3: limitations of the social norms approach

Answer 38

Not all social norms interventions have led to social change. DeJong et al (2009) tested the effectiveness of social norms marketing campaigns to drive down alcohol use among students across 14 different college sites. Surveys were conducted by post at the beginning of the study and three years after the campaign had finished. Despite receiving normative information that corrected their misperceptions of subjective drinking norms, students in the social norms condition did not show lower perceptions of student drinking levels, nor did they report lower self-reported alcohol consumption as a result of the campaign.

Question 39

ao3: evaluations for social norms and the boomerang effect

Answer 39

Schultz et al. (2007) suggest an unwelcome problem with social norms interventions. Although they are typically aimed at individuals whose behaviour is less desirable than the norm, the widespread nature of the approach means that those whose behaviour is more desirable than the norm will also receive the message. For those individuals who already engage in the constructive behaviour being advocated (e.g. drink less than the norm, use less energy than the norm and so on), a normative message can be a spur to engaging in more destructive behaviour. Schultz et al found evidence of what they refer to as the boomerang effect in their own research, where a social norms campaign was effective in getting heavy-energy users to use less electricity, but it also caused those who used less than the norm to increase their usage!