Paper 1: Social Influence Flashcards
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What’s ISI?
Informative Social Influence, a desire of wanting to be correct.
What’s NSI?
Normative Social Influence, wanting to fit in and be liked.
Are the concept of NSI and ISI part of conformity or obedience and what is the difference between the two?
Both ISI and NSi are parts of conformity. Conformity is the following of a group while obedience is obeying an authority.
What are the three types of conformity from weakest to strongest?
Compliance. Only publicly changes beliefs and behaviour.
Identification. Changes both publicly and privately but upon leaving the group will change the beliefs.
Internalisation. The beliefs and behaviour are permanently changed.
Who conducted studies on both ISI and NSI conformity?
Asch’s Line Study.
What was the procedure of Asch’s line study?
123 male participants were told they were taking part in a study of visual perception.
Participants were put in groups with between 7 and 9 confederates (i.e. fake subjects pretending to be part of the experiment too).
Each participant completed 18 trials where they would be shown the sets of lines above (A, B, or C) and then asked which one was closest to the original line.
In the 12 critical trials, the confederates would all give the same wrong answer – the participant was always asked to give their answer last (or second to last) so as to hear the group’s answers first.
The control group for this experiment consisted of 36 participants. In the control trials, participants were asked the same question as above – but this time alone.
What were the results of Asch’s line study?
Across all critical trials, participants conformed to the incorrect group consensus 32% of the time.
75% of participants conformed to at least one incorrect answer
5% of participants conformed to every incorrect answer
This is compared to an error rate of just 0.04% in the control trials.
What were the 3 different variables Asch tested and what were the results?
Having 3 confederates increased group size to 31.8%. The larger the group the more conformity.
Unanimity, the dissenting confederate resulted in conformity decreasing from 32% to 5.5%.
Increasing task difficulty also increased conformity which suggests ISi as well as NSI
Strengths of Asch’s study?
Practical applications: Asch’s experiments demonstrate the extent to which humans follow the herd. This is a valuable psychological insight that may have practical applications. For example, understanding the influence of conformity may encourage scientific researchers to think outside of the current paradigm and come up with revolutionary discoveries.
Weaknesses of Asch’s study?
Questions of ecological/external validity: Guessing the length of lines is a specific and unusual task. As such, it is not clear the extent to which Asch’s findings generalise to conformity in the real world.
Gender bias (beta bias): All the participants in Asch’s study were male, so it is not clear whether the findings are valid in females as well.
Ethical concerns: Asch told participants they were taking part in a study of visual perception, and thus did not give informed consent to the actual study (which was on conformity).
What study looked at conformity to social roles?
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.
What was the procedure of the SPE?
Zimbardo and his team converted the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University into a fake prison.
21 male students were selected from a total of 75 participants for their mental stability and lack of antisocial tendencies.
These 21 participants were randomly divided into two groups: 10 ‘guards’ and 11 ‘prisoners’
Prisoners were arrested by real police and then subjected to real police booking procedures (e.g. fingerprinting and mug shots). They were put in cells in groups of 3 and were confined throughout the experiment.
Guards worked in 8 hour shifts and were instructed to refer to the prisoners by their assigned numbers rather than their names. A realistic prison routine was established with meal times, etc.
The prisoners wore jackets with their number on, and a chain around one ankle. Guards wore khaki uniforms, mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact, and carried handcuffs and wooden batons.
The study was scheduled to run for 2 weeks.
What were the results of the SPE?
he guards became increasingly sadistic. For example, they forced the prisoners to continually repeat their assigned numbers and made them go to the toilet in buckets in their cells. As punishment, the guards refused to allow prisoners to empty these buckets, took away their mattresses and made them sleep on the concrete floor, and took away their clothes.
The prisoners became increasingly submissive. Many stopped questioning the guards behaviour and sided with the guards against rebellious prisoners
After 35 hours, one prisoner began to “act crazy, to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control” and had to be released. Three other prisoners had to be released for similar reasons throughout the duration of the experiment.
The guards’ sadism became so harmful that Zimbardo stopped the experiment after just 6 days instead of the scheduled 2 weeks.
The results of the prison experiment suggest that people conform to social roles to a significant extent.
Strengths of the SPE?
Practical applications: Zimbardo’s study demonstrates the influence of conformity to social roles, which is an important psychological insight that has resulted in useful applications in society. For example, Zimbardo’s research prompted reform in the way juvenile prisoners were treated (at least initially).
Weaknesses of SPE?
Questions of ecological/external validity: Both the guards and prisoners knew they were taking part in a study, and so this might have affected how they behaved. For example, they might have felt they were expected to act a certain way. This is somewhat confirmed by post-study interviews: Many of the participants said they were just acting. As such, the findings of this study may not apply to real life situations.
Ethical concerns: It’s clear the study subjected many of the participants to high levels of stress, as evidenced by the prisoner who “went crazy” and had to be released, as well as the other participants who had to be released. Further, participants did not explicitly consent to all aspects of the experiment, such as being ‘arrested’ at home.
