Paper 1 (Social Influence, Memory, Attachment And Psychopathology) Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of pressure from a person or group of people
What was Asch’s baseline procedure and aim?
Assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others even when the answer is certain.
What were the 3 variables of Asch’s study?
Group size - conformity rate increased when there was more confederates.
Unanimity - introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederates, conformity decreased.
Task difficulty - increased difficulty of line lengths, conformity increased.
What is informational social influence?
Agreeing with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct, we accept because we want to be correct, may lead to internalisation.
What is normative social influence?
Agree with opinion of majority to gain social approval and to be liked, may lead to compliance.
What is compliance?
Lowest level of conformity, going along with other publicly, private personal opinions don’t change.
What is identification?
Publicly change change opinions to be accepted by group even when we don’t privately agree.
What is internalisation?
Genuinely accepts the group, private and public change of opinions, change in opinions persist even in absence of group members.
AO3 of Asch’s study
Beta bias - study only conducts males, Asch assumed results applied to females which minimises difference between females and males even though research had suggested females would conform more, unreliable, lacks pop validity.
Lacks Generalisability - only consisted of male American students, limiting generalisability to the wider population and might not reflect conformity across cultures.
Lab experiment - variables controlled, good control over extraneous variables, standardised, reliable and replicable data, direct link of cause and effect, therefore reliable.
What is social roles?
Parts people play as members of various social groups.
What was the aim of Zimbardo’s study?
Examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or prisoner, when placed in a mock prison envrionment.
How was the SPE (Stanford prison experiment) consisted?
21 male university student who volunteered in response to a newspaper advert, paid $15 a day, participants randomly assigned to one of two social roles, prisoners or guards.
Findings of SPE
Guards - inhumane, treating prisoners harshly, harassed prisoners constantly.
Prisoners - after rebellion was put down they became depressed and anxious, one was released and showed psychological disturbance symptoms.
Zimbardo’s conclusions
People conform to social roles even when the role goes against their moral principles.
AO3 for Zimbardo
Ethical issues - breaking ethical guidelines in particular protection from harm 5 of the prisoners left because of adverse reactions to the physical and mental torment.
Demand characteristics - guards claimed they were acting, knew they were being observed, they may not behave like this in real life situations.
Lacks population validity - used 24 male university students, sample was gender biased and unrepresentative of the general population as it only consisted males - cannot apply to females, only included people in America wasn’t represented to other cultures, lacks pop validity reducing validity of findings.
