Paper 1- Social influence Part 1 Flashcards
List some examples of who/what impacts upon an individuals behaviour
social media government family(nurture) Society that they live in culture role models (celebrities) Religion/beliefs friends/peer groups leaders/teachers finance personality life experiences
What is conformity defined as?
yielding to group pressure
When does conformity occur?
individuals behaviour and or beliefs are influenced by a larger group of people
What is conformity often known as?
Majority influence
When can conformity be a negative force?
When it reduces a persons independence and leads to harmful outcomes
What is the usual outcome of conformity? Explain
Positive
Helps society to function without anything bad and predictable
Individuals need to agree in order for groups to form as human activity is socially based
Who referenced 3 types of conformity?
Kelman
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Identification
Compliance
Internalisation
What is compliance?
When individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of a group to be accepted or avoid disapproval
What kind of conformity is compliance?
Temporary, weak form; only occurs when present within group
When and why does compliance occur?
Due to a desire to fit in and involves public, not private acceptance of groups behaviour and attitudes.
May be out of the fear of rejection
What is internalisation?
Individuals actually adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of the group
What kind of conformity is internalisation?
Long lasting
occurs public-ally and privately
What does internalisation involve?
Individuals being exposed to the belief systems of others and having to decide what they believe in.
Public and private acceptance of groups behaviours and opinions will occur if the beliefs are seen as correct
What is identification?
When individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of the group, because membership of group is desirable
What kind of conformity is identification?
Strong
private and public acceptance
Temporar as it is not maintained when no longer part of the group
Give an example of identification.
In the army you may adopt the behaviour and beliefs of fellow soldiers, but when you leave the army for a civilian life, new behaviours and options are adopted
Explain informal social influence as an explanation for conformity
We as humans require the need to feel confident about whether our ideas and beliefs are correct. For informational social influence, this is motivation.
If we are in an unfamiliar situation, we will look to other people as we believe what they are doing is right or they are better than us.
When we conform due to informal social influence, we tend to believe the opinions that we have adopted. This is due to us being uncertain on what we believe, so we look to other people and become converted to their view point
Who carried out a study into informational social facilitation? When did they carry this out?
Arthur Jennes in 1920
Wha was their aim?
To investigate whether individuals judgement of jellybeans in a jar was influenced by discussion in a group
What type of experiment was Arthur Jennese?
Controlled as it was a lab experiment
Explain how Arthur Jenness carried out his experiment into informational social facilitation
1- Private and individually pmts estimated no. of jellybeans in jar
2- ppts discussed estimates in a larger/smaller group. saw that people estimated differently
MANIPULATION OCCURS AS RESEARCHERS MADE SURE THAT AT LEAST 1 PERSON IN GROU HAD MAJORLY DIFFERENT ANSWER
3- once discussion was over, group estimates were made
4-Individually and privately, individuals made another estimate
What were the findings of the study into informational social influence?
Most pmts second estimate tented to converge, move closer, to group estimate
Among females, the average change in opinion was greater
What conclusion can be drawn up about the study?
Judgements of individuals is affected by majority opinions, especially in ambiguous/ unfamiliar situations. In changing opinion, discussion is not effective, unless the individual entering the discussion, becomes aware that the opinion of others are different to theirs
Evaluate Jennesses study in 1932
Deception was less severe than other studies on this topic even though the pmts did not know the aim
Lacks ecological validity as it takes place in a lab under artificial, unusual situations. Not an everyday event so it cannot reflect behaviour that would occur in real life situations
Name the second explanation of conformity
Normative social influence
Explain the second explanation of conformity
When individuals want others to like and respect them and not reject or ridicule them. The motivation underpinning normative social influence which is the need to be accepted by others.
Best way to gain acceptance is agreeing with the group. But, this does not mean that we truly agree with them
Who carried out aa study into normative social influence ?
Solomon Asch
What did Asch start by doing in 1951?
A series of experiments, publishing progress
What was Asch’s aim?
Investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers
What did Asch find?
Control group had error rate of 0.04% showing how obvious correct answers were
Out of 12 critical trails, 32% conformity rate to wrong answers
75% of ppts conformed to at least 1 wrong answer
25% of ppts did not conform
5% of pmts conformed to 12 wrong answers
Explain Asch’s experiment
123 male American students volunteered to take part in, visual perception. Placed individuals in groups of 7-9 confederates. Had to compare lines and say which one matched 18 trails
12 trails the confederates gave the same wrong answers and the individual ppt was always second to last or last to answers
Control group was also set up 36 individually tested ppts on 20 trails, to test how accurate individual judgements were
What did Asch do after his experiment and what did he find for reasons for conformity?
He carried out interviews with his pmts and found that the were 3 reasons for conformity;
- DISTORTION OF ACTION- majority of pmts conformed publicly and not privately as they did not want to be seen as different
- DISTORTION OF PERCEPTION- some pmts beloved what they thought was wrong so conformed with others
- DISTORTION OF JUDGEMENT- some pmts had doubts concerning the accuracy of the judgements so conformed to the majority view
What was the conclusion of Asch’s experiment?
Individuals judgement is affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong.
Big individual differences in the amount to which people are affected by majority influence. As most pmts conformed publicly, but not privately, it suggests that they were motivated by normative social influence, where individuals conform to gain acceptance or avoid rejection by a group
What is the advantages of Asch’s study?
His method became a paradigm- accepted way of conducting conformity research
What are the disadvantages of Asch’s research ?
UNECONOMICAL + TIME CONSUMING- one ppt is tested at a time
LACK MUNDANE REALISM- would be unusual to be in situation where you would disagree so much with others as to what the correct answer was
UNETHICAL- involves deceit, pmts beloved it was study of visual perception. Also included psychological harm as pmts were under stress through disagreeing with others
What are the 2 categories of variables and factors affecting conformity?
Situational variables
Dispositional variables
What are the situational variables affecting conformity ?
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
What are situational variables ?
Qualities of an environment that influence the levels of conformity- which have an influence over the degree to which individuals conform
What are the dispositional factors that may affect conformity?
Confidence
Expertise
Explain what group size refers to as a situational variable ?
Number of members within a social group
Explain what task difficulty refers to as a situational variable
How obvious the correct answer or decision is when regarding a task
Explain what unanimity refers to as a situational variable
To what degree the group members are in agreement with each other
Explain what researchers found in terms of group size in Asch’s variation of procedure
Conformity rates increase as the size of a majority influence increases, but there comes a point where further increases in the size of the majority doesn’t lead to further increase in conformity
Explain what Asch found about group size in the variation of his procedure
1 real ppt and 1 confederate conformity was low
2 confederates it was 13% and with 3 it was 32%
So, adding any more confederates had no further effect on conformity rate
What has research suggested about unanimity?
Conformity rates have found to decline when majority influence is not unamaious. The important factor though would seem to be the reduction in the majority’s agreement, rather than an individual being given support for their opinions, as conformity drops if a rebel goes against the majority who don’t support the rebels viewpoint
Explain the results of Asch’s research into unanimity
He found that if there was one confederate who went against the other confederates, conformity dropped from around 32% to 5.5% but if the rebel went against both the other confederates and the real ppts, conformity still dropped to 9%
What is suggested about task difficulty?
Greater conformity rates are seen when the task difficulty increases, as the right answer becomes less obvious. This means that individuals will look to others more for guidance as to what the correct response is, suggesting that information social influence is the dominant force.
What did Asch find in his vacation of experiment for task difficulty?
He increase task difficult by making the comparison lines similar to each other, finding that when he did so, ppts were more likely to conform to wrong answers, this demonstrating the effect of task difficult on conformity.
