Paper 1 Social Influences

Question 1

What is the definition of Conformity?

Answer 1

A change in a persons behaviour or opinions because of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people. It involves “yielding” to group pressure and is also known as majority influence.

Question 2

What is the definition of Internalisation?

Answer 2

A deep type of conformity where an individual takes on the majority view because they accept it as correct. It leads to a far-reaching and permanent change in behaviour, even when the group is absent.

Question 3

What is the definition of Identification?

Answer 3

A moderate type of conformity where an individual acts in the same way as the group because they value it and want to be part of it, but they do not necessarily agree with everything the majority believes.

Question 4

What is the definition of Compliance?

Answer 4

A superficial and temporary type of conformity where an individual outwardly goes along with the majority view, but privately. disagrees with it. The change in behaviour only lasts as long as the group is monitoring them.

Question 5

When does conformity occur?

Answer 5

It occurs when an individuals behaviour and their beliefs are influenced by a larger group of people.

Question 6

Who suggested the three ways in which people conform to the opinion of a majority? ad what were they?

Answer 6

Kelman (1958). they were compliance, identification and internalisation

Question 7

When does Compliance occur?

Answer 7

Compliance occurs when individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to a group because of a desire to fit in and be accepted/ avoid disapproval.meaning it only involves public change in belief. this causes the changes to be weak and temporary and beliefs revert when group is not present.

Question 8

When does Identification occur?

Answer 8

this occurs when individuals adjust their behaviour + opinions to those of the group, because membership of that group is desirable. they identify with the group and “take on” their beliefs and behaviours. this is a stronger type of conformity as it involves public and private change in opinion. However, opinions revert after they leave the group.

Question 9

When does Internalisation occur?

Answer 9

this occurs when individuals genuinely adjust behaviour and options. both publicly and privately. this is known as true conformity, s this change is permanent and it is built into ones belief system. this would not change even if the person has left the group.

Question 10

What is an example of compliance?

Answer 10

An individual may say they like a certain singer such as Taylor swift that everyone else in their group likes. This is so that they would not be ridiculed but instead accepted by the group. But privately they do not like Taylor.

Question 11

What is am example of identification?

Answer 11

In the army an individual may adopt certain behaviours and beliefs associated with war and their fellow soldiers. However after leaving the army and returning to civilian life, new behaviours and opinions will be adopted.

Question 12

What is an example of internalisation?

Answer 12

An individual may be exposed to lots of vegan campaigns and so they adopt the belief that “eating meat is wrong” and become vegan themselves.

Question 13

What was Asch’s Research design?

Answer 13

• lab experiment as the independent variable was manipulated in a controlled environment that was unnatural for the participants.
• the IV was a type of trial.
• A volunteer sampling method was used as participants responded to a newspaper advert.
• DV was the level of conformity (whether participants gave the incorrect answer).

Question 14

What are the two types of trials?

Answer 14

• control trial (confederates gave the correct answer)
• critical trial ( confederates gave the incorrect answer)

Question 15

What was the Aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 15

-to investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers using a ‘visual perception’ task.

Question 16

What was Asch’s procedure?

Answer 16

-123 american male students were tested.(each one in a group with other apparent participants)
-Each participant saw two large white cards on each trial. The line one the left hand card was the standard line. The lines A,B and C were the three comparisons lines. One of the comparison lines was always clearly the same length as the standard line. the other two were substantially different (clearly wrong).
- participants had to say which comparison lines were the same length as the standard line out loud every time.
- tested in groups of 6 to 8.
- only 1 genuine participant seated on the last/second last chair.
-others were confederates and gave the same incorrect answers.
- real participants didn’t know about the ‘fake’ participants.
- they all completed 18 trails and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trails. (critical trials).

Question 17

What were Asch’s findings?

Answer 17

• the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 36.8% of there critical trials.
• 75% of the articiants conformed at least once on the critical trials.
• 25% never conformed.
• when there were no confederates the participant gave an incorrect answer 1% of the time.
• Asch interviewed each participant after and most said they conformed as they wanted to fit in or because they thought they would be ridiculed (distortion of action).
• others conformed because they had doubts about their own answer (distortion of judgement).

Question 18

What was Asch’s conclusions?

Answer 18

• the judgements of individuals are impacted by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong.
• the participants conformed due to formative social influence and the desire to fit in and avoid rejection.

Question 19

Ethical reasons for Asch’s evaluation?

Answer 19

-participants were deceived as they believed that the confederates where also participants. However, the participants needed to be deceived to test their conformity to an obvious answer.
- Participants were put through psychological harm as they were put under stress of having to decide whether to conform or not. Most had increased levels of autonomic arousal.

Question 20

Validity reasons for Asch’s evaluation?

Answer 20

-findings may have suffered from demand characteristics. Due to the easy nature of the task many participants could’ve guessed the aim of the study and changed their behaviour. they could’ve conformed as they thought it was required of them and not because they felt the real need to conform which could skew the validity of the results.

Question 21

applicability reasons for Asch’s evaluation?

Answer 21

• the experiment was artificial as the task lacked mundane realism meaning that it is not similar to the tasks that happens in the real world everyday.does not represent real world behaviour.

Question 22

VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY What does the term “task difficulty” mean and what did asch do for it?

Answer 22

How hard a task is to complete. Asch’s line-judging task was more difficult when the comparison lines became closer in length.

Question 23

VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY What does the phrase “Group size” mean? And what did Asch do For it?

Answer 23

The number of people in a group. Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority.

Question 24

VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY What does the term “Unanimity” mean? And what did Asch do in his research?

Answer 24

The extent to which all members of a group agree. In Asch’s research, the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line.

Question 25

How did Asch test the conformity levels based on Group size?

Answer 25

-He varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15, so the total group size was from 2 to 16.
- He found out that with one confederate and one participant conformity levels were at 4%. With 2 confederates conformity was 13%. 3 Confederates conformity was at 32%.
-This suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others.

Question 26

What is the meaning of ‘Informational social influence’?

Answer 26

-An explanation of conformity that says individuals agree with the opinion of the majority because they believe it is correct. People therefore accept the opinion because they too want to be correct. Can lead to internalisation.

Question 27

What is the meaning of ‘Normative social influence’

Answer 27

-An explanation of conformity that says individuals agree with the opinion of the majority because they want to be accepted, gain social approval, and be liked. This can lead to compliance.

Question 28

What did Deutsch and Gerard (1955) say were the two main reasons that people conform?

Answer 28

• The need to be right (ISI)
• The need to be liked (NSI)

Question 29

What is ISI about?

Answer 29

-Who has the better information.
- If most of a group gives one answer, or shows one behaviour/belief, an individual is likely to accept it, because they will feel that it is likely to be right.
- ISI is a cognitive process/ to do with thinking,

Question 30

When does ISI usually occur?

Answer 30

• When somebody is labeled as an ‘expert’
• when there is a crisis where decisions must be made quickly, and an individual assumes that the the group is more likely to be right.
• when the situation is ambiguous (individual looks for what is right.)

Question 31

what are examples of ISI?

Answer 31

• in a restaurant, somebody may not know what cutlery to use. they then look at another table to see what cutlery they should use.

Question 32

How did Asch use ISI in his study?

Answer 32

-He increased the task difficulty. as the task became harder, conformity increased because the participants looked to the confederates for guidance.

Question 33

What is the evaluation for ISI?

Answer 33

• Lucas et al (2006). found that there was a greater number of conformity when people answered the harder maths questions compared tot the easier ones. this shows that people conform when they feel like they do not know the answer.
  -Jenness (1932) found that when people were asked to estimate how many jellybeans were in a jar as a group. they then gave a second estimate privately and the study found that their private estimates swayed towards the group estimate. shows that judgement is impacted by majority opinions/ ambiguous/ unfamiliar situations.

Question 34

What is ‘Normative Social Influence’ about?

Answer 34

• what is normal/ typical behaviour for a social group.

Question 35

Why do people pay attention to Norms?

Answer 35

• Because most people do not want to appear as foolish and prefer to gain social approval rather than be rejected.

Question 36

Why does NSI say people conform and why?

Answer 36

-Because people feel the need to be accepted and belong to a group. this is because humans have a desire to be accepted and a fear of reaction. NSI is concerned with emotion.

Question 37

When does NSI usually occur?

Answer 37

When:
- Individuals seek the approval of strangers. e.g. in an interview or first day at a new job.
-An individual is in a a stressful situation and people are in greater need for social support.
- Individuals are with people they know. because people are concerned about the social approval of their friends.

Question 38

What type of Conformity is NSI?

Answer 38

• it results in people conforming publicly but not privately, meaning it is compliance.

Question 39

what is an example of NSI?

Answer 39

• someone wears the ‘colours’ of their social circle, despite not liking the colour.
• People queue in a shop rather than go straight to the front.
• An individual ‘likes’ a sports team that their peer group likes, despite not liking the sport/ the team.

Question 40

What is the evaluation for NSI?

Answer 40

• in Asch’s experiment participants that were interviewed after the study claimed that they conformed to avoid rejection. however, when participants wrote their answers privately, conformity fell to 12.5%.
  -Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) found that adolecents who ere exposed to the message that non of their peers smoked were subsequently less likely to smoke. similarly Schultz et al (2008) found that hotel guests that were exposed tot the message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day caused towel use to drop by 25%. this shows how people want to fit in.

Question 41

What is the evaluation against NSI?

Answer 41

• McGhee and Teevan (1967) People who are less concerned with being liked are less impacted by NSI, than those who care more about being liked. this shows that the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others.

Question 42

What is the explanations for conformity evaluation?

Question 43

What is the definition of ‘Social roles’?

Answer 43

• The ‘parts’ people play as members of various social groups. Everyday examples include parent, child, teacher, passenger etc. These are accompanied by expectations about what is appropriate behaviour in each role.

Question 44

what do learnt social roles become

Answer 44

• They become ‘internal mental scripts’ which is something inside our head telling us how to behave.

Question 45

what type of conformity is it when people conform to their social roles?

Answer 45

-Identification as a person changes their public and private beliefs but, only while they are in a particular social role.

Question 46

What does Zimbardo’s (1973) prison study illustrate?

Answer 46

• the influence of social roles in conformity.

Question 47

what was Zimbardo’s research design?

Answer 47

• An overt(aware)- controlled-participant observation. Overt as the participants knew that they were involved in the study.
• the type of sampling was volunteering
• ## it was ‘participant’ as zimbardo played the role of a prison superintendent.

Question 48

hat was the aim for Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 48

-how readily people would conform to the social roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life.
- Also examined whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors (the people themselves), or external situational factors (the environment and conditions of the prison)

Question 49

What was the procedure for Zimbardo’s study

Answer 49

1) Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison.
2) he advertised for male students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight.
3) The volunteers were psychologically and physically screened. The 21 most stable were then randomly assigned, by a coin flip, to either the role of the prisoner or the role of a guard in a simulated prison environment.
4) prisoners were arrested from their home, Strip-searched, de-loused, issued a loose smock to wear and a cap to cover their hair, and referred to by their number only.
5) The guards worked shifts of 8 hours, But when not working remained ‘on call’.
6) No physical violence was permitted
7) Zimbardo observed the behaviour of the prisoners and guards (as a researcher) and acted as prison warden.

Question 50

What were Zimbardo’s findings?

Answer 50

1) Following a rebellion by the prisoners where they ripped their ‘uniforms’ and shouted and swore at the guards, the guards and prisoners settled into their new roles.
2) The guards became more aggressive and assertive as the prisoners became more submissive. guards demanded even greater obedience from prisoners. some began to harass prisoners. they behaved in a sadistic way and some enjoyed it.