Paper 1: Topic 1: Social Influence Flashcards
Define conformity
‘yielding to group pressures’.
‘a change in a person’s behaviour or opinion as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people’
Who proposed the 3 types of conformity
Kelman
What are Kelman 3 types of conformity:
From strongest to weakest
Internalisation = Making the beliefs, values,
attitude and behaviour of the group your own. change of view is permanent
Identification = Temporary/short term change
of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence of a group
Compliance) = To follow other people’s ideas/to go along with the group to gain their approval or avoid disapproval. You publically agree but privately disagree. change of view is temporary, usually as a result of normative social influence
2 explanations for social influence
Informative social influence
Normative social influence
Describe Jenness 1932 experiment on
ISI
Aim: examine whether individuals will change their opinion in an ambigious situation, in response to group discussion
Method: filled a glass bottle with 811 beans
26 students estimated number of beans
They were then divided into groups of 3 and discuss their estimations.
P’s were given chance to give another estimate after to see if they’d change their answer
Results: the range of the whole group decreased by 75%
Conclusion: results suggested individuals change initial estimate due to ISI as they believed group estimates were more likely to be correct.
Strength of ISI
P: One strength is that there is empirical evidence to support
ISI.
E: Jenness (1932) asked p’s to make independent judgements about the number of white beans contained in a jar and discuss their estimates in a group. They then made a private estimate. Jenness found this second private estimate moved closer to the group estimate and females typically conformed more.
E: shows that internalisation of group beliefs will take place will occur especially if in an unfamiliar, ambiguous situation.
L: Therefore, providing evidence that people will change their behaviour (conform) in order to feel ‘right’ which increases the validity of ISI.
Define ISI
-conforms because they want to be right
-usually the cause of internalisation.
- so copying or obeying others, to have the right answer in an ambiguous situation if they are unsure
Evidence - Fein asked participants to vote for a US presidential candidate after they saw others voting for somebody else. Most of the participants changed their mind because they wanted to be ‘correct’
Define NSI
-conforms because they want to be liked and be part of and accepted by the group (fit in to the social norm”) -prevent social rejection and confrontation
- drives compliance.
2 strengths of NSI
P: Empirical evidence to support
Eg: Aschs line judgement experiment
-many participants went along with the obviously wrong answer in the critical trials.
-in a later variation that when participants wrote down their answer instead of stating it aloud conformity rates dropped to 12.5%
Ex: post-experimental interviews of the original research participants revealed they had changed their answer to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group. This shows compliance had occurred in order to ‘fit in’.
L: increases validity of theory
P: empirical evidence supporting the explanation that people conform to be liked
E: Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) made an anti-smoking campaign for teenagers in the USA, with a key message that
‘most children in their own age group do not smoke’. Only 10% of non-smokers went on to start smoking, compared to
17% in a town not exposed to the message
Ex: supports the explanation of NSI because teenagers who are exposed to a simple message that most of their peers did not smoke were less likely to take up smoking. In addition, in areas where teens were told most peers did smoke, more teens started smoking.
L: predicted by NSI as it shows that people changed their behaviour to fit with the norm and therefore it increases the validity of the explanation.
Define confederates
People who are in on an experiment who participate to fill in or control extraneous variables
Eg: Aschs dissenters in unanimity
Milgrams shock experiment - the learner was a confederate
Define cognitive dissonance
When someone holds a contradicting actions to beliefs.
This could be due to the want to conform
Describe Linkenback and Perkins 2003 anti-smoking campaign for teenagers as an example for NSI
for teenagers in USA
Only 10% of non-smokers went on to start smoking, compared to 17% in a town not exposed to the message (control group)
Empirical evidence to support NSI
Describe Asch’s (1951) original research examining conformity
Aim: examine extent to which social pressure to conform from unanimous majority effects
Method:
Sample: 123 male undergraduate students from USA
We’re told they were taking part in a vision test
Line judgement task where one real(naïve) participant in a room with 6-8 confederates
Real p was always seated second to last
18 trials
And confederate gave same incorrect answer on the 12 critical trials
Results: average rate of conformity was 32%
74% conformed at least once
Conclusion:
Asch did post experimental interviews asking p’s why they conformed, complied due to NSI
Pubically agreed but privately disagreed
Factors that affect conformity/Ash’s variations
Group size
Task difficulty
Unanimity - extent that members of a majority agree with each other
Explain results of Aschs group size variation
Group size:
How size of majority affects rate of conformity
Range from 1 to 15 confederates
With 1: 3% conformity rate of p
With 2: 12.8% conformity rate
With 3: 32% conformity rate
All on critical trials
Suggests conformity reaches its highest level at 3 confederates and a majority pressure is created
with 15 confederates: rate dropped to 29% because p’s came suspicious
Explain results of Aschs unanimity variation
1 confederate (the dissenter) was asked to give the correct answer throughout trials
Rate of conformity dropped to 5%
Because the p has support for their belied they’re more likely to resist the pressure to conform
Explain results for Aschs task difficulty variations
In the original experiment the correct answer was obvious.
He made the lines look more similar in length making the task more ambiguous
Rate of conformity increased
Likely to done due to ISI
Evaluate Aschs experiment GET A STRENGTH
P - Lacks temporal validity
E - Perrin and spencer - replicated Asch’s study using science and engineering students in the UK and only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials - different to the 74% of participants that conformed at least once Asch
As 1950s in USA it was an era of McCarthyism (a paranoid hunt for communist infiltrators). Most people at this time were so scared they became social conformists and this may have increased the conformity levels in Asch’s study.
P- Low populational validity
eg: NETO - women conform more than men - Asch sample was only males so didn’t take gender or culture into account - the participants in Asch were all from USA, an individualist culture.
Eg: Bond and Smith (1996) analysed results of 133 studies replicating Asch’s line-judging task. They found a significant relationship demonstrating conformity is greater in more collectivistic countries.
Aschs study presents an androcentric and culture bias
Define conformity to social roles
When an individual adopts a particular behaviour and belief, while in a particular social situation.
Represents identification- they change their behaviour only in the presence of the group
What was Zimbardo study called and when was it
Stanford prision experiment
1973
Describe Zimbardo study on conformity to social roles
Aim: examine if people would conform to social roles of prisiomers guard or prisiomers when placed in a mock prison environment.
Wanted to see if behaviour displayed in prisiomers was due to dispositional or situational factors
Method:
Sample: 21 male university student volunteers from a newspaper advert
Selected from 75 volenteers on the basis of their physical and mental stability
Paid $15 a day each
Randomly allocated into role of prisoner or guard
Basement of Stanford university - mock prision
‘Prisoners’ were arrested by real police in the middle of the night, finger printed, stripped and given an identification number - dehumanisation
Results: both prisoners and guard identified quickly to their roles, prisoners rebelled within days as guards grew increasingly abusive Five of the prisoners were released from the experiment early, because of their adverse reactions to the physical and mental torment, for example, crying and extreme anxiety.
experiment was set to run for two weeks, it was terminated after just six day
Conclusion: Zimbardo concluded that people quickly conform to social roles, even when the role goes against their moral principles
situational factors were largely responsible for the behaviour found, as none of the participants had ever demonstrated these behaviours previously
Define situational and dispositional factors
Dispositional - internal factors due to the people themselves personality and individual characteristics
Situational - external factors due to the environment that influence an experiment out of the researchers control.
Evaluate Zimbardos Stanford prisiomers experiment GET STRENGTH
Limit:
P: criticised for its powerful demand characteristics and low internal validity.
Eg: Banuazizi and Mohavedi (1975) argue that p’s were play acting based on stereotypes rather than actually conforming to a role they showed the SPE to students and the majority correctly guessed the aim of the study.
Ex: may have been demand characteristics that affected the way the prisoners acted rather than the role they were assigned, challenging the internal validity of the results.
Link: Zimbardo counter argues this claim by suggesting 90% of the prisoner’s conversations were about prison life.
Overall, the validity of the experiment can certainly be challenged.
results have never been replicated again and researchers have challenged the findings.
Eg: Reicher and Haslam (2006) conducted a partial replication of the study in the broadcast of The BBC Prison Study.
Contrastingly, this time it was the prisoners that took control in the mock prison and subjected the guards to harassment.
Ex: researchers used Social Identity Theory (SIT) to explain the behaviour, which argues that our self-identity is based on membership within social groups. They suggested that the guards failed to develop a shared social identity, unlike the prisoners and it was this identity that encouraged them to refuse to accept the limits of their role as prisoner.
L: contradictory finding challenges Zimbardo’s conclusion of the Stanford Prison Experiment as the findings of The BBC
Prison Study cannot be explained with conformity to social roles in a given situation.
Define obedience
form of social influence that is in direct response to an order from another person usually of higher authority or social status
Describe Milgrams research investigating obedience to authority
Aim: investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain and inure an innocent person.
Method:
-Sample: 40 male American volunteers recruited through a newspaper advert. -Paid $4.50 to take part.
-lab experiment at prestigious Yale University
-experimenter and another ppt (who were both confederates) ‘drew lots’ to see who would be assigned to each role within the study but this was fixed so that the real ppt was always assigned to the role of ‘teacher’ and was instructed by the experimenter to administer an electric shocks to the ‘learner’, ‘Mr Wallace’, every time he made a mistake when recalling a list of word pairs
-each time the learner got a word pair wrong, the teacher had to administer an electric shock of increasingly voltage, starting at 15 volts to max 450 volts.
-At 300 volts the learner would bang on the wall and complain.
-After the 315-volt shock was administered there were no further responses heard from the learner.
-If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of verbal prods, for example:
The experiment requires that you continue.’
Results:
Quantitive data:
all of the ppts went to at least 300 volts
65% administered the full 450 volts.
Qualitative data: p’s showed signs of distress and tension eg: sweating, stuttering and trembling.
When was Milgrams obedience infamous shock experiment
1963
What are the 3 situational factors/variables of obedience in Milgrams experiment
Proximity : how close you are to someone/something
Location
Uniform
