Resistance to social influence Flashcards
What is resistance to social influence?
The ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority. This ability to withstand social pressure is influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.
What is social support?
The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same. These people act as models to show others that resistance to social influence is possible.
How can the pressure to conform be reduced?
If they have support from a dissenter.
Asch had a one of the confederates give the correct answer throughout. Conformity dropped to 5%.
A dissenter acts as social support - naïve participant follow conscience.
Acts as a model of independent behaviour.
Define the term dissenter.
Someone who disagrees with the majority or refuses to obey.
How can the pressure to obey be reduced?
If there is another person who is seen to disobey.
Milgram’s variation study suggested that obedience dropped significantly (65% to 10%) when the participant was joined by a disobedient confederate.
What are the strength of social support?
Real-world research support.
Research support for dissenting peers.
Explain the real-world support.
Albrecht et al evaluated Teen Fresh Start USA, an eight-week programme to help pregnant adolescents aged 14-19 resist peer pressure to smoke.
Social support provided by a slightly older mentor or ‘buddy’.
At the end participants with a ‘buddy’ were less likely to smoke than a control group who didn’t have one.
Explain the research from Gamson that support the role for dissenting peers.
Participants were told to produce evidence that would help an oil company run a smear campaign.
29/33 rebelled against their orders the high level of resistance is because participants were in groups so could discuss what they were told to do.
Peer support could lead to disobedience.
Although, could be said may participants were just conforming to others in the group who were rebelling.
What is locus of control.
The concept of how much a person believes they control what happens in their lives, and can be measured on a scale from high internal to high external.
What do internals believe?
That the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves.
What do externals believe?
That things happen without their own control.
Explain the LOC continuum.
People differ in the way they explain their successes, it is not as simply as being internal or external = there is a continuum. High internal LOC at one end, with high external LOC at the other end, with low internal and low external lying in between
What is the strength of locus of control?
Research support.
Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s baseline study and measure whether participants were internals or externals.
He found that 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock, whereas 23% of externals did not continue.
Shows resistance is partly related to LOC, which increases the validity of LOC as an explanation of disobedience.
What is the limitation of locus of control?
Twenge et al (2004) analysed data from American LOC studies over a 40 year period (1960 – 2002)
Over this time span, people became more resistance to obedience but also more external.
If resistance is linked to an internal locus of control we would expect people to have become more internal.
Not valid explanation to resistance to social influence.
