Resistance to social influence

Question 1

what is social support

Answer 1

• presence of people who resist pressures to conform/obey and can help others to do the same
• act as role models to show others that resistance to social influence is possible

Question 2

social support in conformity

Answer 2

• if someone else resists (doesn’t conform), constitutes as social support allowing individuals to follow their conscience + go against group/authority
• Asch: unanimity variation. 1 dissenting confederate gives correct answer drops conformity to 5%
• reduces consistency of majority, allowing participants to act individually as no pressure

Question 3

social support in obedience 1/3

Answer 3

MIlgrams variation where a teacher refuses to shock a patient and walks out the room even after being told by the researcher to stay.
- obedience dropped to 10%
- this refusal can move participants from agentic state back to autonomous state, acting to their won conscience

Question 4

social support in obedience 2/3

Answer 4

• nurses able to confer - 16/18 disobeyed

Question 5

social support in obedience 3.3

Answer 5

• Gamson
• paid volunteers who were being influenced by a company to argue in favour of the sacking of an oil company executive.
• clear the sacking was unjust
• findings: 29/33 groups refused to sign, findings higher levels of resistance than in milgrams as Ps were in groups and could discuss
• shows peer support can lead to disobedience by undermining the legitimacy of an authority figure

Question 6

who designed the locus of control scale

Answer 6

Rotter, said people with a higher internal locus are more likely to resist social influence as they believe they have the choice to conform or not

Question 7

what is the internal locus of control

Answer 7

• believed their behaviour is caused by their own personal decision
• control of events
  actively seeks useful information
• takes responsibility for their own behaviour

Question 8

what is the external locus of control

Answer 8

• believes their behaviour is caused by fate, luck or other external circumstances
• believed they aren’t in control of events
• relies on others for information
• attributes responsibility to external factors

Question 9

strengths of LOC 1/2

Answer 9

Research support: Holland, repeated the Milgram experiment and measured whether they were internal or external
- 37% who refused to continue to 450 v had an internal locus of control
- 23% with high external LOC didn’t continue
- internal LOC showed greater resistance to authority so shows validity that the 2 are linked

Question 10

strengths of LOC 2/2

Answer 10

• Avitgis, meta-anaylsis of studies of the relationship between LOC and different form of social influence
• analysis showed external LOC - more easily persuaded than internal LOC
• however low correlation, only 0.37 between external LOC and rates of conformity, not as strong as other situational factors such as: task difficulty,group size

Question 11

Limitation of LOC 1/1

Answer 11

LOC doesn’t always help us resist conformity
- spector found internal more likely to resist NSI than externals
but found LOC, not a significant factor in resisting ISI, suggesting that a high degree of internally only helps individuals to resist pressure to conform where their main motivation is to gain approval