Resistance to social influence

Question 1

What effect can social support have on conformity?

Answer 1

Social support can help people to resist conformity, this is because the pressure to conform can be reduced if there are other people present who are not conforming.

Question 2

What effect did social support have on participants in Asch’s experiment?

Answer 2

The person conforming doesn’t have to be giving the ‘right’ answer but simply the fact that someone else is not following the majority appears to enable a person to be free to follow their conscience.

Question 3

What is social support?

Answer 3

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 is possible.

Question 4

What effect can social support have on obedience?

Answer 4

Social support can help people to resist obedience because the pressure to obey is reduced if another person is disobeying.

Question 5

What effect did social support have on participants in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 5

In a variation of Milgram’s experiment the obedience rate dropped from 65% to 10% when joined by a disobedient confederate.

Question 6

What is a locus of control?

Answer 6

Refers to the sense we each have about what directs the events that occur in our lives.

Question 7

What two types of people are there according to the concept of the locus of control?

Answer 7

Internals and Externals.

Question 8

Why would an external believe they were successful or unsuccessful in an exam?

Answer 8

They could believe that success is due to a certain revision resource available and failure is due to lack of resources available or they had bad luck.

Question 9

Someone who says they failed their test because they were unlucky with the questions is likely to have what type of LOC?

Answer 9

External, placing the blame on an external factor.

Question 10

What do internals believe?

Answer 10

That the things that happen in their life are largely controlled by themselves.

Question 11

Why would an internal believe they were successful or unsuccessful in an exam?

Answer 11

They believe that success is due to their own hard work and failure is due to a lack of work.

Question 12

What do externals believe?

Answer 12

That the things which happen in their life are due to luck or greater forces.

Question 13

Who proposed the concept of the locus of control?

Answer 13

Julian Rotter (1966).

Question 14

On the LOC continuum what are the two extremes?

Answer 14

High internal LOC at one end and High External LOC at the other end.

Question 15

What types are in the middle of the LOC continuum?

Answer 15

Low Internal LOC and Low External LOC.

Question 16

People with what type of LOC are most likely to resist social pressures to conform or obey?

Answer 16

Internal LOC’s because they take personal responsibility for their actions and experience (good and bad) and therefore are more likely to base their decisions on their own beliefs.

Question 17

What traits are associated with high Internal LOC?

Answer 17

• Higher self-confidence,
• More achievement orientated,
• Higher intelligence,
• Less need for social approval.

Question 18

AO3 - Research support (social support resistance to conformity).

Answer 18

Allen and Levine (1971) found that conformity decreased when there was one dissenter in an Ash-type study. Supporting the idea that resistance is not purely motivated by following someone else, it enables someone to be free of the pressure from the group.

Question 19

AO3 - Research support (social support resistance to obedience).

Answer 19

Gamson (1982) found higher levels of resistance in their study than Milgram. This was probably because the participants in Gamson’s study were in groups, he found 29 out of 33 groups rebelled which shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance.

Question 20

AO3 - Research support (LOC).

Answer 20

Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s baseline study whilst measuring participants LOC aswell, he found that 37% of internals did not continue whereas only 23% of externals did not continue. Showing that internals have a greater resistance to social pressure.

Question 21

What did Holland (1967) prove about internals in his study of obedience?

Answer 21

He showed that internals were more resistant to social and authoritative pressures as less continued to the highest voltage in a replication of Milgram’s baseline study.

Question 22

AO3 - Limited role of LOC.

Answer 22

The role of LOC in resisting social influence may have been somewhat exaggerated. Rotter (1982) points out that LOC only comes into play in novel situations, meaning there is little influence on behaviour in familiar settings.

Question 23

AO3 - Contradictory research (LOC).

Answer 23

Twenge (2004) analysed data from American LOC studies over a 40-year period, the data showed that over this time span, people have become more resistant to obedience but also more external. This research challenges the link between internal LOC and increasing resistant behaviour.