resistance to social influence

Question 1

How many people did not conform in Asch’s, Zimbardo , hofling’s, and milgrams study

Answer 1

Asch-24% did conform at all
Zimbardo- two thirds of the guards weren’t sadistic
Hofling- on e nurse disobeyed
Milgram- 35% didnt go up to 450 volts

Question 2

What is social support

Answer 2

An important external factor which is the presence of others who resist the pressure to conform or obey.
The disobedient person doesn’t have to be right the fact they are disobeying allows people to follow their own ideas.

Question 3

Evaluation of social support

Answer 3

+) there is a lot of research support when there was one dissenter conformity rates dropped to 5.5% , in a variation of Asch’s study with a dissident confederate obedience rates dropped to 10%. Both prove the power of social influence
+) The studies can be applied to real life, Gamsons study with the group discussions about the oil company is very ecologically valid

-) Social support doesn’t work for larger groups of over 100 such as as you would see in real life , so studies explaining social support are limited to small group sizes.

Question 4

What is locus of control?

Answer 4

A locus of control is a persons perception of how much personal control they have over their future and behavior.
An external locus of control means you see your future and behaviors as mostly resulting from outside factors.
An internal locus on control means you feel a stronger sense of control over their lives. They also seek information out more, are more confident and are more likely to resist social influence then people with an external locus of control.
It was proposed by Rotter in 1966

Question 5

Locus of control evaluation

Answer 5

+) Oliner and Oliner (1988) study, they interviewed two groups of non jewish people who lived though the holocausts, 406 people who protected Jews and 126 people who hadn’t done this. They found the group that protected the Jews had a higher internal locus of control.
A repeat of Milgrams study found that 37% of internal disobeyed authority as compared to 23% of externals.

-)Twenge (2004) analyzed data from studies from America over a 40 year period and it showed that over time people have become more external but have become more resistant to obedience. This challenges the link between LOC and resistance to obedience.

• )Also Rotter pointed out that LOC doesn’t have that much of an impact in familiar situations just new sudations
• ) In a study it was found a higher external locus of control is associated with NSI but with ISI it didn’t seem to be a factor.