Resisting Social Influence & minority influence Flashcards
What are the two psychological reasons why people do not conform or obey?
Finding social support
Having an internal locus of control
What is social support?
This explanations suggest that people are less likely to conform/obey when they have someone who supports them when doing so
What research is their to support social support?
In a variation to his original experiment ash out in a dissenter (someone who always disagrees with the majority)
Conformity dropped from 32% to 5.5%
What’s the conclusion of social support?
Social support means that people are less likely to conform as they would be more confident and sure with their answers
What is a locus of control?
ROTTER 1996
This is how much someone believes they are in control of events in their own lives
What would someone with an internal locus of control believe?
What happened a is largely a result of their own behaviour,they can control their stress levels to succeed
What will someone with an external locus of control believe?
They would believe that what happened is largely down to external factors such as luck or fate
What study investigated the locus of control and resisting conformity?
Shute 1975
What was shutes method?
Participants were tested for their LOC using a questionnaire,they were then given a conformity task where they were put into groups
What was shutes method?
Participants with an internal LOC were less likely to confront to the groups attitudes about drug laws
what are the three factors regarding to minority influence?
consistency
commitment
flexibility
what key study looked into consistency?
MOSCOVICIC ET AL 1969
What was Moscovicicis aim and method?
aim-to investigate the effects of a consistent minority or a majority
method-conducted a re-run of Aschs experiment but in reverse,so he put two actors togethers with 4 genuine participants
-participants were shown 36 slides which were clearly different shades of blue and asked to state the colour of each slide out loud
How did the two actors in Moscovivics study answer ?
- In the first part of the experiment the two actors answered green for each of the 36 slides. They were totally consistent in their responses.
- In the second part of the experiment they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times. In this case they were inconsistent in their answers.
results of Moscovicis study?
The participants agreed with the minority that the slides were green 8% of the time
-32% conformed to the minority at least once. However, when the confederates answered inconsistently the conformed went down to 1.25%.
conclusion of moscovicics study?
Minorities can influence a majority, but not all the time and only when they behave in certain ways (e.g. consistent behavior style).
why is commitment important?
For someone to be converted by a minority they must trust them and believe that they are campaigning for the right reasons
-they must show they are committed to the cause by making sacrifices of money,time or freedom
why is flexibility important?
if the minority is seen as dogmatic (inflexible) then people are less likely to trust them and join them
who did a study demonstrated the importance of flexibility ?
Nemeth-demonstarted this by creating a group of three participants and one actor who had to decide how much to pay a victim of a ski accident
-when they were inflexible with a low amount he refused to get the majority
why do people yield to minority influence?
1) Group membership
2) consistency
3) snowball effect
4) internal locus of control
5) shown to make sacrifices
what is group membership?
if the message comes from a group who you identify as being positive then it is more likely to be listened too
-a respected minority is important in getting people to change their social behaviour through the desire to be right
why is consistency important?
if the message is consistent then more people will listen to it
-consistency is more important in making people change their opinion through the desire to be right
what is the snowball effect?
once the message has begun to adopt followers through the desire to be right and people have started to internalise this change then more people will be picked up as the minority turns into the majority and people will start to join through normative social influence
what does having an internal locus of control mean?
these people don’t conform as readily as research suggests as they think for themselves and don’t care about how the appear to others
how is the minority shown to have made sacrifices?
this will further emphasis that they believe in what they are doing
