Resisting Social Influence & minority influence

Question 1

What are the two psychological reasons why people do not conform or obey?

Answer 1

Finding social support

Having an internal locus of control

Question 2

What is social support?

Answer 2

This explanations suggest that people are less likely to conform/obey when they have someone who supports them when doing so

Question 3

What research is their to support social support?

Answer 3

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%

Question 4

What’s the conclusion of social support?

Answer 4

Social support means that people are less likely to conform as they would be more confident and sure with their answers

Question 5

What is a locus of control?

Answer 5

ROTTER 1996

This is how much someone believes they are in control of events in their own lives

Question 6

What would someone with an internal locus of control believe?

Answer 6

What happened a is largely a result of their own behaviour,they can control their stress levels to succeed

Question 7

What will someone with an external locus of control believe?

Answer 7

They would believe that what happened is largely down to external factors such as luck or fate

Question 8

What study investigated the locus of control and resisting conformity?

Answer 8

Shute 1975

Question 9

What was shutes method?

Answer 9

Participants were tested for their LOC using a questionnaire,they were then given a conformity task where they were put into groups

Question 10

What was shutes method?

Answer 10

Participants with an internal LOC were less likely to confront to the groups attitudes about drug laws

Question 11

what are the three factors regarding to minority influence?

Answer 11

consistency
commitment
flexibility

Question 12

what key study looked into consistency?

Answer 12

MOSCOVICIC ET AL 1969

Question 13

What was Moscovicicis aim and method?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

How did the two actors in Moscovivics study answer ?

Answer 14

• 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.

Question 15

results of Moscovicis study?

Answer 15

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%.

Question 16

conclusion of moscovicics study?

Answer 16

Minorities can influence a majority, but not all the time and only when they behave in certain ways (e.g. consistent behavior style).

Question 17

why is commitment important?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

why is flexibility important?

Answer 18

if the minority is seen as dogmatic (inflexible) then people are less likely to trust them and join them

Question 19

who did a study demonstrated the importance of flexibility ?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

why do people yield to minority influence?

Answer 20

1) Group membership
2) consistency
3) snowball effect
4) internal locus of control
5) shown to make sacrifices

Question 21

what is group membership?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

why is consistency important?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

what is the snowball effect?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

what does having an internal locus of control mean?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

how is the minority shown to have made sacrifices?

Answer 25

this will further emphasis that they believe in what they are doing