Social infleunce evalaution Flashcards
Types of conformity and explanations for conformity
Difficulties in distinguishing between compliance and internalisation
- relationship between compliance and internalisation is complicated by how we define public and private acceptance
- acceptance may by in public but may dissipate in private, because they are presented with new information or they have forgotten previous information
- also possible that the individual may actually been merely compiling in public, but as a result of self perception they come to accept that position as their own
Research support for normative influence
- US research has shown the relationship between peoples normative beliefs and the likelihood of them taking up smoking
- Linkenback and Perkins 2003 found that adolescents exposed to the simple message that the majority of their age peers did not smoke were less likely to take up smoking
- used to influence how people behave when saving energy Schultz et al 2008 found that a hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused there towels each day rather than using a new tail, they reduced their own towel usage by 25% - support the aim that people shape there behaviour out of a desire to fit in with their reference group
Research support for informational influence
- some studies have demonstrated how exposure to other peoples beliefs have an important influence on social society
- Wittenbrink and Henly 1996 - found participants exposed to negative information about African Americans and were led to believe that they were the opinion of the majority, later reported more negative beliefs about a black individuals
Fein et al 2007 - demonstrated how judgements of candidate performance in US presidential debates could be influenced by knowledge of others reactions - participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of their fellow participants on screen during the debate and produced large shifts in participants judgements of the candidates performance
Normative influence may not be detected
- research on conformity has led to the conclusion that normative influence has a powerful effect on the behaviour of the individual
- researchers have began to wonder whether the individuals do recognise behaviour of others as a casual factor in their own behaviour
- Nolan et al 2008 - investigated whether people detected the influence of social norms on their energy conservation behaviour
- when asked about what factors effected there social influence behaviour they believed that the behaviour of neighbours had the least impact on their own energy conservation - results showed it had the strongest
Informational influence is moderated by a type of task
- features of the task moderately impact the majority of influences
- some material can be established within the realm of physical reality - deciding whether a town in a county is the highest populated
- however judgements cannot be made using objective criteria, e.g deciding whether the town is the most fun in the county - made on the basis of social consensus - majorities exert greater influence on issues of social rather than phyical reality
Evaluation of variables that affect conformity
Asch’s research may be a “child of its time”
- in 1956 US was in an anti-communist period when people were scared to go against the majority so are more likely to conform
- Perrin and Spencer 1980s, tried to repeat Asch’s findings and study using students who were studying science and engineering - in initial study they one obtained one conformity out of 396 trials
- then they used youths on probation and probation officers and found similar levels of conformity by those such as Asch
- conformity due to the likely of preconceived costs of not conforming
Problems with determining the effect of group size
Bond 2005 - suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have only used a limited range of majority sizes
- 3 may not be a sufficient number for maximal influence, but subsequent studies have used the number 3
-Bond points out that no other study has used a majority greater than 9 and majority sizes used are much narrower between 2 and 4
- suggest we know very little about majority sizes
Independent behaviour rather than conformity
- two thirds of the participants stuck to the right answer despite an overwhelming majority
- Asch study showed that human beings have a tendency for participants to stick to what they believe in the correct judgement
unconvincing confederates
- difficult for the confederates to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer - low validity
- Mori and Arai 2010 - overcame the confederate problem where participants wore glasses with polarising filters - 4 of the group wore identical glasses whereas one wore a different pair of glasses with a different filter therefore were judging a different line from the rest
- female participants closely matched the findings of Asch’s study although not the male participants showing that the confederates did act convincingly
cultural differences in conformity
- research suggests that there are important cultural differences in conformity and we may experience different results depending on the culture that the study takes place in
- Smith et al 2006 - analysed the results of Asch type studies across different cultures
- average conformity rate across different cultures was 31.2%
- individualist cultures - this was 25% conformity rates
- collectivist cultures - this was 37% rate - viewed more favourably as a social guide which binds communities together
conformity to social roles
Conformity to social roles in not automatic
- Zimbardo believed the guards sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of embracing their role and suppressed the ability to realise what they were doing was wrong
- There were a few good guards these did not degrade or harass the prisoners and did small favours for them this should that the guards chose how to behave rather than completely conforming – Haslam and Reicher 2012
The problem of demand characteristics
Banuazizi and Movahedi 1975 – argued that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners was not due to their response to a compleeing prison environment but a response to powerful demand characterstic in the experimental situation
- The particiapants guessed how the researchers wanted them to behave
- [resented the details of the SPE experimental procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study they guessed that the role was to show the ordinary people assigned to guards and prisoners would behave like them
- Predicted that the guards would behave hostile and the prisoners would be passive
ethical issues
- Zimbardos studied was considered ethical as it followed the lines of Standford University ethics committee that had approved it, for example there was no deception and particpants were told in advance that some of there rights would be suspended
- Zimbardo acknowledges that his study should have been stopped earlier because so many participants were experiencing emotional distress – carried out debriefing sessions for years afterwards and concluded that there were no lasting effects
- Reicher and Haslam’s study used same set up as Zimbardo but had greater measures to protect participants from harm
SPE and its relevance to Abu Ghraib
- Zimbardo argues that conforming to a social role in SPE was evident in Abu Ghraib, a US prison in Iraq were American soldiers tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners in 2003 and 2004
- The guards who committed to the abuses were victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely for example lack of training, boredom, no accountability to higher authority, opportunity to misuse power associated with the assigned role of guard led to prisoner abuses
- Zimbardo’s conclusion from SPE was that people descend into tyranny as they conform unthinkingly to the roles that authority prescribe without the need for specific orders
- Brutality of the guards is a natural consequence of being allocated the role of guard and asserting the power associated with that role
- Reicher and Haslam reject the idea that group behaviour is mindless and tyrannical, and the BBC prison study suggest the way in which members of strong groups behave upon the norms and values associated with their specific social identity
situational variables effecting obedience
ethical issues
- Milgram’s study was critiscised by other psychologists such as Diana Baumrind for his lack of concern for the well being of his research participants - hid the true reasoning of the research topic,
- made it impossible for participants to give there consent on taking part in the study
- although Milgram claims that participants were free to leave at any time prods from the experimenters made it hard to leave as participants thought they had no choice but to continue
internal validity is a lack of realism
Orne and Holland 1968 - claimed participants in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know that the true aim of study is disguised - in Milgram’s study the participant remained calm and distant even though the other participant/confederate was crying out in pain so they must have known that the other participant was ok
- Perry 2012 discovered that many of Milgrams participants had been sceptical of whether the participants were actually being shocked or not
- Milgram’s research assistant divided the participants into those who believed that the shocks were real and those who had doubts, the first group were less likely to give anything more than low shocks
individual differences and the influence of gender
- underestimated the importance of individual differences in obedience
- commonly held assumption is the idea that woman are more susceptible to social influences then men, therefore there would be gender differences
- Milgram had one condition in which the participants were female and he found self reported tension in females who went to max shock level was higher than for men but there rate of obedience was the same for males in a comparable condition
external validity and the obedience alibi
Mandel 1998 - challenges obedience research as an explanation of real life atrocities - there not borne by real life events
- 1942 the reserve police battalion 101 in Poland received orders to carry out mass killings of jews, the commanding officer made an offer to the men that anyone who did not feel up to it could be assigned other duties, despite the presence of factors to increase defiance such as close contact to their victims only a small few disobeyed and the rest carried out there orders
historical validity
- Blass 1999 - carried out a statistical analysis of all of Milgrams obedience experiments and studies conducted between 1961 and 1985 - correlational analysis relating each study’s year of publication with the level of obedience found and found no relationship whatsoever
- Burger 2009 - found levels of obedience almost identical to the ones conducted by Milgram 46 years earlier
Agentic state and the Legitimacy of authority
The agentic state explanation and real life obedience
- Milgram claimed that people shift back and forth between the autonomous state and the agentic state
- this fails to explain the gradual and irreversible transition that Lifton 1986 found in his study of German doctors working in Aushwitz
- lifton found that doctors had changed from ordinary medical professionals who cared for there patients to carried out vile and lethal experiments on pateitns
- Staub suggests that rather than the agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in Holocaust perpetrators it is the experience of carrying out acts of evil over a long period of time that changes the way that they think
The agentic state or just plain cruel
- one of the signs of cruelty is the fact that the participants used the situation to express their sadistic impulses
- proved by SPE, within a few days guards became cruel even though there were no authority figure telling them to do so
the legitimate authority explanation and real life obedience
- can be used to justify harming others, if people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct
- therefore as a consequence when directed by a legitimate authority they are willing to do so
- shown in military authority
the agentic state as loss of personal control
- Fennis and Aarts - suggest that the process of agentic shift is not confined to obedience to authority but extends to other forms of social influence
- reason for the agentic shift is a reduction in an individuals experience of personal control therefore they show an increased acceptance of external sources of control to compensate for this therefore they have greater obedience to authority
the obedience in the cockpit a test of legitimate authority
Tarnow - provided the support for the power of legitimate authority through a study of aviation accidents
- studied data from US national transportation safety board review of all serious aircraft accidents in the US between 1978 and 1990 where the flight recorder was available and where crew actions were a contributing factor
- the participant accepts the experimenters definition of the situation - there was excessive dependence on the captains authority and expertise the second officer claimed that although the captain was taking a risky approach he said nothing as he assumed the captain knew what he was doing
- found this in 19 of the 37 accidents
The authoritarian personality
Research evidence for the authoritarianism/ obedience link
- several studies have reported that more authoritarian participants are more obedient
for example, milgram and Emlms
- milgram study - tend to suffer from a good deal of suspicion to whether or not that the shocks were real
- Damburn and Vantine overcame this problem by using an immersive virtual environment where the actor was filmed and recorded receiving the shocks then shown to the participants but they were told the victims reactions were not real but they still responded as if they were real, there were clear differences between participants RWA scores and the max voltage administered
The social context is more important
Milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and disobedience he did not believe the evidence for this was strong
- showed that variations in the social context of the study were the cause of the participants level of obedience
Differences between authoritarian and obedient participants
Elms and Milgram research also presented important differences in the characteristics of the Authoritarian personality and the characterstics of obedient participants
- Elms and Milgram asked participants about their upbringing many of the full obedient participants were reported having a very good relationship with their parents rather than growing up with a strict parenthood like authoritarian
Education may determine authoritarianism and obedience
- Research has found that those that are less educated are more authoritarian than those who are well educated
- found that those with lower levels of education are more likely to be obedient
- suggests that instead of authoritarian causing obedience it might be lack of education which can be responsible for both
the left wing views are associated with lower levels of obedience
Altemeyers reformulation of the authoritarian personality in terms of right wing authoritarianism this suggest that people who define themselves as on the right of the political spectrum are more likely to obey authority
- Begue et al carried out a replication of Milgram’s study as a games show where they had to deliver electric shocks to other participants
- interviews using world value survey questionnaire revealed that the more left the participants the lower intensity of shocks that they agreed to give the other participants
Describe stuff for types of conformity and explanations for conformity
Types
Compliance - occurs when an individual accepts influence because they hope to achieve a favourable reaction from those around them, an attitude is adopted because of the rewards the view is not internalised
Identification - a form of influence where an individual adopts an attitude or behaviour because they want to be associated with a particular person or group
Internalisation - occurs when an individual accepts influence because the content of the attitude or behaviour proposed is consistent with their own value system
Explanations
- normative - this is a form of soicla influence whereby an individual conforms with the expectations of the majority in order to gain approval or to avoid social disapproval
- informative - form of influence which is the result of a desire to be right, looking to others to gain evidence about reality
Describe study and stuff for variables affecting conformity
Asch
- variables affecting conformity - group size, the unanimity of the majority, the difficultly of the task
Conformity to social roles
- Stanford prison experiment - Haney et al
- BBC prison experiment
situational variables affecting obedience
Milgram
- 26/40 went to 450 max volts, everyone went to 300
- only 5 stopped at 300 when the learner first objected
situation factor sin obedience
- proximity - 21% when experimenter was out the room, feel to 40% when sitting next to the learner
- location - Yale so moved it to a run down office in Bridgeport, varied but not significantly with only 48% going to 450 volts
Power of the uniform - Bushman women in polce uniform, executive, beggar
Agentic state and legitimacy of authority theory
The agentic state
- obedient person puts the blame onto someone else to see themselves as not responsible, this is the agentic state, at the end of milgrams study individuals highlighted how they wouldn’t have done it themselves but because the experimenter was telling them to they did it
- one explanation is because they want to maintain a positive self image, the participant may assess the conseuqneces of this action for his or herself and refrain but once they move into the agentic state they do not care
- binding factors - social etiquette keeps them in the agentic state and regulates behaviour therefore if the participant must commit
Legitimacy of Authority
- first condition needed to shift into the agentic state - someone who is perceived to be in a situation of social power, this is their position in a social situation in his study the experimenter was the legitimate authority
- definition of a situation that provided by the legitimate authority, although the participant carries out the role the legitimate authority defines it and orders them to continue
- requires an institution to work if the commands are harmful or destructive they must occur in an institution like the military or university
The authoritarian personaility stuff and studys
F-scale
- Adorno et al used it to measure the different components that make up the authoritarian personaility, contains statements such as obedience and respect are the most important virtue in a child, and based on how you agree this would determine how authoritarian they are
- found that people who scored high were raised by parents who were strict and therefore they see this as the norm
Right wing authoritarianism (RWA)
- Altemerye refined the concept of the authoritarian personality by identifying 3 variables that he referred to as RWA
1. conventionalism - this is an adherence to conventional norms and values
2. authoritarian aggression - aggressive feelings to people who violate these norms
3. authoritarian submission - uncritical submission to legitimate authorities
- tested this by ordering participants to give themselves increasing levels of shock everytime they go the question wrong, level of shocks they gave showed how RWA they were
Study Elms and Milgram
- follow up study
- 20 obedient and 20 disobedient participants who had refused to continue
- asked them to complete the MMPI and F scale
- found little difference between obedient and definant participants on the MMPI scale but found higher levels of authoritarianism on those that classified as obedient
- significant differences between those who were obedient and not, such as upbringing, those obedient participants saw the experimenter more admirably than the defiant participants
Resistance to social influence
Social support
social support and resisting conformity
- Asch found that the presence of social support enables an individual to resist conformity pressure from the majority
- introduction of an ally caused conformity levels to fall
- breaks the unanimity of the majority
- provides the individual with an independent view of reality making them more confident in there ability
social support and resisting obedience
- disobedience can change the perception than it is difficult to take a stand against authority as the obedient behaviours of others make a harmful action appear acceptable
- if an individual has an ally to join them they are more likely to disobey than if they did not have an ally
- disobedient peers therefore act as role models
- individuals are able to use the defiance of peers as an opportunity to extricate themselves from causing harm to a victim
- milgram - one of variables was to shock the learner after seeing two others refuse to shock the learner, the participant refused to shock the learner and only 10% continued to the maximum 450v shock
Locus of control
- a strong internal locus of control is associated with the belief that we can control events in our lives, believe what happens to them is a consequence of their own ability and effort therefore they are more likely to have independence in thought and behaviour
- people with high external locus of control tend to believe what happens to them is to do with external factors they believe that things just happen to them and approach events with a more passive and fatalistic attitude than internals
internality and resistance to social influence
1. high internals are active seeks of useful information so are less likely to rely on opininons of others which make them less vulnerable to social influence
2. high internals - more achievement orientated and consequently more likely to become leaders
3. high internals are better able to resist coercion from others, for example in a prisoner of war camp situation internals were able to resist attempts of an interrogater - Hutchins and Estey
Evaluation of resistance to social influence
Social support: the importance of response order
- Allen and Levine studied whether the response position of the person providing social support made any difference to a participant resisting the majority
- in one condition a confederate answered first giving the right answer while other confederates all gave the same wrong answer
- in the second condition the confederate answered fourth
- the real participant always answered last
- support was more effective in position 1 than in position 4
- a right first answer confirms the participants own judgement this means that the initial commitment to the correct response that is initial
Social support: support may not have to be valid to be effective
- Allen and Levine looked at whether social support was not particularly valid would not be effective in helping particpants resist conformity
- in one condition the confederate wore glasses with thick lenses therefore providing invalid social support
- in the second the supporter had normal vision
- both reduce conformity but the valid social supporter had much more impact
Locus of control is related to normative but not informative influence
- spector measured locus of control and predisposition to normative and informational influence in 157 undergrads
- found correlation between locus of control and predisposition to normative social influence
- found no relationship for predisposition to informational social influence therefore not a factor in this kind of conformity
locus of control people are more external than they used to be
- meta analysis study by Twenge et al found that young Americans increasingly believed that there fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions.
- studies used for this analysis researchers found that locus of control scores are more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002
social support in the real world: the Rosenstrasse protest
- 1943
- women protested in Berlin for the Gestapo to release 2,000 Jewish men who were married to non Jewish men
- stood in the street while the Gestapo threatened to open fire if they did not disperse
- Jews were set free
- example of Milgrams research
disobedient peers made others more confident
Minority influence stuff and studies
Consistency
commitment
flexibility
Moscovici et al
Procedure
- each group is compromised four native participants and a minority of two confederates
- shown a series of blue slide that only varied in intensity and were asked to judge the colour of each slide
- in the consistent condition two confederates repeatedly called the blue slides green
- in the inconsistent condition they called the blue slides green on 2/3 of the time
- in a control condition with no confederates they were called blue throughout
Findings
- the consistent minority - influenced the naïve participants to say green on over 8% of the trials
- inconsistent minority exerted very little influence and did not differ from the control condition
- after the main study participants were asked to sort 16 coloured discs into either blue to green
- three of these discs were blue and three were green
the remaining ten discs could be considered either blue or green
- had to decide a threshold point where everything would be blue and everything would be green
- those in the consistent and inconsistent set thresholds at different points
- consistent condition judged them more green than those in inconsistent condition
- greater with those who hadn’t gone along with the minority showing that the initial influence was more at a private than public level
