Social influence

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.

Question 2

What are the types of conformity and who suggested these types of conformity?

Answer 2

Herbert Kelman (1958) - three ways in which people conform to the opinion of a majority.
Internalisation
Identification
Compliance

Question 3

What is internalisation in regards to conformity?

Answer 3

A deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct. Internalisation occurs when a person genuinely accepts the groups norms, it results in a private and public change of opinion/ behaviour. The change is likely to be permanent and persist even in the absence of other group members.

Question 4

What is identification in regards to conformity?

Answer 4

A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be part of it. This may mean we publicly change our opinions/ behaviour even if we don’t privately agree with everything the group stands for.

Question 5

What is compliance in regards to conformity?

Answer 5

A superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. The behaviour or opinion stops as soon as group pressure stops.

Question 6

What are the explanations for conformity and who came up with them?

Answer 6

Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955) - Two process theory arguing that there are two main reasons people conform. They are based on two central human needs: the need to be right (ISI), and the need to be liked (NSI).

Question 7

What is ISI?

Answer 7

Informational social influence - The need to be right.
We conform to the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well. This is most likely to lead to internalisation.
It is a cognitive process.
ISI is most likely to happen in situations that are new to a person or situations where there is ambiguity. It is also present in crisis situations where decisions are needed quickly or when someone is regarded as being more of an expert.

Question 8

What is NSI?

Answer 8

Normative social influence - The need to be liked.
We conform with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked. It is about norms - norms regulate the behaviour of groups. This is most likely to lead to compliance.
It is an emotional process.
NSI is most likely to occur in situations with strangers where you feel concerned about rejection or with people you know as we are most concerned about the social approval of our friends. It may also occur in stressful situations where people have a need for social support.

Question 9

What is a study / evidence for NSI?

Answer 9

Schultz et al (2008)
They found that they could change the behaviour of hotel guests by using printed messages encouraging them to save energy. The messages that suggested other guests were using fewer bath towels were the most successful.

Question 10

Evaluate explanations for conformity.

Answer 10

• Research support for ISI, Lucas et al (2006) asked students to give answers to maths problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than the easy ones. This supports ISI as it shows people conform in situations where they feel they dont know the answer.
• Individual differences, ISI and NSI do not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way. E.g. people who are less concerned with being liked are less affected by NSI (nAfflilators = people who have greater need for affiliation, being in a relationship with others). McGhee and Teevan found students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform. And Asch found students were less conformist than other participants, Perrin and Spencer also found little conformity.
• ISI and NSI work together, Deutsch and Gerrard explain that conformity is either due to ISI or NSI but often both processes are involved. E.g. when there is a dissenting participant in Asch’s experiment they can reduce NSI and they can reduce ISI. Therefore we arent sure whether NSI or ISI is at work and casts doubt over the two working independently.
• Research support for NSI, Asch (1951) found many participants went along with a clearly wrong answer just because others did. These participants said they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer and were afraid of disapproval.

Question 11

Describe Asch’s study into conformity.

Answer 11

Solomon Asch (1951, 1955) tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards at a time. On one was a standard line and on the other there were three comparison lines. One of the three lines was the same length as the standard and the other two were always substantially different (clearly wrong). 
The participant was asked which of the three lines matched the standard.

Question 12

Describe the participants in Asch’s study.

Answer 12

The participants were 123 American male undergraduates. Each naive participant was tested individually with a group of between six and eight confederates, they were not aware these were confederates. The naive participant was always seated either last or next to last in the group, participants gave their answers out loud, one at a time, beginning with the 1st person.
On the first few trials all the confederates gave the right answers but then were instructed to give the same wrong answer.
Each participant took part in 18 trials and on 12 critical trials the confederates gave the wrong answer.

Question 13

Explain Asch’s findings (Original study).

Answer 13

The naive participant gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time.
Overall 25% of the participants didn’t conform on any trials which means 75% conformed at least once.
When interviewed after most said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI).

Question 14

What is the Asch effect?

Answer 14

The extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous.

Question 15

What were the variations in Asch’s research?

Answer 15

Asch was interested in the conditions that might increase or decrease conformity. He investigated by carrying out variations of his original study. These were:

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Task difficulty

Question 16

Explain the variation group size in Asch’s study.

Answer 16

Asch wanted to know if the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. He added more confederates which increased the size of the majority. He found that with 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but the addition of more confederates made little difference.
This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but at the other extreme, there is no need for a majority of more than three.

Question 17

Explain the variation unanimity in Asch’s study.

Answer 17

Unanimity = The extent to which all the members of a group agree.
Asch wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the naive participant’s conformity. He introduced a confederate that disagreed with the others (sometimes giving the right answer, sometimes giving the wrong answer).
The dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous, they allowed the participant to behave more independently.
This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous.

Question 18

Explain the variation task difficulty in Asch’s study.

Answer 18

Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the standard line and comparison lines more similar in length.
He found that conformity increased under these conditions.
This suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder, this is because the situation is more ambiguous meaning we are more likely to look to others for guidance and assume they are right and we are wrong.

Question 19

Evaluate Asch’s research into conformity.

Answer 19

• Asch effect is not consistent across situations or across time, shows it is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour. Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s study with engineering students in the UK. Only 1 student conformed in a total of 396 trials. This could be due to the engineering students being more confident measuring the lines or that 1950 was a conformist time in America and so it was normal to conform.
• Artificial situation and task, participants knew they were taking part in a research study and so may have gone along with the demands of the situation (demand characteristics). The task was trivial so there was no reason not to conform. The groups also did not represent groups we are part of in everyday life. This means findings do not generalise to everyday situations.
• Limited application of findings, only men were tested and other research suggests women might be more conformist (maybe because they are more concerned about social relationships - Neto 1995). The men were also American, America is an individualist culture were people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group. Studies conducted in collectivist cultures, where social group is more important, found conformity rates to be higher. Asch didn’t take gender or culture into account and so his findings may only apply to American men.
• Participants had to answer aloud in a group of strangers, this could make conformity higher due to wanting to impress the strangers. However, Williams and Sogon (1984) found conformity to be higher in groups of friends rather than strangers.
• Ethical issues, the naive participant was deceived because they believed the confederates were genuine participants. Should take into account the benefits against the costs however.

Question 20

What did Zimbardo want to investigate?

Answer 20

Conformity to social roles
Following reports of brutality by guards in prisons across America he wanted to find out if prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation that creates such behaviour?

Question 21

Define social roles.

Answer 21

The parts people play as members of various social groups. These are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role.

Question 22

Describe the procedure for Zimbardo’s research.

Answer 22

Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University, they advertised for students willing to volunteer and selected those deemed as ‘emotionally stable’ after psychological testing.
The students were then randomly assigned the roles of guards or prisoners. The prisoners were arrested in their homes and then delivered to the prison.

Question 23

Explain the social roles in Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 23

The social roles of the prisoners and guards were strictly divided.
The prisoners’ daily routines were heavily regulated, there were 16 rules they had to follow which were enforced by guards. The prisoners were addressed as a number, the guards never used their names.
The guards had their own uniform that contained wooden clubs, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades. They were told they had complete power over the prisoners.

Question 24

Explain the findings of Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 24

The guards took up their roles with enthusiasm, their behaviour became a threat to the prisoners’ psychological and physical health. This meant the study was stopped after 6 days, instead of the intended 14.
Within 2 days, the prisoners rebelled against the guards treatment, they ripped their uniforms and shouted and swore at the guards who retaliated with fire extinguishers. The guards employed divide and rule tactics by playing the prisoners off against each other, they harassed them constantly to remind them that they were being monitored all the time.
The guards highlighted the differences in social roles by creating plenty of opportunities to enforce the rules and punish the smallest of misdemeanour.
Prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious, with one prisoner being released on the first day because he showed symptoms of psychological disturbance. Two more were released on the fourth day. One went on a hunger strike, the guards attempted to force feed him and then punished him by putting him in a tiny dark closet. Instead of being a hero, he was shunned by other prisoners.
The guards identified more and more closely with their role and their behaviour became more brutal and aggressive.

Question 25

What conclusions were gathered from Zimbardo’s research?

Answer 25

The study revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour. Guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their roles within the prison and the roles were taken on very easily.
Even volunteers who came in to perform certain functions found themselves behaving as if they were in a prison rather than a psychology study.

Question 26

Evaluate Zimbardo’s research.

Answer 26

• Zimbardo and his colleagues had some control over
  variables. The most obvious example of this was the selection of participants. Emotionally stable individuals were chosen and randomly assigned to the roles of
  guard and prisoner. This was one way in which the researchers tried to rule out individual personality differences as an explanation of the findings. If guards and prisoners behaved very differently, but were in those roles only by chance, then their behaviour must have been due to the pressures of the situation.
  Having such control over variables is a strength because it increases the internal validity of the study.
• Lack of realism, Banuazizi and Mohavedi (1975) argued the participants were merely play-acting
  rather than genuinely conforming to a role. Their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. For
  example, one of the guards claimed he had based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke. This would also explain why the prisoners rioted –
  because they thought that was what real prisoners did.
  However quantitative data gathered during the procedure showed that 90% of the prisoners’ conversations were about prison life. ‘Prisoner 416’ expressed the view that the prison was a real one, but run by psychologists rather than the government. On balance, it seems that the situation was real to the participants, which gives the study a high degree of internal validity.
• Fromm (1973) accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour, and minimising the role of personality factors (dispositional
  influences). For example, only a minority of the guards (about a third) behaved in a brutal manner. Another third were keen on applying the rules fairly. This suggests that Zimbardo’s conclusion – that participants were conforming to social roles – may be over-stated. The differences in the guards’ behaviour indicate
  that they were able to exercise right and wrong choices, despite the situational pressures to conform to a role.
• Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam’s (2006) partial replication of the Stanford prison experiment, the BBC prison study found findings very different to those of Zimbardo and his colleagues. It was the prisoners
  who eventually took control of the mock prison and subjected the guards to a campaign of harassment and
  disobedience. The researchers used social identity theory (SIT – Tajfel 1981) to explain this outcome. They
  argued that the guards failed to develop a shared social identity as a cohesive group, but the prisoners did. They actively identified themselves as members of a social group that refused to accept the limits of their assigned role as prisoners.
• Ethical issues, A major ethical issue arose because
  of Zimbardo’s dual roles in the study. For example, on one occasion a student who wanted to leave the
  study spoke to Zimbardo in his role as superintendent. The whole conversation was conducted on the
  basis that the student was a prisoner in a prison, asking to be ‘released’. Zimbardo responded to him as a
  superintendent worried about the running of his prison rather than as a researcher with responsibilities towards his participants.

Question 27

State another study that supports Zimbardo’s research.

Answer 27

Norma Jean Orlando’s study (1973).
she staged a mock psychiatric ward at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois. Here, 29 of the hospital staff members played the role of patients in a psychiatric ward. Other staff played their normal roles. Just as in the Stanford Prison Study, this study only lasted a few days. Orlando observed with amazement how the mock patients begun to act so similarly to real patients in such short period of time. Staff members in the experiment took their roles so seriously that some tried to escape, wept uncontrollably, had near nervous breakdowns, and experienced increased tension, anxiety, frustration and despair. One staff member declared how conceptually wrong he had been about patients. Orlando’s work also gives us insight on the consequences of placing people into roles.

Question 28

Define obedience.

Answer 28

A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority.

Question 29

What did Milgram set out to research?

Answer 29

Obedience.
He wanted to know why the German population had followed the orders of Hitler and killed over 10 million Jews, Gypsies and other social groups.

Question 30

Describe the participants in Milgram’s study.

Answer 30

40 males were recruited through newspaper adverts and flyers in the post. The ad said Milgram was looking for participants to participate in a memory study.
Participants were between 20 and 50 years old and ranged from having unskilled to professional jobs.
They were offered $4.50 to take part and were paid this at the outset when they arrived.

Question 31

Describe the procedure in Milgram’s study.

Answer 31

Participants were put into a rigged draw for their role of either learner or teacher. A confederate - Mr Wallace - always ended up the learner while the participant was the teacher. There was also an experimenter dressed in a lab coat, played by an actor. Participants were told they could leave at any time.
The learner was strapped into a chair in another room and wired with electrodes. The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task. The shocks were not real but the participant believed they were.
The shock level started at 15 volts (slight shock) and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts (danger - severe shock).
When the teacher got to 300 volts (intense shock) the learner pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.
After the 315 volt shock the learner pounded on the wall again but after that there was no further response from the learner.
When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance, the experimenter gave a standard instruction ‘‘An absence of response should be treated as a wrong answer’’.
If the teacher felt unsure about continuing the experimented then gave a sequence of four standard prods.

Question 32

What were the 4 prods used in Milgram’s study?

Answer 32

Prod 1 - ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on’
Prod 2 - ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
Prod 3 - ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
Prod 4 - ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’

Question 33

What were Milgram’s original study’s findings?

Answer 33

No participants stopped below 300 volts, 12.5% (5 participants) stopped at 300 volts and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts.
Qualitative data was also collected, it showed participants showing signs of extreme tension, sweating, trembling. Three even had full blown uncontrollable seizures.
Prior to the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the participants’ behaviour, they estimated that no more than 3% would continue to 450 volts. This shows findings were not expected.
All participants were debriefed and assured that their behaviour was normal. They were also sent a follow up questionnaire and 84% felt glad to have participated.

Question 34

Evaluate Milgram’s research.

Answer 34

• Low internal validity, Orne and Holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t believe in the set up - they guessed the shocks weren’t real. Therefore Milgram was not testing what he intended to. Gina Perry listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported many doubted the shocks. However, Sheridan and King (1972) conducted a similar study where real shocks were given to a puppy. 54% of the male participants and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock.
  This suggests Milgram’s findings were genuine. Milgram himself reported that 70% of participants said they believed the shocks were genuine.
• Sample bias, only tests males.
• Good external validity, the central feature of this situation was the relationship between the authority figure and the participant. Milgram argues that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life. Other research supports this like Hofling et al. This suggests that the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in Milgram’s lab can be generalised to other situations.
• Supporting replication, Le Jeu de la Mort - a documentary about reality TV - includes a replication of Milgram’s study. Participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode of a new TV show. They were paid to give fake electric shocks when ordered to by the presenter to other participants. These were actors. The results were similar to Milgram’s, 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man. Their behaviour was also similar, nail biting and nervous laughter. This supports Milgram’s findings about obedience to authority.
• An alternative explanation, according to social identity theory the key to obedience lies in group identification. In Milgram’s study, participants identified with the experimenter (the science of the study). When obedience levels fell it was because the participants identified less with the science and more with the victim. Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher analysed participant behaviour, looking at how they reacted when the prods were used. The first 3 prods don’t demand obedience, they appeal for help with the science. The 4th prod demands obedience. Every time the 4th prod was used, the participant quit.
• Ethical issues, Baumrind criticised the way Milgram deceived his participants. He led them to believe that the allocation of teacher and learner roles were random and that the electric shocks were real. Baumrind objected because she saw deception as a betrayal of trust that could damage the reputation of psychologists and their research.

Question 35

What is Hofling et al’s study?

In relation to Milgram’s study

Answer 35

Hofling et al studied nurses on a hospital ward and found that levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors were very high (21 out of 22 nurses obeyed).

Question 36

What ethical guidelines did Milgram break?

Answer 36

Milgram was not breaking an official ethical guidance at the time because none existed. However if they were official then he would have ethical issues of:

• The right to withdraw
• Gaining fully informed consent from the participants
• Using deception
• Protecting the participants from the risk of psychological and physical harm.

Question 37

What was Rank and Jacobson’s study?

In relation to Milgram

Answer 37

Rank and Jacobson found evidence to contradict Hofling et al’s conclusions.
They replicated Hofling’s study but changed some aspects that might have maximised obedience. E.g. being given an order over the phone was unusual and administering an unknown drug was unusual.
In Rank and Jacobson’s study the nurses were asked to administered Valium, a real drug the nurses would have been familiar with. They also gave the doctor a name known to the nurses and they had the chance to discuss the order with each other.
In these circumstances only 2 out of the 18 nurses obeyed the doctor’s orders.

Question 38

What are situational variables?

Answer 38

Factors that might influence the level of obedience shown by participants. They are related to the external circumstances rather than the personalities of the participants.
Milgram carried out variations of his original study to consider the situational variables that might create greater or lesser obedience.

Question 39

What were the situational variables Milgram carried out?

Answer 39

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 40

Explain the situational variable proximity and what it did to obedience levels?
(Milgram)

Answer 40

In Milgram’s original study, the teacher and learner were in adjoining rooms meaning the teacher could hear the learner but not see them.
In the proximity variable, they were in the same room.
This made the obedience rate drop from the baseline 65% to 40%.
In another proximity variation, the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto an electroshock plate when they refuse to give an answer. (Touch proximity condition).
The obedience rate dropped further to 30%.
In a third proximity variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions to the teacher by telephone. (Remote instruction condition). The obedience rate in this variation dropped to 20.5%.
The participants also frequently pretended to give shocks or gave weaker ones than they were ordered to.

Question 41

Describe each variation Milgram carried out and give their obedience levels.

Answer 41

Baseline study - 65%
Change of location to run-down office (location) - 47.5%
Teacher and learner in same room (proximity) - 40%
Teacher forces leaner’s hand onto plate (proximity) - 30%
Experimenter gave orders by phone (proximity) - 20.5%
Experimenter played by ‘member of public’ (uniform) - 20%

Question 42

Explain the situational variable location and what it did to obedience levels?
(Milgram)

Answer 42

Milgram changed the location of the obedience study to a run-down building rather than the prestigious university setting. In this situation the experimenter had less authority.
Obedience fell to 47.5%.

Question 43

Explain the situational variable uniform and what it did to obedience levels?
(Milgram)

Answer 43

In the original study the experimenter wore a grey lab coat as a symbol of his authority (a kind of uniform). Milgram carried out a variation where the experimenter was called away due to a phone call and the role of the experimenter was taken over by an ‘ordinary member of the public’ (played by a confederate) in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat.
The obedience rate dropped to 20%, the lowest of these variations.

Question 44

Evaluate Milgram’s variations.

Answer 44

• Research support, Bickman (1974) carried out a field experiment in NYC where three confederates were dressed in three different outfits - jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit and a security guard’s uniform. They stood in the street and asked passer-byers to perform tasks like pick up litter or give the confederate a coin for parking. People were twice as likely to obey the person dressed as a security guard than the one dressed in jacket and tie. This supports Milgram’s conclusion that a uniform conveys the authority of its wearer and is a situational factor likely to produce obedience.
• lack of internal validity, Orne and Holland originally said that participants worked out the procedure was fake in Milgram’s first study. It is even more likely that the participants guessed the fake set up due to the extra manipulation. This is a limitation because it is unclear whether the results are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the participants saw through the deception and acted accordingly.
• Cross-cultural replication, Milgram’s findings have been replicated in other cultures. Miranda et al (1981) found an obedience rate of over 90% among Spanish students, this suggests Milgram’s results are not limited to American males. However Smith and Bond point out that most replications have taken place in Western, developed societies. These are not that culturally different from the USA, so it would be premature to conclude that Milgram’s findings apply to people everywhere.
• Control of variables, Milgram systematically altered one variable at a time to see the effect it has on obedience. This is a strength as it reduces extraneous variables and makes the data for each situational variable reliable.
• The ‘obedience alibi’, David Mandel (1998) argues that using situational variables to explain obedience offers an excuse for evil behaviour. In his view it is offensive to survivors of the Holocaust to suggest that the Nazis were simply obeying orders and were victims themselves of situational factors beyond their control.

Question 45

How does Milgram explain obedience to destructive authority?

Answer 45

After the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for war crimes, (Eichmann had been in charge of the Nazi death camps and his defence was that he was only obeying orders). Milgram proposed that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person doesn’t take responsibility. Instead they believe they are acting for someone else, that they are an agent. An agent = someone who acts for or in place of another.
An agent experiences high anxiety (moral strain) when they realise that what they are doing is wrong, but feel powerless to disobey.

Question 46

Define agentic state.

Answer 46

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure. This frees us from the demands of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure.

Question 47

Define autonomous state.

Answer 47

This is the opposite of the agentic state.
Autonomy means to be independent or free, so a person in an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions.

Question 48

What is the agentic shift?

Answer 48

The shift from autonomy to agency.
Milgram suggested that this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority. This other person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy.

Question 49

Define binding factors.

Answer 49

Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the moral strain they are feeling.
Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victims.

Question 50

Define legitimacy of authority.

Answer 50

An explanation for obedience that suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us. This authority is justified (legitimate) by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy.
Most of us accept that authority figures have to be allowed to exercise social power over others because this allows society to function smoothly. However one consequence of this (legitimacy of authority) is that some people are granted the power to punish others.
We are willing to give up some of our independence and to hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately.
We learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood, from parents initially and then teachers and adults generally.

Question 51

What is the problem with legitimate authority?

Answer 51

Problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive. Charismatic and powerful leaders can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, like ordering people to behave in cruel ways.

Question 52

When was destructive authority demonstrated in Milgram’s study?

Answer 52

When the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.

Question 53

Evaluate the agentic state.

Answer 53

• research support, Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed a film of Milgram’s study to students who were asked to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm of the learner. The students blamed the experimenter rather the participants. They also indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority (the experimenter was top of the hierarchy and therefore had legitimate authority), but also because of expert authority (because he was a scientist). They recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting this explanation.
• the agentic shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings, it doesn’t explain why some participants did not obey (humans are social animals and are involved in social hierarchies and therefore should all obey). The agentic shift also doesn’t explain the findings from Hofling et al’s study. The shift predicts that as nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants, as they understood their role in a destructive process, but this was not the case.
  This suggests that the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.
• there is research evidence to show that the behaviour of the Nazis cannot be explained in terms of authority and an agentic shift. Mandel 1998 described one incident involving German Reserve Battalion 101 where men obeyed the orders to shoot civilians, despite the fact that they did not have direct orders to do so (they were told they could be assigned to other duties if theu preferred).

Question 54

Evaluate legitimacy of authority.

Answer 54

• A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority.
  Kilham and Mann 1974 - replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale.
  Mantell 1971 - found that 85% of German participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale.
  This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals.
  This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures.
  Such supportive research findings from cross-cultural research increase the validity of the explanation.
• can help explain how obedience can lead to real-life war crimes. Kelman and Hamilton 1989 argue that the My Lai massacre can be understood in terms of the power hierarchy of the US army. During the Vietnam war, unarmed civilians were killed by American soldiers, only one was found guilty and faced charges, his defence was that he was only doing his duty by following orders.

Question 55

Why did Theodor Adorno start his research, what did he find?

Answer 55

Theodor Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand the anti-semitism of the holocaust.
Their research contradicted Milgram’s as they came to believe that a high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder, and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual.

Question 56

Define dispositional explanations.

Answer 56

Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individual’s personality (their disposition). Such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations.

Question 57

Define Authoritarian personality.

Answer 57

A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority.
Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.

Question 58

What was Adorno’s procedure in his authoritarian personality study?

Answer 58

Adorno et al 1950 investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
They developed several scales to investigate this, including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale) which is still used to measure authoritarian personality.
The F-scale measured nine dimensions of the authoritarian personality. Participants had to rate their agreement with each item on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 6 (agree strongly).
Examples
- the businessman and the manufacturer are much more important to society than the artist and the professor.
- science has its place, but there are many important things that can never be understood by the human mind.
- every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions he obeys without question.
- nobody ever learned anything really important except through suffering.
- homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished.

Question 59

What are the findings from the authoritarian personality study?

Answer 59

People with authoritarian leanings (those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’.
They were very conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect, deference (polite submission and respect) and servility to those of higher status.
Adorno et al also found that authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.
There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Question 60

What are authoritarian characteristics?

Answer 60

Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority.
They have an extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it.
They also show contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status, and have highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender.
They view society as going to the dogs and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values.
People with an authoritarian personality are inflexible in their outlook - for them there are no ‘grey areas’. Everything is either right or wrong and they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Question 61

Where did authoritarian personality originate from?

Answer 61

Adorno et al concluded that it formed in childhood, as a result of harsh parenting. The parenting style features extremely strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism of perceived failings. It is also characterised by conditional love - the parent’s love and affection for their child depends entirely on how he or she behaves.
These experiences create resentment and hostility in the child, but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because of a well-founded fear of reprisals. So the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker, in a process known as scapegoating. This explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority, which is a dislike (and even hatred) for people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups.
This is a psychodynamic explanation.

Question 62

Evaluate the authoritarian personality.

Answer 62

• research support, Milgram conducted interviews with a small sample of fully obedient participants, who scored highly on the F-scale, believing there might be a link between obedience and authoritarian personality. However, this link is merely a correlation between two measured variables and this makes it impossible to draw the conclusion that authoritarian personality causes obedience on the basis of this result. It may be a third factor is involved and this unrelated factor causes authoritarian personality.
• limited explanation, an explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find it hard to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population. E.g. in pre-war Germany, millions of people all displayed obedient and racist behaviour despite all of them having different personalities. It seems unlikely that they could all possess an authoritarian personality.
  An alternative explanation is much more realistic - social identity explains obedience, the majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the outgroup of Jews.
• political bias, the F-scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology. Christie and Jahoda 1954 argued that this is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality, this is a limitation because it means Adorno’s theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.
• methodological problems, it is based on a flawed methodology. E.g. every one of its items is worded in the same ‘direction’. This means it is possible to get a high score for authoritarianism just by ticking the same line of boxes down one side of the page. People who agree with the items on the F-scale are therefore not necessarily authoritarian but merely ‘acquiescers’, and the scale is just measuring the tendency to agree to everything (acquiescence bias).
• Adorno et al interviewed their participants about their childhood experiences but the researchers knew the participants’ test scores, so knew which of them had authoritarian personalities. They also knew the hypothesis of the study.

Question 63

What correlations did Adorno et al find?

Answer 63

Adorno and his colleagues measured a range of variables and found many significant correlations between them.
E.g. they found that authoritarianism was strongly correlated with measures of prejudice against minority groups. However, no matter how strong a correlation between two variables might be, it does not follow that one causes the other. Therefore, Adorno could not claim that a harsh parenting style caused the development of an authoritarian personality.

Question 64

Define resistance to social influence.

Answer 64

The ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority. This ability to withstand social pressure is influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.

Question 65

Define social support.

Answer 65

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 to social influence is possible.

Question 66

Define locus of control (LOC).

Answer 66

Refers to the sense we each have about what directs events in our lives. Internals believe they are mostly responsible for what happens to them (internal locus of control). Externals believe it is mainly a matter of luck or other outside forces (external locus of control).

Question 67

What can be done to reduce conformity?

Give an example.

Answer 67

Social support can help people to resist conformity. The pressure to conform can be reduced if there are other people present who are not conforming.
E.g. In Asch’s research the person not 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 person to be free to follow their own conscience. This other person acts as a ‘model’.
However, Asch’s research also showed that if this ‘non-conforming’ person starts conforming again, so does the naive participants. Thus the effect of dissent is not long lasting.

Question 68

What can be done to reduce obedience?

Give an example.

Answer 68

Social support can also help people to resist obedience. The pressure to obey can be reduced if there is another person who is seen to disobey. In one of Milgram’s variations the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the genuine participant was joined by a disobedient confederate. The participant may not follow the disobedient person’s behaviour but the point is the other person’s disobedience acts as a model for the participant to copy that frees him to act from his own conscience.

Question 69

What is locus of control?

Who was is proposed by?

Answer 69

Julian Rotter 1966 first proposed the concept of locus of control. It is a concept concerned with internal control versus external control.

Question 70

What is an internal locus of control?

Answer 70

Some people, internals, believe that the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves.

Question 71

What is an external locus of control?

Answer 71

Externals have a tendency to believe that things happen without their own control.

Question 72

What is the continuum of LOC?

Answer 72

People differ in the way they explain their successes and failures but it isn’t simply a matter of being internal or external. There is a continuum with high internal LOC at one end and high external LOC at the other end of the continuum, with low internal and low external lying in between.

Question 73

How does LOC relate to resistance to social influence?

Answer 73

People who have an internal LOC are more likely to be able to resist pressures to conform or obey. They take personal responsibility for their actions and experiences and are more likely to base their decisions on their own beliefs and thus resist pressures from others.
Also, people with a high internal LOC tend to be more self-confident, more achievement-orientated, have higher intelligence and have less need for social approval.
These personality traits lead to greater resistance to social influence.

Question 74

Evaluate resistance to social influence.

Answer 74

• research support (resistance to conformity), evidence to support the role of dissenting peers in resisting conformity. Allen and Levine 1971 found that conformity decreased when there was one dissenter in an Asch-type study. This occurred even when the dissenter wore thick glasses and said he had difficulty with his vision (so he clearly was in no position to judge the length of the lines). This supports the view that resistance is not just motivated by following what someone else says but it enables someone to be free of the pressure from the group.
• research support (resistance to obedience), evidence that supports the role of the dissenting peers in resisting obedience. Gamson et al 1982 found higher levels of resistance in their study than Milgram. This was probably because the participants in Gamson’s study were in groups (they had to produce evidence that would be used to help an oil company run a smear campaign). In the study, 29 out of 33 groups of participants (88%) rebelled. This shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance.

Question 75

Evaluate LOC.

And how this affects resistance.

Answer 75

• research support for the link between LOC and resistance to obedience. Holland 1967 repeated Milgram’s baseline study and measured whether participants were internals or externals. He found that 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level (they showed some resistance) whereas only 23% of externals did not continue. This increases the validity of the LOC explanation and our confidence that it can explain resistance.
• however not all research supports the link between LOC and resistance. Twenge et al 2004 analysed data from American LOC studies over a 40-year period (from 1960 - 2002). The data showed that, over this time span, people have become more resistant to obedience but also more external. If resistance were linked to an internal locus of control, we would expect people to have become more internal. This challenges the link between internal LOC and increasing resistant behaviour. However, it is possible that the results are due to a changing society where many things are out of personal control.
• limited role, the role of LOC in resisting social influence may have been exaggerated. Rotter 1982 points out that LOC only comes into play in novel situations. It has very little influence over our behaviour in familiar situations where our previous experiences will always be more important. This means that people who have conformed or obeyed in specific situations in the past are likely to do so again, even if they have a high internal LOC.

Question 76

Define minority influence.

Answer 76

A form of social influence in which a minority of people or sometimes just one persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.

Question 77

Define consistency.

Answer 77

Minority influence is most effective if the minority keeps the same beliefs, both over time and between all the individuals that form the minority. It’s effective because it draws attention to the minority view.

Question 78

Define commitment.

Answer 78

Minority influence is more powerful if the minority demonstrates dedication to their position, for example, by making personal sacrifices. This is effective because it shows the minority is not acting out of self-interest.

Question 79

Define flexibility.

Answer 79

Relentless consistency could be counter-productive if it is seen by the majority as unbending and unreasonable. Therefore minority influence is more effective if the minority show flexibility by accepting the possibility of compromise.

Question 80

What is minority influence?

Answer 80

Minority influence refers to situations where one person or a small group of people (a minority) influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people.
This is different from conformity where the majority is doing the influencing.

Question 81

What study demonstrates minority influence?

Answer 81

Moscovici et al 1969 demonstrated minority influence in a study where a group of six people was asked to view a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity and then state whether the slides were blue or green.
In each group there were two confederates who consistently said the slides were green on two-thirds of the trials. The participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials, 32% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial.
A second group of participants was exposed to an inconsistent minority and agreement fell to 1.25%.
A third control group had no confederates and all participants had to do was identify the colour of each slide. They got this wrong on just 0.25% of the trials.

Question 82

Explain consistency in terms of minority influence.

Answer 82

Over time, the consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people. This consistency might be agreement between people in the minority group = synchronic consistency (they’re all saying the same thing). And/or consistency over time = diachronic consistency (they’ve been saying the same time now).
Such consistency makes other people start to rethink their own views.
(Maybe they have a point if they keep saying it).

Question 83

Explain commitment in terms of minority influence.

Answer 83

Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their views. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause. Majority members then pay attention.
This is called the augmentation principle.

Question 84

Explain flexibility in terms of minority influence.

Answer 84

Nemeth 1986 argued that consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence because it can be interpreted negatively. Being extremely consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours again and again can be seen as rigid, unbending, dogmatic and inflexible. This is off-putting to the majority and unlikely to result in any conversions to the minority position. Instead, members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments.
The key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility.

Question 85

Explain the process of change in minority influence.

Answer 85

Consistency, commitment and flexibility (factors in minority influence) make people think about the topic. If you hear something which agrees with what you already believe it doesn’t make you stop and think. But if you hear something new, then you might think about it, especially if the source of this view is consistent and passionate. It is this deeper processing which is important in the process of conversion to a different, minority viewpoint.

Question 86

What are the factors involved in minority influence?

Answer 86

Consistency
Commitment
Flexibility
The process of change

Question 87

What is the augmentation principle?

Answer 87

Minority groups doing extreme activities that are at some risk to themselves as this demonstrates commitment to their view.

Question 88

What is the snowball effect?

Answer 88

Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position. They have become ‘converted’.
They more that this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. This is called the snowball effect.
Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.

Question 89

Evaluate minority influence.

Answer 89

• Research support for consistency, Moscovici et al’s study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Wood et al 1994 carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential. This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.
• Research support for depth of thought, Martin et al 2003 gave participants a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured their support. One group then heard a minority group agree with this idea and another group heard it from a majority. Participants were finally exposed to a conflicting view and attitudes were measured again. They found that people were less willing to change their opinions if they listened to a minority group rather than a majority. This suggests that the minority message had been more deeply processed and had a more enduring effect.
• Artificial tasks, Moscovici’s study was artificial meaning that research is far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. In cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are more important. This means Moscovici’s study lacks external validity and limit what we know about how minority influence works in real-life social situations.
• Research support for internalisation, In a variation of Moscovici’s study, participants were allowed to write their answers down so that their responses were private. Private agreement with the minority position was greater in these circumstances. Moscovici thought this was due to fear of being associated with a minority position.
• Limited real-world applications, real-life social influence situations involve a much bigger difference between minority and majority. Majorities usually have much more power and status. Minorities tend to be very committed to their causes because they face very hostile competition.

Question 90

Define social influence.

Answer 90

The process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours. Includes conformity, obedience and minority influence.

Question 91

Define social change.

Answer 91

The occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals adopt new attitudes, beliefs, and ways of doing things.

Question 92

How does minority influence create social change?

Answer 92

Draws attention through social proof
Consistency
Deeper processing 
The augmentation principle 
The snowball effect
Social cryptomnesia

Question 93

What is social cryptomnesia?

Answer 93

People have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened.

Question 94

What are the lessons from conformity research?

Answer 94

Asch has highlighted the importance of dissent, in which one confederate gave correct answers throughout the procedure. This broke the power of the majority encouraging others to dissent. Such dissent has the potential to ultimately lead to social change.
Environmental and health campaigns increasingly exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence. They do this by providing information about what other people are doing.
So, social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing.

Question 95

What are the lessons from obedience research?

Answer 95

Milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models. In the variation where a confederate teacher refuses to give shocks to the learner, the rate of obedience in the genuine participants plummeted.
Zimbardo 2007 suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process pf gradual commitment. Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one. People essentially ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour.

Question 96

Evaluate social change.

Answer 96

• research support for normative influence, Nolan et al 2008 investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community. They hung messages on doors in San Diego every week for one month. The key message being that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy but no reference to others behaviour. Nolan et al found significant decreases in energy usage in the first group. This is a strength as it shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence.
• minority influence is only indirectly effective, social change happens slowly when they happen at all. E.g. it has taken decades for attitudes against drink-driving and smoking to shift. Nemeth 1986 argues that the effects of minority influence are likely to be indirect and delayed. They are indirect because the majority is influenced on matters only related to the issue at hand, and not the central issue itself. They are delayed because the effects may not be seen for some time. This is a limitation because it shows minority influence has a limited role in social change.
• role of deeper processing, Mackie 1987 disagrees that minority influence causes individuals to think more deeply about an issue than majority influence. They present evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views. This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same ways to us. When we find that a majority believes something different, then we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning. This causes doubt on the validity of Moscovici’s theory that minority influence causes deeper processing.
• barriers to social change, Bashir et al investigated why people so often resist social change, even when they agree that it is necessary. Researchers found that their participants were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they didn’t want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’. They rated activists and feminists in a negative way, researchers’ advice to minorities hoping to create social change is to avoid behaving in ways that reinforce stereotypes because this is off-putting to the majority that they want to influence.
• methodological issues, can relate back to the issues with Moscovici’s, Asch’s and Milgram’s study. They all have criticisms that limit the validity of the explanations.