Social Influence Flashcards
Agentic state
- state where we fee no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure
- i.e. as their agent - acts for/ in the place of another
- frees us from the demands of our consciences
- allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure
- experience high anxiety (moral strain) when they realise what they are doing is wrong - but feel powerless to disobey
- e.g. Hitler’s Nazi’s
Autonomous state
- independent or free to behave according to their own principles
- therefore feel a sense of responsibility for their own actions
Agentic shift
- the shift from autonomy to agency
- occurs when a person perceive someone else as a figure of authority
- this person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy
Binding factors
- aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour
- reduces the moral strain they are feeling
e. g: - shifting the responsibility to the victims
- denying the damage they were doing to the victims
Legitimacy of authority
- explanation for obedience
- we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
- authority = their position of power is higher within the social hierarchy
Legitimacy of authority in society
- in societies there are people in positions who hold authority over us at times e.g. parents, teachers, police officers, night club bouncers, etc.
- their authority is legitimate = it is agreed by society
- allows society to function smoothly
Consequences of legitimacy of authority
- some people are granted power to punish others
- most people accept that police and courts have the power to punish wrong doers
- we are willing to give up some of our independence and hand control to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately
- we learn this willingness from childhood e.g., to parents and then teachers, etc.
Destructive authority
- some people who we grant authority to can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes
- e.g. ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel, stupid and dangerous
- e.g. in Milgram’s study the experimenter executed destructive authority to make p’s behave againhst their consciences
Agentic state and legitimacy of authority: evaluation
P - limited explanation
E - doesn’t explain a lot of Milgram’s research findings
- e.g. why some P’s did not obey
- (if humans are social and involved in social hierarchies then they should obey)
C - this suggests that agentic state can only be used to account for SOME situations of obedience
P - research support
E - researcher showed a film of Milgram’s study to students
- asked who they thought was responsible for the harm to the learner
- students blamed the experimenter rather than the P
- also said it was due to both legitimate authority (top of hierarchy) and expert authority (scientist)
C - this findings support this theory with legitimate authority as a cause of obedience
P - cultural differences
E - legitimacy of authority explanation is a useful account of cultural differences
- studies show cultural differences in degree of obedience to authority
- replicated Milgram’s study in Australia and found only 16% of P’s went to the top of the voltage scale whereas replications in Germany have found 85%
C - shows that in some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate. Reflects how different societies are structured –> cross-cultural studies increase the validity of this explanation
Situational Variables
- variables that influence the level of obedience shown by P’s
- related to external circumstances rather than the personalities of those involved
- Proximity, location and uniform
Proximity
- physical closeness or distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving orders to
- closeness of teacher an learner (Milgram)
Milgram and Proximity
- Original Study: Teacher and Learner in adjoining rooms –> can hear but not see each other - 65% fully obedient
- Same Room: 40% (can see pain)
- Teacher forces Learner’ hand onto shock plate: 30% (more personal - directly causing shock)
- Experimenter gives order through the phone: 20.5%
- –> in this cond P’s often lied or gave weaker shocks than were ordered to
Location
- The place where an order is issued
- relevant factor = status or prestige associated with location
e. g. Milgram 1st study = Yale - very prestigious and well known research university
Milgram and Location
- Original study: Yale university (prestigious): 65% fully obedient
- Run down office: 47.5%
- highlights impact of location on obedience - less credible locations = reduction in the level of obedience.
Uniform
- positions of authority = often also have uniform that is symbolic of their authority –> judges and police officers
- indicates to the rest of us who is entitled to expect our obedience
Bickman and Uniform
- New York City
- 3 confederates dress as: a milkman, a security guard or wearing a jacket and tie
- stood in the street and asked passers-by to preform tasks such as: picking up litter or giving the confederate a coin for the parking meter
- 2x as likely to obey the security guard than the one dressed in a shirt and tie
Authoritarian Personality
- A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority
- these induviduals are though to be submissive to those of a higher status and dismissive of inferiors
Dispositional Explanation
- any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality (disposition)
- not all of Milgram’s P’s obeyed despite being in the same situational pressures –> must be other factors at play (dispositional)
Adornos Authoritarian Personality: method:
- 2000 middle class white Americans
- tested their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
- developed the potential for fascism scale (f-scale) which is still used to measure the authoritarian personality.
e.g. ‘homosexuals are no better than criminals and ought to be punished’
‘ obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’
Adornos Authoritarian Personality: Findings:
- people with authoritarian leanings (scored higher) identified with ‘strong’ people and looked down upon the ‘weak’.
- very conscious of their own status and that of others’
- showed excessive respect and submission to those of a higher status
- authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there is no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people –> fixed and distinct stereotypes about other groups
- strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
Authoritarian characteristics
- especially obedient to authority
- extreme respect for authority
- extreme submissiveness to authority
- disrespect/contempt for those they perceive as having inferior social status
- highly traditional views on sex, race and gender
- see society as being ruined by the new age and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional views such as:
> love of country, religion and family - inflexible with their views, no grey area –> things are either right or wrong
- uncomfortable with uncertainty
Origin of the authoritarian personality
- formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting
- strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standard, severe criticism of ‘failure’
- conditional love —> love and affection depend on how the child behaves
- experiences create resentment and hostility in the child
- these feelings, however, cannot be expressed directly against their parents due to a fear of the consequences
- so the fears are displaced onto perceived ‘weaker’ others (scapegoating)
- this explains hatred to socially inferior or those who belong to different groups
Authoritarian personality: Evaluation
P - research support
E - Milgram and Elm’s: interviews with fully obedient P’s who so scored high on the F-scale
- found a link
C - suggest there may be a relationship between authoritarian personality and obedience
H - results = correlational –> difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of the obedience
P - Limited explanation
E - cannot explain obedience for the majority of a whole population
- e.g. in pre-war Germany millions of individuals displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behaviour despite the fact they must have differed in their personalities
- extremely unlikely that they all had the authoritarian personality
C - weakness because other explanations are far more realistic
- such as situational variables
P - correlational evidence
E - Adorno found many significant correlations between a wide range of variables
- e.g. authoritarianism is strongly correlated with prejudice against minority groups
- however, no matter how strong the correlation between two variables, it does not allow for cause and effect
C - Therefore there is no way to state that the authoritarian personality is for example, cause by a harsh parenting style
Social Support
- 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 show others that resistance to social influence is possible
Social support and conformity
- social support can help people
To resist conformity - the pressure to confirm can be reduced if there are other people present who are not conforming
(Asch - the person not conforming doesn’t have to give the ‘right’ answer —> simply the fact that someone else is not following the majority enables us to be free to follow our own conscience —> they act as a ‘model’ - asch also showed that I’d the non-conforming person starts conforming again so does the näive P (not a long lasting effect)
Social support and obedience
- social support can help people to resist obedience
- pressure to obey can be reduced if there is another person who is seen to disobey
- obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the genuine P was joined by a disobedient confederate (Milgram)
- the P may not follow the disobedient person’s exact behaviour but their disobedience acts as a ‘model’ for the P to copy (free to act from their own conscience)
Locus of control
- 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 LOC)
- externals: believe it is mainly a matter of luck or other outside forces (external LOC)
Internal locus of control
- Believe the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves
- e.g. if they do well in an exam it is because they worked hard and if they don’t do well in an exam it’s because they didn’t work hard
External locus of control
- Believe things happen without their own control
- e.g. if they failed an exam they might say it was because they had back luck because the questions were hard
Locus of control continuum/spectrum
- people differ in the way they explain their successes and failures
- it isn’t a matter of being EITHER external OR internal
- there is a spectrum with high internal LOC on one end and high external LOC at the other end
- with low external and low internal LOC lying in between
Locus of control impact on obedience
- People who have an internal LOC are more likely to be able to resist pressure to conform or obey
—> if someone takes personal responsibility for their own actions/experiences then they are more likely to base decisions on their own beliefs and resist pressures from others
- other reasons may be bc they tend to be more self-confident, more achievement orientated, have higher intelligence and have less need for social approval
Social support: evaluation
P - research support (resistance to conformity)
E - Levine: introducing a dissenter in an Asch-style study greatly reduced conformity levels
- even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and claimed they had poor eyesight (no position to judge line length)
C - supports the idea that resistance is not just motivated by following what someone else says but enables the release of pressure from the group
P - research support (resistance to obedience)
E - Gamson: higher levels of resistance in their study than Milgram
- The P’s were in groups in which they would make decisions in each other’s company
- 88% rebelled
C - peer support is linked to greater resistance
Locus of control: Evaluation
P - Research Support
E - Holland: repeated Milgram’s study and also measured whether P’s were intenrals or externals
- 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level
- 23% of externals did not (lower rate)
- internals showed greater resistance to authority
C - increases the validity of LOC theory and confidence we have in it to explain resistance
P - Contrasting Research
E - Twenge: meta-analysis of American LOC studies over a 40 year period
- found that people have become more resistant to obedience but also more EXTERNAL
- if resistance were linked to an internal LOC we would expect to see people becoming more INTERNAL
C - challenges the link between internal LOC and increased resistant behaviour
H –> it is possible that these findings were due to a changing society where many things are out of personal control
Minority influence
- a form of social influence in which a minority of people (or just one person) persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
- leads to: internalisation or conversion –> private AND public behaviours change
Consistency
- increases the amount of interest from other people if they all have the same beliefs and for a long time
- synchronic: all of the minority say the same things
- diachronic: they say the same thing for a long time
- makes people start to rethink their own views
e. g. - ‘if they all think this way - maybe they have a point’
e.g. 2 - ‘if they’ve been saying this for so long - maybe they have a point’
Commitment
- influence is more powerful if the minority demonstrate dedication to their cause
- e.g. extreme personal sacrifices or activities that cause some type of risk to them
- They are not acting out of self-interest
- e.g. ‘he really must believe in this so maybe i should consider his view’
Flexibility
- consistency can be interpreted negatively
- being extremely consistent and repeating the same argument and behaviours again and again can be seen as: unbending and inflexible
- this is off-putting to the majority
- and unlikely to result in any conversions
- members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their POV and accept valid and reasonable arguments
- be flexible and accept the possibility of compromise
The process of change (minority influence)
- all 3 factors make people think about the topic
- if you hear something new, you’re more likely to think about it
- -> especially if the view is consistent and compassionate
- over time more people switch from majority –> minority
- they have become ‘converted’
- the more this happens the faster the rate of conversion
- the snowball effect
- the minority become the majority
Minority influence: Evaluation
P - research support for consistency
E - the green blue study in which p’s were asked to identify the colour of blue slides
- found that if confederates consistently gave the wrong answer the P’s were more likely to agree with them
- than if they inconsistently gave right and wrong answers
C - shows that consistency is a major factor in minority influence
P - Artificial tasks
E - a weakness of this research is that tasks like identifying the colour of a side are very artificial
- there are no consequences for getting the slide colour wrong
- task is quite far from instances where real minority influence may occur
- e.g. juries individuals determine the outcome of someone’s life - would the minority have such an influence?
C - tasks lack external validity
- limits what it can tell us about how minority influence impacts real -life social situations.
P - evidence for depth of thought
E - Research shows that change to minority position involves deeper thought
- Martin found people were less willing to change opinions if they had listened to a minority rather than majority.
C - Suggests it had been processed more deeply
Green blue study sumamary
- 172 female participants
- P’s in groups of six and shown 36 slides,
- all varying shades of blue.
- state out loud the colour of each slide.
- 2/6 were confederates
- one condition (consistent): the 2 confederates said that all 36 slides were green
- second condition (inconsistent) the confederates said that 24 = green and 12 = blue
- consistent condition real p’s agreed on 8.2% of trials,
- inconsistent condition agreed on 1.25% of the trials.
- a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.
