Social Influence Flashcards
Social Influence
involves intentional and unintentional efforts to change another person’s beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour.
Conformity
The process whereby people change their beliefs, attitudes, actions, or perceptions to more closely match those held by groups to which they belong or want to belong or by groups whose approval they desire.
Compliance
Compliance is the lowest level of conformity. Here a person changes their public behaviour (the way they act) but not their private beliefs. This is usually a short-term change and often the result of normative social influence.
Identification
Associating with role model’s and adopting their behaviour because you want to be like them
Internalisation
Internalisation is the deepest level of conformity. Here a person changes both their public behaviour (the way they act) and their private beliefs. This is usually a long-term change and often the result of informational social influence.
Two-Process Theory
Normative influence is defined as “influence to conform with the positive expectations of another” (and often “or to avoid sanctions from another”) whereas Informational Influence is “influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality”. It is often that influence that derives from the power of an individual or group to present their perspective on a subject as more authoritative and erudite than the opinion of the majority. A professor in a group would probably yield informational influence.
ISI PEEL
P - the theory has supportive research from Lucas et al (2006)
E - more conformity to incorrect answers when the problems were more difficult
E - more evident when students said they disliked maths and it was more difficult
L - supports the idea of informational social influence
NSI PEEL
P - the theory has supportive research from Asch
E - 32% conformed when the group was entirely confederates whereas only 1% gave the wrong answer with no confederates
E - evident that the pressure of being incorrect affects the given answer
L - supports the idea of informational social influence
NSI and ISI PEEL
P - The two process model is over simplified
E - The model ignores individual differences
E - This means that results vary from person to person and therefore study to study, in fact, the two theories may work together rather than individually
L - this goes against the idea of generalised social influence.
One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group. This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people.
The study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real-life situations of conformity.
Used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students partook in a visual task. Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates who had agreed on a given answer prior to the task. Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. 32% conformed, 75% conformed at least once. Whereas no confederates led to 1% getting an incorrect answer.
Group Size
Asch’s study was replicated with different numbers of confederates.
1 - 3%
2 - 13%
3 - 32%
Unanimity
Having one confederate give the correct answer lead to a drop to 5% conformity rate, as opposed to 32%
Task Difficulty
In one his variations he made the task more difficult, by making the difference between the line lengths significantly smaller. In this variation Asch found the rate of conformity increased, although he didn’t report the percentage. This is likely to be the result of informational social influence, as individuals look to another for guidance when completing the task, similar to the results found in Jenness’ experiment.
Zimbardo and his colleagues (1973) were interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e., dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (i.e., situational). 24 men judged to be the most physically & mentally stable, the most mature, & the least involved in antisocial behaviours were chosen to participate. The participants did not know each other prior to the study and were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment. Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, with the guards adopting theirs quickly and easily.
The study has low ecological validity. Demand characteristics could explain the findings of the study. Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting. As the guards and prisoners were playing a role, their behaviour may not be influenced by the same factors which affect behaviour in real life. This means the study’s findings cannot be reasonably generalized to real life, such as prison settings.
The study lacks ethicality. The prisoners did not have the chance to use their right to withdraw as Zimbardo acted as both chief guard and lead experimenter, meaning his interests conflicted. While this creates a more realistic prison scenario, it goes against what the participants reasonably expected.
