Social Influence Flashcards
Define Social Influence
Social influence is the change in behaviour that one person causes in another, either intentionally or unintentionally. it is often due to group pressure and can be a change in opinion as well as behaviour.
Define Conformity
The process by which a person’s attitudes, opinions, beliefs, or behaviours are modified by the presence or actions of others (usually the group majority and conforming to group pressure).
Define Compliance
The person conforms publicly but continues privately to disagree. it is the shallowest form of conformity and behaviour stops when you leave the group. The change is therefore a temporary form of conformity with the least impact.
Define Identification
The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group, and they feel a sense of group membership. The change of belief or behaviour is often still temporary.
Define Internalisation
The person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and genuinely accepted the views of the group norm. it is the deepest form of conformity, and the change is permanent and therefore leads to conversion in views (convert from one belief to another)
Define Normative social influence (NSI)
The desire to be liked. Agreeing with the opinion of the group majority because we want to be accepted and be approved and liked by the group.
Define Informational social influence (ISI)
The desire to be right. Agreeing with the opinion of the majority because we believe they are correct, and we desire to also be right.
Which type of conformity is associated with Normative social influence (NSI)
Compliance
Which type of conformity is associated with Informational social influence (ISI)
Internalisation
What was Asch’s procedure?
Asch (1951) conducted one of the most famous laboratory experiments examining conformity. He wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform.
Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from Swarthmore college in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed on real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last. In turn, each person had to say out loud which line (a, b, or c) was most like the target line in length. Unlike Jenness’ experiment, the correct answer was always obvious. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect.
What was Asch’s findings?
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed. Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found that less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.
What was Asch’s conclusion?
Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed. Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed. This confirms that participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in.
What were the 3 factors effecting conformity?
Group size, Unanimity of the group and Task Difficulty.
What were Asch’s findings and conclusions about group size?
Asch found that when the number of confederates rose from one/two to three, the conformity significantly rose to 31.8%. Any more than three confederates made little difference to the conformity level.
What were Asch’s findings and conclusions about unanimity of the group?
The presence of a non-conforming confederate reduced conformity by 25%. It didn’t matter whether this confederate agreed with the naïve participant, or not-it allowed the naïve participant to behave more independently.
What were Asch’s findings and conclusions about task difficulty?
Asch made the comparison lines more difficult to differentiate between. Conformity increased in these conditions.
What ethical issues were broken by Asch?
Deception, informed consent, protection from harm and right to withdraw.
How/why did Asch break the ethical issue deception?
The students thought they were participating in a vision test alongside other participants when in actuality they were surrounded by actors and in a social influence study.
How/why did Asch break the ethical issue informed consent?
The students thought they were participating in a vision test not a study on social influence. Therefore, they didn’t give consent to participate in the study.
How/why did Asch break the ethical issue protection from harm?
The participants were likely anxious about going against the group majority therefore they were subjected to psychological distress.
How/why did Asch break the ethical issue right to withdraw?
The participants we’re not informed of the true nature of the study and therefore were not made aware of their right to withdraw from the study.
Name the strength of Asch’s research
lab experiment, with high control over extraneous variables.
Name the limitations of Asch’s research
Sample/volunteer sample, lacks ecological validity, lacks temporal validity.
Define Social Roles
The ‘parts’ people play in various social groups. We have expectations of what is classed as appropriate behaviour based on these roles.
What was the aim of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment?
Whether the situation impacts the person or whether its ‘bad apples’
What were the procedures of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment?
• Participants – male psychology students at Stanford University, California - Volunteers
• Randomly allocated to two groups – prisoners and prison guards
• The prisoners were to spend two weeks locked in ‘cells’ in a wing of the university.
• The prison guards were there to look after the prisoners and keep them under control.
• The prisoners were arrested at home (unexpectedly) and taken to the university.
• They were stripped, deloused, and given a prison uniform and a prisoner number. They were to be called
this number and not their name.
• They were to spend 23 hours a day locked in their cells for two weeks.
• The prison guards were given uniforms, including sticks and mirrored sunglasses.
• They worked shifts and went home at the end of their shift.
