Social Influence Flashcards
Internalisation definition
Making the beliefs, values, attitude and behaviour of the group your own
so an individual’s change of view is permanent e.g. being brought up in a religious
household, and becoming religious yourself
- often as a result of informational social
influence
Identification definition
Temporary/short term change of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence
of a group e.g. acting more professional and than normal when you arrive at your
office to work because you believe you should be like that at work
Compliance
To follow other people’s ideas/go along with the group to gain
their approval or avoid disapproval. You publicly agree but privately disagree so your change of view is superficial and temporary -due to normative social influence e.g. when friends pressure you into drinking alcohol
when you don’t truly want to, and will not drink outside of such social situations
Informational social influence definition
When a person is uncertain or unsure, they usually look to others for information so it occurs in situations where we believe we lack knowledge to make our own decisions e.g. a person following the direction of the crowd in an emergency, even though they don’t actually know where they are going, as they assume that everyone else is going to the right place.
Normative social influence definition
When someone conforms because they want to be liked and be part of a group and be accepted or have approval from a group. It often occurs when a person wants to avoid the embarrassing situation of disagreeing with the majority. e.g. a person starting to smoke because everyone around them is smoking.
What studies support informational social influence?
Jenness (number of beans in glass jar)
Asch - original
Asch variation - difficulty of task
What studies support normative social influence?
Asch - original
Asch variation - bigger group
Asch variation - answers privately
Asch variation - not unanimous
Outline Asch original study
123 male American undergraduates, each one put in a group with 5 confederates
Participants and confederates were presented with 4 lines; 3 comparison lines and 1 standard line
They asked to state which of three lines was the same length as a
stimulus line
The real participant always answered last or second to last
Confederates would give the same incorrect answer for 12 out of 18
trials
Asch observed how often the participant would give the same incorrect answer as the confederates versus the correct answer
Pps conformed on 32% of the critical trials
22% never conformed
78% conformed at least once
In post-experiment interview people were asked why they conformed - mix of not wanting to go against majority and genuinely believed they must wrong so shows normative but also could show informational social influence.
Evaluate Asch’s study
High internal validity - lab experiment so there was strict control over extraneous variables,
such as timing of assessment and the type of task used + easy to replicate and see reliability
Lacks ecological validity - based on trivial task
and so the findings cannot be generalised to real life as it does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity where there are many other confounding variables
Ethical issues - deception, lack of informed consent however the participants were debriefed so cost-benefit
analysis is required.
Lacks population validity - the
participants were only American male undergraduates, and so the study
was subject to gender bias and culture bias, where it is assumed that findings from male
participants can be generalised to females and findings from one place can be generalised to everyone across world
Factors affecting level of conformity (Asch variation studies)
Size of majority/Group size - An individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group.
There was low conformity if group size of confederates were less than 3 (1 had 3%, 2 had 13%) - any more than 3 and the conformity was around 32%
So a person is more likely to conform if all members of the group are in agreement and give the same answer, because it will
increase normative social influence. Conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four so this is considered the optimal group size.
Unanimity of majority - An individual is more likely to conform when the group is
unanimous
When joined by another participant or partner confederate who gave the correct answer, conformity could decrease by 80%
This suggests conformity due to what others think of them, normative social influence
Unanimity is vital in establishing a consistent majority view, so very important for normative social influence
Task Difficulty - An individual is more likely to conform when the task is more difficult
Asch altered the (comparison) lines, making them more similar in length. Since it was harder to judge the correct answer conformity increased. When the task is difficult, we are more uncertain of our answer
so we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task the greater the conformity.
This suggests that informational social influence is a major reason for conformity when the situation is ambiguous and the
individual does not have enough of their own knowledge or information to make an informed decision independently, and so has to look towards others
Answer privately - when allowed to answer i private conformity decreased.
Less group pressure, less fear of rejection from group so normative social influence not as powerful.
Supports normative social influence as conformity explanation
Outline Zimbardo
Participants - 24 American male undergraduate students
The basement of the Stanford University psychology building was
converted into a simulated prison.
American student volunteers were paid to take part in the study.
They were randomly issued one of two roles; guard or prisoner.
Both prisoners and guards had to wear uniforms.
Prisoners were only referred to by their assigned number.
Guards were given props like handcuffs and sunglasses (to make eye contact with prisoners impossible and to reinforce the boundaries between the two social roles within the established social hierarchy).
No one was allowed to leave the simulated prison.
Guards worked eight hour shifts, while the others remained on call.
Prisoners were only allowed in the hallway which acted as their yard, and to go to the toilet. The guards were allowed to control this behaviour, in order to emphasise their complete power over the prisoners.
No physical violence was permitted, in line with ethical guidelines and to prevent complete overruling.
The behaviour of the participants was observed
Identification occurred very fast, as both the prisoners and guards adopted their new roles and played their part in a short amount of
time, despite the apparent disparity between the two social roles.
Guards began to harass and torment prisoners in harsh and aggressive ways – they later reported to have enjoyed doing so and
relished in their new-found power and control.
Prisoners would only talk about prison issues (forgetting about their previous real life), and snitch on other prisoners to the guards to
please them. This is significant evidence to suggest that the prisoners believed that the prison was real, and were not acting
simply due to demand characteristics.
They would even defend the guards when other prisoners broke the rules, reinforcing their social roles as prisoner and guard, despite it not being real.
The guards became more demanding of obedience and assertiveness towards the prisoners while the prisoners become
more submissive. This suggests that the respective social roles became increasingly internalised
Had to end study after 6 days instead of 2 weeks due to the psychological harm it was having on prisoners - people dropped out, believed weren’t allowed to leave, screaming, signs of insanity
Evaluate Zimbardo
Bad ethics - psychological harm, lack of informed consent
Internal validity good as controlled environment but bad as experimenter in the experiment so bias
Bad ecological validity as very extreme situation
Bad population validity as only American males
Authoritarian personality description
Dispositional explanation
Adorno thought people that had one particular characteristic would be more likely to obey than others (authoritarian personality)
These traits can be measured using the F-scale. This requires participants to rate
the extent of their own agreement to certain statements using a scale e.g. if they agree with the statement ”Respect for authority and parents are some of the most important values which a child
can learn”.
The authoritarian personality is when you believe that people should completely obey or submit to higher authority figures, and suppress their own beliefs but those who are perceived as lower than the individual should submit to the individual. Such individuals do not challenge stereotypes due to their tendency to have very black and white thinking from their schemas (often group people into ‘us’ and ‘them’)
Adorno believes this personality trait came from childhood influences particularly parents. When a child has overly harsh and disciplinarian parents, they would displace their anger with their parents onto people they viewed as inferior. They would fear parents and be angry at them but not be able to express this, and so they feel the need to displace this anger.
The child would be more likely to target their displaced anger on those who seem weak and unable to defend themselves, such as minority groups and this behaviour then continues into adulthood.
Evaluate authoritarian personality
There are methodological issues with the F-scale as its based on people’s own views of themselves, social desirability bias and also statements very extreme so forced into extreme answer that may not be reflective of actual views so issues with validity.
Little ecological validity because it can’t explain real-life examples of mass obedience. For example, it is very unlikely that all Nazis and German population had this Authoritarian Personality. This means that such a theory is a limited explanation for some examples of obedience
Milgram Experiment
Outline Milgram original
40 ‘average’ American male volunteers
Milgram wanted to observe whether people would obey a figure of authority when told to harm another person to evaluate the influence of an authority figure and disprove Adorno.
Pp given the role of ‘teacher’ and a confederate given the role of ‘learner’. They thought this was decided through a random allocation.
Participant had to ask the confederate a series of questions from a separate room but could hear them.
Whenever the confederate got the answer wrong, the participant had to give him an electric shock, including when no answer was given.
The electric shocks incremented by 15 volts at a time, ranging from
300V to 450V, with the higher voltages marked as lethal.
Participants thought the shocks were real when in fact there were no real shocks, the confederate was just acting. The shocks were falsely demonstrated to be real prior to the start of the study.
Participants were assessed on how many volts they were willing to shock the confederate with.
The experimenter’s role was to give a series of orders when the participant refused to administer a shock including saying the pp wouldn’t be responsible.
Found all participants went up to 300V and 2/3 went up to 450V showing that the vast majority of participants were prepared
to give lethal electric shocks to a confederate when told to by legitimate authority figure.
