Social Influence Flashcards
Sherif studied social influence using what phenomenon?
The Autokinetic effect
- These effects occur when there is a point source of light in a dark room and the light seems to move even if it is stationary
- This is because your body is moving, your head is moving and your eyes are moving.
Festinger’s theory of social comparison processes assumes that we seek to do what, how, and when?
This theory states that we want to evaluate ourselves and our beliefs about external reality.
- If objective criteria are available we use them.
- If not, we look to others who are similar.
What was different about the kind of stimuli used by Asch in comparison to that used by Sherif?
Compared to Sherif, Asch used stimuli that made their social influence experiment ambiguous.
In the Asch experiment, when did subjects give their answers?
When they were alone
- When they were alone, they gave the correct answers.
- When they gave their answers with a group of people, they often got it wrong and went with the group answer
What kind of errors did subjects make, and how often did they make them?
Errors about whether they did or didn’t give the right answer
- On some of the trials, everyone gave the correct answer, but on other trials, the others present
(who were confederates) all gave the wrong answer.- 32% of the time the subject went along with the group and gave the wrong answer.
- When he ran the experiment with six confederates and two subjects, the subjects gave 10% wrong answers
What was most important about the group that led to this effect?
What was important was the unanimity of the group, the fact that they all agreed.
What effect did the size of the group have?
A larger group size did not matter however he found that once you were outnumbered two against one, there was the full effect.
What happened when the situation was reversed? This indicates the importance of what?
- When it was reversed and the confederates gave the wrong answer, the others laughed and wondered what was wrong with him.
- This indicates the importance of social support.
When subjects were the lone dissenter, many questioned what? What did others do?
- When the person was alone and the rest of the group was unanimous, Asch asked subjects how they felt.
- Some of them questioned their judgment.
- Others felt that they were right, but went along with the group anyway and gave the wrong answer.
What does Kelman call each of his 3 processes of Social Influence?
(C. Id. In. )
Kelman suggests that there are three processes of Social Influence:
- Compliance
- Identification
- Internalization
What is important in accepting influence in each of Kelman’s process?
- For compliance, what is important in accepting influence is to achieve rewards or avoid punishments
- For identification, what is important in accepting influence is your identification with the person or group
- For internalization, what is important in accepting influence is that it is consistent with your values
How does surveillance relate to Kelman’s processes?
Kelman notes that surveillance by the influence agent is important for compliance, but not for identification or internalization.
What does it mean to say that an authority is legitimate?
Legitimate means that the person has the socially defined right to tell you what to do.
- But that authority is usually limited to certain kinds of things the person can tell you to do.
What cover story did Milgram use?
He stated that he was looking for volunteers for an experiment to study the effects of punishment on learning
What did psychiatrists predict about obedience in the Milgram experiment?
a. Were their predictions confirmed?
They predicted that 1/10th of 1% would obey fully.
a. No their predictions were not confirmed.
