Social Influence Flashcards
3 types of conformity
compliance - conforming to majority but not really agreeing
identification- conforming to expectation of social role
internalization - public behaviour and private beliefs changed
Normative influence
conforming because everyone else is ‘the norm’
Informational influence
conforming because you believe the other person has the right information
Asch Procedure
line judgement task , Ps were asked to identify which two lines looked most similar in a room full of confederates giving the wrong answer
Asch Results
75% conformed at least once
Pro and Con of Asch
- repeated easily - adds validity
- deception - ethical issue
4 Factors influencing conformity
size of group
nature of response
task difficulty
presence of a dissenter
Perrin and Spencer ( Asch replication)
Used engineering students and found conformity was lower as more confident in decision making
Eagly and Carli ( Asch replication)
Women showed higher conformity rates as they don’t like group conflict whereas men are expected to be assertive
Stanford Prison Proc
Mock prison , Ps were either assigned to guard or prisoner
Day 2 - prisoners revolted, guards harassed prisoners
Day 6- experiment ended as prisoners were having psychological harm
Milgram was influenced by
trial of adolf Aichman , a Nazi soldier whose defnense for killing someone was he was following orders
Milgram proc
40 ps told to deliver shocks to a learner if gave wrong answer with increasing intensities
- experimenter in same room giving prompts that were scripted
- Milgram was watching from a two way mirror
MIlgram results
65% shocked to max voltage
Milgram ( office building %)
48%
Milgram ( learner in same room %)
40%
Milgram ( P’s had to place learner hand on electric plate %)
30%
Milgram ( remote instructions %)
23%
agentic state
person behaves as if they are an agent of someone else - individuals allow someone else to direct their behaviour
autonomous state
someone acting on their own accord and take responsibility for the consequence
binding factors
factors that result in you going ahead to do something that you know you shouldn’t.
moral strain
when we obey an order than goes against our conscience.
agentic shift
shift from autonomous to agentic state
happened in Milgram’s
Milgram ( Milkman giving instruc %)
14%
3 situational factors affecting obedience
proximity, location , uniform
3 factors causing agentic shift
insistence of authority
pressure of location
unwillingness to disrupt
Authoritarian personality
obedient to higher status but hostile to lower status
caused by strict parents as learnt to do as told
Adorno F Scale
Fascist scale - interested as to why so many Nazis followed orders
series of questions - quite directional as all worded in the same way
locus of control
extent to which you believe you are in control of your life
Internal LoC
things happen due to personal choices
External LoC
things happen due to fate
Cultural differences in LoC
individualist have an internal loc
collectivist have an external loc
japanese have higher conformity rates than americans
Conversion
process where majority adopt minority view point
Cryptoamnesia
new belief takes place but no concious understanding of when and how
minority influence
- a minority rejects the established norm of the majority of group members
- they persuades the majority to move to the position of the minority
Snowball effect
minority view slowly becomes adopted by majority so change occurs
minority influence - commitment
some minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause
minority influence -flexibility
the minorirty have to change slightly to not seem unreasonable.
augmentation principle
the minority having an effective message which creates conflict in the majority’s mind
minority influence - consistency
over time, consistency in the minority’s view increases the amount of interest.
3 Factors affecting minority influence
consistency, commitment , flexibility
Moscovio et al - Minority influence proc
192 females split into 6 groups ( 2 confeds a group)
control group - no confeds
asked to identify colour of 36 blue slides
Inconsistent confeds identified half blue , half green
Consistent confeds identified all green
Moscovio results
consistent confed - 8.2% idnetified atleast 1 slide as being green
inconsistent confed - 1% identified atleast 1 slide as being green
Latence and wolf social impact theory
people will change behaviour if under enough pressure to do so
3 Factors affecting social impact
Immediacy - how close problem is to you
Numbers - how many are applying pressure
Strength- consistency and strength of message
social support - reason for resistance to conformity
the presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others do the smae
milgram - eg of social support dropping conformity
presence of a disobedient confederate in Milgram’s study dropped conformity from 65% to 10%
two reasons for resistance to social influence
- social support
- locus of control ( internal)
evidence of locus of control having an effect of social influence - Holland
repeated Milgram’s test and found that 37% of people with an internal LOC didn’t shock to full voltage whereas only 23% of people with an external LOC didn’t.
Asch - variation of group size result
3 more confederates who agreed with wrong answer rose the rate by 31.8%
5 processes of social change
1- drawing attention
2- consistency
3- deeper processing
4 - augmentation principle
5 - snow ball effect
how obedience can bring about social change
by implementing laws , no smoking inside
A03 - social change - evidence
real life evidence - suffragette movement
followed the processes of social change
A03 - social change - eg applications
COVID - synchronic and diachronic consistency about same message going out in every briefing
A03- Research support for informational social influence
Lucas et al - asked students to complete a sequence of maths problems , higher conformity to wrong answers when the questions were more difficult and was most true for students who rated their maths ability as poor
A03 - individual differences in normative social influence
people have differing concerns about being liked and some people have greater need for affiliation and they are more likely to conform
A03 - normative social influence - Asch variation
when asch asked people to write answers instead of saying them aloud , conformity dropped to 12.5% this shows effect of normative social influence
A03 - Asch sample size
only tested US men
individualistic culture , when this was repeated in collectivist cultures such as japan , conformity levels were higher
A03 - zimbardo - control of variables
had control over variables and patients , only emotionally stable ps were selected this ruled out individual personality differences as a variable
A03 - Zimbardo - lack of realism
argument that ps were purely acting to the role of the stereotype rather than conforming
however 90% of prisoners had conversations about prison life which contradicts this
A03 - zimbardo - over exaggeration
only one third of the guards behaved aggressively all the others were keen to abide by the rules , zimbardo has been accused of over stating the conformity
A03 - Milgram - low internal validity
Orne and Holland argue that ps behaved the way they did as they knew the set up was fake meaning the study lacked internal validity
A03 - milgram - external validity
milgram argued that the lab conditions reflected wider authority relationships , 21 out of 22 nurses obey doctors so has other applications
A03 - milgram - cross cultural
Miranda et al did milgrams study on spanish students both male and female and found obedience rates were over 90% - however both are western cultures
A03 - legitimacy of authority support
Blass and Schmitt showed students the video of Milgram’s study and asked who was to blame for the shocks , students said the experimenter due to legitimate authority
A03 - agentic shift - limited explanation
doesn’t explain why some people don’t obey showing agentic shift can only account for some situations
A03 - Authoratrian personality - Milgram and Elms
conducted a study on the obedient participants and found that they scored highly on the F scale
however this may be a third variable and not the direct cause
A03 - Authoratrian personality - limited explanation
an individual personality makes it difficult to explain obedience for a whole population , unlikley that all Nazis had an authoritarian personality
A03 - F scale - political bias
measures the tendency in an extreme right wing ideology meaning it is a politically biased interpretation so can’t account for whole population
A03 - F scale - methodological issues
all the questions are worded in the same direction so the answers could be a result of acquiescence bias
A03 - Social support - Allen and Levine
found that conformity in Aschs study reduced with the presence of a dissenter , even when they were wearing thick rimmed glasses which showed they weren’t in a position to judge the length of the line
A03 - social support - Gamson
replicated milgrams study but in groups of people , and 88% of participants rebelled
A03 - locus of control - situational variables
LOC only becomes apparent in situations that we are not familiar with however situations with previous experience then the memory of these will be more important
synchronic consistency
everyone is saying the same thing
diachronic consistency
they’ve been saying the same thing for a while
A03 - minority influence- limited explanation
change is slow and often delayed , the change in attitudes about smoking and drink driving took years to come about so is minority influence actually an explanation
A03 - minority influence - deeper proecessing?
Mackie argues that majority influence creates deeper processing as when people realise a large group don’t agree with their views this will lead to deeper processing
