Social influence Flashcards
define conformity
- sticking to the social norms amd unwritten rules of society
- doing what you think is expected of you
- for example doing the same actions or carrying out the same behaviours as the majority of people in your community
who is Asch and what did he suggest (types of social influence)
suggested the idea of normative social influence and informational social influence
describe asch’s baseline procedure
- aimed to asses to what extent people will conform even where the answer is certain
- 123 american men individually tested in group with other confederates
- asked to state which line was the same length as the standard line
- 1 of 3 lines were the same and the others were obviously different lengths
- had to say their answer out loud
- naive participant was sat after most of confederates
- confederates instructed to give wrong answers
describe asch’s baseline findings
- on average the genuine participants agreed with the confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time
- there were individual differences; 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer
state the 3 variables investigated by asch
- group size
- unanimity
- task difficulty
explain the variable of group size in asch’s experiment
- he varied the number of confederates from 1 - 15
- curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
- conformity increased with group size but only up to a point
- suggests most people are sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinions
explain the variable of unanimity in asch’s experiment
- introduced a confederate who gave different answers to the other confederates
- in one variation this confederate have the right answer and in another variation he gave a different answer (still wrong but different to the other confederates)
- genuine naive participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
- rate of conformity decreased to less than a quarter than baseline study
- this was even truer when they disagreed with the genuine participant
- suggests influence of the majority depends on it being unanimous
explain the variable of task difficulty in asch’s experiment
- increased difficulty of line judging task by making lines more similar in length
- conformity increases with task difficulty
- unclear to the participants what the right answer is so they look to other people for guidance and assume they are right and you are wrong
give 3 limitation evaluation points for asch’s research
artificial situation and task
- participants knew they were in a research study and may have done what they thought was expected ( demand characteristics)
- groups and situation were not like that in everyday life (Susan Fiske 2014)
- findings don’t generalise to real world situations
limited application
- all participants were american men
woman may be more conformist because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Neto 1995)
- US is individualist culture so conformity rates will be higher than collectivist cultures
- findings tell us little about conformity in women and other cultures
ethical issues
- the participants were deceived
- didn’t know there were confederates
give one strength evaluation point for asch’s research
research support
- todd lucas (2006) asked their participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems
- participants given answers from three other students (not real)
- participants conformed and agreed with wrong answers more often when the problems were harder
- shows asch was correct in claiming task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity
counter point
- however lucas’s study found that conformity is more complex than asch suggested
- participants with high maths confidence conformed less on hard task
- shows an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
state the 3 types of conformity
- internalisation
- identification
- compliance
define internalisation
- genuinely accepts group norms
private and public change of opinions/ behaviour - change is usually permanent because attitudes have been internalised, part if the way they think
- change of opinions/ behaviours happens even in the absence of other group members
define identification
- sometimes conform to opinions/ behaviours of group because there is something about that group you value
- identify with the group so want to be part of it
- publicly change opinions/ behaviour to be accepted by the group, even if we don’t privately agree with what the group stands for
define compliance
- simply going along with others in public
- not changing personal opinion/ behaviour
- results in only a superficial change
particular opinion/ behaviour stops as soon as group pressure stops
state the 2 explanations for conformity
- informational social influence
- normative social influence
