social influence Flashcards
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Identification
Compliance
Internalisation
What is internalisation?
Going along with the majority and their views. Their views become your views.
What is compliance ?
Going along with the majority view in public but not sharing their views.
You go along with their views to fit in as you fear being rejected.
What is identification ?
Conforming to what is expected of you and your social role. Changing your behaviour to fit a specific role in society or intimate a role model
What are the two types of social influence?
Normative social influence
Informational social influence
APFC of Sheriff’s experiment into the effects of informational social influence
A- wanted to see whether people were influenced by others when carrying out an ambiguous task
P- Labatory experiment using repeated measures.
Sheriff used a visual illusion of a stationary dot which appears to move.
First. ppts were asked indviudally how far they thought they light had moved.
They were then put into groups of 3 where each of them discussed their estimate.
after this the pts were then individually asked their estimation.
F- The guesses made when alone varied a lot but when they made guesses in the presence of others the estimates were much closer to each other. When asked their own estimate when alone at the end most had changed from their original guess to the group guess.
C- The ppts estimates were influenced by the estimates of others. Ppts used information from others to from their estimate. This is informational social influence
Evaluation of Sheriff
Strength- the experiment can be easily replicated due to it being a lab experiment which means any variables are controlled.
Strength- Due to lab experiment, cause and effect can be established.
Weakness- The study lacks ecological validity. Estimating how far a light had moved is an artificial task meaning it’s not often carried out in normal life.
Weakness- The study lacks population validity. The sample that was used was made up of only white males. These results don’t represent the entire population meaning it is hard to generalise them to everyone
APFC of Asch’s research into the effects of normative social influence
A- wanted to see whether people would conform to a majorities incorrect answer in an unambiguous task
P- A laboratory experiment using independent groups. Ppts were put into groups of 8 and asked to judge line lengths by saying out loud which line 1,2,3 matched the control line they were shown. there was only 1 real ppt in the group the rest were confederates. The real ppt was always sat either second to last or last so that they could hear others answers before theirs. Each ppt carried out 18 trails in 12 of these the confederates all gave the same wrong answer. There was a control group were the ppt judged the line in isolation.
F- 75% OF ppts conformed and have the wrong answer at least once.
Ppts conformed to the majority 37% of the time.
In the control group, ppts got the answer wrong 0.7% of the time.
Some ppts admitted that they knew the answer was wring but agreed with others as they didn’t want to seem different.
C- the control group shows that it was an easy task to get right but that 37% of ppts answered incorrectly in the other group.
This suggests that the ppts conformed to the majority due to normative social influence
Evaluation of Asch’s line study
Strength- The effects of extraneous variables are minimised due to variables being controlled as the study was a lab experiment
Strength- Study can be easily replicated to see if you get the same results
Weakness- Study lacks ecological validity. As ppts weren’t in a natural setting the task did not replicate real life.
Weakness- Ethical implications. The ppts were deceived.
What situational factors did Asch study?
1- Group size
2- Unanimity/ social support
3- Task difficulty
How does group size effect conformity?
When the size of the group was changed so that there was only two confederates, the levels of conformity dropped to only 14%
When the amount of confederates increased to 3 the conformity levels increased to 32%.
Group size matters to a certain extent as the smaller the group the easier it is to not conform but influence does not keep increasing when group size does.
How does Unanimity/ social support effect conformity?
Asch found that when he changed the study so that one of the confederates agreed with the ppt the rate of conformity dropped to 5.5% as it was now easier to resist the pressure to conform
How does Task difficulty effect conformity?
Asch found that by making the task more difficult the levels of conformity rose as people are more likely to conform when they are less confident in their own knowledge
APFC of Zimbardo’s study into conforming to social roles
A- Wanted to see if people would conform to set social roles.
P- paid $15 a day
- had to do a personality test before
- responded to an advert, volunteers
- mostly students, all male
- all white middle class
- 10 guards, 11 prisoners
- zimbardo was prison superintendent]
- held in psychology basement at Stanford university
- prisoners arrested by real police, Palo Alto
- prisoners were dehumanised, smocks, numbers
- guards in military uniform, khaki, sunglasses
F– guards and prisoners accepted their roles
- guards became more sadistic
- de-individualisation as prisoners refer by numbers
- after 36 hours one prisoner released due mental stress
- 3 more prisoners also released due to metal stress
- prisoner revolt initially, hunger strikes
- 90% of prisoner conversations about prison life
- scheduled for 14 days. stopped after 6.
- guards became increasingly more aggressive
- all PP’s surprised by uncharacteristic behaviour shown
C-people conform to their social roles due to situational factors.
Evaluation of Zimbardo
Weakness- the environment was artificial environment which means that the results are had to generalise to other settings.
Weakness- There are many ethical issues within this study such as deception . The ppts were not told that they would be arrested from their homes . This could have caused the ppts psychological harm.
Weakness- There is observer bias within the study. Zimbardo was the one who ran the experiment and was involved throughout even revealing that he became to involved.
