Social Influence Flashcards
Types of conformity
Difficulties in distinguishing between compliance and internalisation: Compliance is when a person publicly agrees with the majority but disagrees with them in private. When a person who agrees with the group in public and private has internalised views.
Research support for normative influence: Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) found adolescents exposed to the simple message that the majority of their age did not smoke were subsequently less likely to take up smoking. Normative influence has also been used successfully to manipulate people to behave more responsibly when it comes to energy conservation. Schultz et al (2008) found that hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day (rather than requiring fresh towels) reduce their own towel use by 25%. These studies support the claim that people shape their behaviour out of a desire to fit in with their reference group.
Research support for information influence: Wittenbrink and Henley (1996) found that participants exposed to negative information about African Americans later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual. Research has also shown how it can shape political opinion. Fein et al (2007) demonstrated how judgements of candidate performance in US presidential debates could be influenced by knowledge of others reactions. Participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of fellow participants on screen during debate. This produced large shifts in participants judgements of candidates performance.
Variables affecting conformity
Variables affecting: group size, unanimity of majority, difficulty of task
Asch’s research may be a ’child of its time’: It is possible that Asch’s Findings are unique because the research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was high. In 1956, the US was in grip of McCarthyism, a strong Anti-Communist period when people were scared to go against the majority and so more likely to conform. Perrin and Spencer attempted to repeat Asch’s study in the UK in the 1980s using students who are studying science and engineering. In their initial study they obtained only one conforming response out of a total of 396 trials where a majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer. In a subsequent study, they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as the confederates, this time they found similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch back in the 1950s. This confirmed conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high.
Problems with determining the effect of group size: Bond (2005) suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have used only a limited range of majority sizes. Investigators were quick to accept Asch’s conclusion that a majority size of three was a sufficient number for maximum influence and therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used three as the majority size. Bond points out that no studies other than Asch have used a majority size greater than nine, and in other studies of conformity the range of majority sizes used is much narrower, typically between two and four. This suggests we know little about the effect of a larger majority size on conformity levels.
Independent behaviour rather than comformity: we should remember only 1/3 of trials were the majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer produced a conforming response. In other words in 2/3 of these trials the participants stuck to their original judgement despite being faced with an overwhelming majority expressing a different view. Asch believed that rather than showing human beings to be overly conformist, his study demonstrated a commendable tendency for participants to stick to what they believed to be the correct judegement.
Conformity to social roles (Zimbardo Prison Experiment)
Conformity to roles is not automatic: Zimbardo believed the guards drift into sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequences of them embracing their role, which in turn suppressed their ability to engage with the fact that what they were doing was too wrong. However, in the SPE, guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic, to for a few, being ‘good guards’. These guards did not degrade or harass the prisoners, and even did small favours for them. Hallam and Reicher (2012) argue that this shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role.
The problem of demand characteristics: Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners was not due to their response to a ‘compelling prison environment’ but rather it was a response to powerful demand characteristics of a study that let research participants guess what experimenters expect or want them to behave like. Banuazizi and Movahedi presented some of the details of SPE experimental procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The vast majority of these students correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, they predicted the guards would act in a hostile, domineering way and prisoners would react in a passive way.
Ethical?: Zimbardo’s study was considered ethical because it followed the guidelines of the Stanford university ethics committee that had approved it. These participants told in advance their usual rights would be suspended, so no deception. However, Zimbardo acknowledges perhaps the study should have been stopped earlier as many were experiencing emotional distress. He attempted to make amends for this by carrying out debriefing sessions for several years afterwards and concluded there was no lasting negative effects. Reicher and Haslams study used the same basic set up as Zimbardo, but took greater steps to minimise potential harm. Their intention was to create a situation that was harsh and testing, but not harmful.
Variables affecting obedience (Milgram)
Ethical issues: Milgram’s study was criticised by other psychologists such as Diana Baumrind (1964) for his apparent lack of concern for the well—being of his participants. Milgram deprived his participants, by telling them they were involved in a study on the effects punishment on learning, rather than telling them the true purpose of the study. This made it impossible for participants to make an informed decision before giving their consent to participate in the study. Part of giving informed consent is allowing participants the right to withdraw if at any point they change their mind about participating. Although Milgram claimed that participants were free to leave at any time.
Internal Validity: a lack of realism: Orne and Holland (1968) claimed that participants in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know that the true purpose of the study may be disguised. In Milgram’s study, despite the fact that the learner cried out in pain, the experimenter remained cool and distant. This led the participant to suppose that the ‘victim’ could not really be suffering any real harm. Perry (2012) discovered that many of Milgram’s participants had been sceptical at the time about wether the shocks were real.
Individual differences: the influence of gender: Milgram underestimated the importance of individual differences in obedience. A commonly held assumption is that women would be more susceptible to social influence that men (Eagly, 1978), therefore we might expect to find gender differences in obedience. Milgram did have one condition in which the participants were female. Although he found that the self-reported tension in females who went to the maximum shock level was significantly higher than it was for males, their rate of obedience was exactly the same as for males in a comparable condition. Blass (1999) studied nine other replications of Milgram’s study, which also had male and female participants. Consistent with Milgram’s own findings, eight out of nine found no evidence of any gender roles in obedience.
Agentic state and legitimacy of authority
The agentic state explanation and real-life obedience: Milgram claimed people shift back and forth between the autonomous state and agentic state. However, this idea of rapidly shifting states fails to explain the very gradual and irreversible transition that Lifton (1986) found in his study of German doctors working at Auschwitz. Lifton found these doctors had changed from ordinary medical professionals, concerned only with welfare, to men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on the helpless prisoners. Staub (1989) suggests that rather than agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many Holocaust perpetrators, it is the experience of carrying out acts of evil over a long time that changes how individuals think and behave.
The legitimate authority explanation and real-life obedience: Although there are positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority (responding to a police officer in an emergency, it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as a basis for justifying the harming of others. If people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel their own moral value is relevant to their conduct. As a consequence, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, people are alarmingly willing to do so.
Resistance to social influence
Social support: the importance of the response order: Allen and Levine (1969) studied wether the response position of the person providing social support made any difference to a participant resisting the majority. In one condition, a confederate answered first, giving the right answer, while other confederates all gave the same wrong answer. The real participant always answered fifth (last). In the second condition, the confederate answered fourth, after other confederates. Support was significantly more effective in position 1 than in position 4. The researchers suggests that a correct first answer in confirming the participants own judgement, produces an initial commitment to the correct response that endures even though other group members disagree.
Social support, support may not have to be valid to be effective: Allen and Levine (1971) looked at wether social support that was not particularly valid would also be effective in helping participants resist conformity. In one condition, the confederate providing the support wore glasses with very thick lenses. Therefore he provided invalid social support, given that this was a test of visual discrimination. In the second, the supporter had normal vision, i.e. he provided valid social support. Both conditions reduced the amount of conformity, but the valid social supporter had much more impact, showing that as an ally is helpful in resisting conformity, but more so if they are perceived as offering valid social support.
Locus of control is related to normative but not informational influence: Spector (1983) measured LOC and predisposition to normative and informational influence in 157 undergraduate students. He found a significant correlation between LOC and predisposition to normative social influence, with externals more likely to conform to this form of influence than internals. However, no relationship was found for predisposition to informational social influence, with LOC not appearing to be a significant factor in this type of conformity.
Locus of control: people are more external than they used to be: Meta-analysis by Twenge et al (2004) found young Americans increasingly believed that there fate was determined more by luck And powerful others rather than their own actions. In the studies used for this analysis, researchers found LOC scores had become substantially more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002.
Social influence processes in social change
Social change through minority influence may be very gradual: history challenge is the view that minorities such as the suffragettes can bring about social change quickly. Because there is a strong tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position, groups are more likely to maintain the status quo Rather than engage in social change. The influence of a minority, therefore, is frequently more latent them direct (creates the potential for change rather than actual social change).
Being perceived as deviant limits influence of minorities: The potential for minorities to influence social change is often limited because they are seen as deviant in the eyes of the majority. Members of the majority may avoid aligning themselves with the minority position because they do not want to be seen as deviant themselves. The message of the minority would then have very little impact because the focus of the majorities attention would be The source of the message rather (deviant minority``0 than the message itself. In trying to bring about social change, minorities says the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviant and also making people directly embrace their position.
Limits of social norms approach: While social norms interventions have shown positive results in a number of different settings (e.g reducing heavy drinking among students and teenage smoking) They also have their limitations. A particular problem is that not all social norms interventions have lead to social change. Dejong et al (2009) Tested the effectiveness of social norms marketing campaigns to drive down alcohol use among students Across 14 different college sites. Surveys were conducted by post at the beginning of the study and three years after the campaign had finished. Despite receiving normative information that corrected misperceptions Of subjective drinking norms, students in the social norms conditions did not show lower perceptions of student drinking levels, Nor did they report lower self-reported alcohol consumption as a result of the campaign.
Authoritarian personality
Research evidence for authoritarianism/ obedience link
Although several studies have found that authoritarian participants are more obedient (Elms and Milgram, 1966 Altemeyer (1981), there has been a good deal of suspicion about whether these participants really believed they were giving electric shocks. Dambrun and Vatine (2010) overcame this problem by using an immersive virtual environment where an actor taking the role of the learner was filmed, recorded and displayed on a computer screen. Participants were informed that the experiment was a simulation and that the shocks and the victim’s reactions were not real, but stimulated. Despite this, participants still tended to respond as if the situation was real, and there was a clear and significant correlation between participants’ RWA scores (assessed before the experiment) and the maximum voltage shock administered to the victim. In other words, participants who displayed higher levels of RWA were the ones who obeyed the most, confirming the link between authoritarianism and obedience.
Social context is more important
Although Milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and disobedience, he did not believe evidence for this was particularly strong. Milgram showed variations in social context of the study (e.g proximity of victim, location, presence of disobedient peers) were the primary cause of differences in participants levels of obedience, not variations in personality. He believed the specific social situation participants found themselves in caused them to obey or resist regardless of their personalities. Relying on an explanation of obedience based purely on authoritarianism lacks flexibility to account for these variations.
Differences between authoritarian and obedient participants
Elms and Milgram’s research also presented some important characteristics in authoritarian and obedient participants. Elms and milgram asked participants about their upbringing, many of the fully obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with their parents, rather than having grown up in the overly strict family environment associated with the authoritarian personality. It also seems implausible, therefore, given the large number of participants who were fully obedient in Milgram’s study that the vast majority would have grown up in a harsh environment with a punitive father.
Minority influence
Research support for flexibility
Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987) provided support for the role of flexibility in a simulated jury situation. Group members discussed compensation to be paid to someone in a ski lift accident. When a confederate put forward an alternative point of view and refused to change his position, this had no effect on other group members. A confederate who comprised, and showed some degree of shift towards the majority, did exert an influence on the rest of the group. However, influence was only evident in those who shifted late in negotiations (showing flexibility ) rather than those who shifted earlier. This suggests flexibility is only effective at changing majority opinion in certain circumstances.
Real value of minority influence
Nemeth (2010) argues that dissent, in the form of minority opinion ‘opens’ the mind. As a result of exposure to a minority position, people search for information, consider more options, makes better decisions and are more creative. Dissenters liberate people to say what they believe and they stimulate divergent and creative thought even when they are wrong. The view is supported by the work of Van Dyne and Saavedra (1996) who studied the role of dissent in work groups, finding that groups had improved decision quality when exposed to a minority perspective.
Mackie (1987) argues that the views of the minority do not necessarily lead to greater processing, but rather it is the majority who are more likely to create greater message processing. We tend to believe majority of group members share similar beliefs to ours. If the majority express a different view from the one we hold, we must consider it carefully to understand why this is the case. By contrast, people tend not to waste time trying to process why a minority’s message is different; therefore it tends to be less, rather than more influential.
