Social Influence

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

When a person changes their attitude or behaviour due ro “real” or “imagined” group pressure

Question 2

What are the 3 levels of conformity?

Answer 2

Compliance
Identification
Internalisation

Question 3

What is compliance?

Answer 3

• A person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs
• This is usually a short term change
• Normative social influence
• Lowest level of conformity
• Strangers

Question 4

What is identification?

Answer 4

• The middle level of conformity
• A person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group they are identifying with
• This is usually a short term/temporary change
• Normative social influence

Question 5

What is internalisation?

Answer 5

• The deepest level of conformity
• Here a person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs
• This is usually a long-term change
• Informational social influence

Question 6

What is normative social influence?

Answer 6

• Wants to be liked and not rejected
• The need to be accepted by others and the best way to gain acceptance of others is to agree but not necessarily truly agree / believe

Question 7

What are individual differences that affect normative social influence?

Answer 7

nAffiliators - Those who are in greater need of affiliation and social approval. Therefore, they are more likely to conform due to normative social influence.

Question 8

What is informational social influence?

Answer 8

• For example, watching to see what cutlery to use in a restaurant
• People tend to believe the opinions they adopt as they are uncertain what to believe so look to the opinions of others and become converted
• Most likely to happen in a new situation that is ambiguous

Question 9

Outline research support for informative social influence

Answer 9

• Lucas et al - 2006
• Asked students to give answers to maths problems, which were easy or hard
• Conformity rose for the harder questions, especially in students who rated their mathematical ability as poor

Question 10

Outline Asch’s study on conformity (1951)

Answer 10

123 male US college students
1 participant and between 7 and 9 confederates in each room, who had agreed their answer prior
Participant was deceived - believed the confederates were real participants
The naive participant was always seated second from last
Each person had to say out loud which line was closest in length to the target line
There were 18 rounds, and incorrect answers were given on 12 of them (critical trials)
Unambiguous

Participants conformed to incorrect answers 37% of the time during critical trials
74% of participants conformed on at least 1 critical trial
People only make mistakes 1% of the time

Participants knew their answers were wrong when asked but wanted to fit in with the group - normative

Question 11

What were the three Asch variations?

Answer 11

Group size
Task difficulty
Unanimity

Question 12

What were Asch’s findings on how group size affects conformity levels?

Answer 12

Asch found that as he increased the size of the majority, conformity levels increased
- 1 confederate answering incorrectly on a question has 3% conformity
- 2 confederates answering incorrectly increased to 12.8% conformity
- 3 confederates answering incorrectly increased to 32% conformity
However, increasing the group size even further made no significant increases to he rate of conformity

Question 13

What were Asch’s findings on how unanimity affects conformity levels?

Answer 13

This is the extent that members of a majority agree with one another
- when one confederate would go against the incorrect answer and agree with the participant, conformity levels dropped from 32% to 5%
- when the confederate gave a different incorrect answer, conformity dropped to 9%

Question 14

What were Asch’s findings on how task difficulty affects conformity levels?

Answer 14

Asch did another variation where the answer was far more ambiguous
- conformity levels increased as they wanted to be right instead of fitting in
- went from normative si to informational si

Question 15

Why does Asch’s original research lack temporal validity?

Answer 15

1950’s America (McCarthyism) was a highly conformist time

Question 16

Outline Perrin and Spencer’s study on engineering students

Answer 16

1980
Asch variation done in the UK
Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials
Suggests education levels matters

Question 17

What were the findings of Bond and Smith’s conformity study (1996)

Answer 17

Asch’s study, but in collectivist cultures
Conformity was much higher

Question 18

Outline Zimbardo’s study on conformity to social roles

Answer 18

Aim:
To investigate how readily people would conform to prisoner and guard roles in the exercise that stimulated prison life

Method:
24 participants
All applicants were interviewed and those deemed most stable were accepted
Randomly assigned prisoner or guard
Prisoners were arrested from their house by real police
They were stripped and humiliated
Guards wore sunglasses, khakis, batons
Prisoners wore smoks (emasculating), flip flops, stockings on their heads and were given a number
Physical abuse wasn’t allowed

Results:
Prisoners became passive
Guards became aggressive
Within 5 days, 5 prisoners had to be released because showing extreme psychological disturbance
Experiment terminated after 6 days after prisoners were abused by guards

Conclusions:
The guards and prisoners conformed to the social roles they were expected to play. Both groups became dehumanised in the eyes of the other and the experiment supports the situation explanation of human behaviour.

Question 19

What are social roles?

Answer 19

The part people play as members of a social group
With each social role you adopt, your behaviour changes to fit the expectations both you and others have of that role.

Question 20

What is obedience?

Answer 20

Complying with the demands of an authority figure

Question 21

Outline Milgram’s obedience study (1963)

Answer 21

Aim:
To see the extent to which individuals will obey, even it it goes against their morals.

Procedure:
Volunteer sampling - 40 men, 20-40 age
One participant and one confederate were ‘randomly allocated’ position of teacher or learner
Participant was always teacher
If learner (confederate) got a question wrong, teacher would shock
Each shock increase in voltage by 15v, from 15 to 450 (fatal)
When pt refused to shock, the researcher would say a prompt to try and persuade them to shock, and prompts increased in intensity:
“Please continue”
“The experiment requires you to continue”
“It is absolutely essential that you continue”
“You have no other choice, you must go on”

Findings:
All participants went to 300 volts
12.5% stopped at 300 volts
65% continued until 450 volts
Participants showed signs of clear moral strain and tension, including sweating, trembling, biting their lips, groaning, and laughing
Three participants had full, blown uncontrollable seizures
84% said they were glad to have taken part

Conclusion:
Milgram showed that inhumane, immoral acts can be committed by normal, moral people. Its situational factors.

Question 22

What are the 3 situational variables to obedience?

Answer 22

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 23

Outline Milgram’s proximity variations

Answer 23

Learner and teacher in same room
40% went to 450 volts

Milgram gave instructions over the phone
20.5% went to 450

Teacher forced learner’s hand onto the plate
30% went to 450

Question 24

Outline Milgram’s location variation

Answer 24

Experiment was held in rundown office block
47.5%

Question 25

Outline Milgram’s uniform variation

Answer 25

Experimentor in lab coat was called away and replaced with confederate
20%

Question 26

Outline Milgram’s agentic state and shift variation

Answer 26

Participant was the experimenter
92.5%
Demonstrates the power of shifting responsibility, able to shock more due to feeling less responsible for their actions

Question 27

What are the situational explanations for obedience?

Answer 27

• Agentic state
• Legitimacy of authority

Question 28

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 28

Being aware of the consequences of one’s own actions and therefore taking voluntary control of one’s own behaviour. A person in an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions.

Question 29

What is the agentic state?

Answer 29

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure. This frees us from the demands of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure, for example the Nazis blindly following Hitler

Question 30

What are binding factors?

Answer 30

Things that will keep a person in an agentic state, despite the moral strain.
They include:
- gradual commitment
- fear of increasing anxiety by disobeying
- shifting responsibility

Question 31

What is the agentic shift?

Answer 31

Changing from being in an autonomous state to being in an agentic state, usually due to the presence of an authority figure

Question 32

What is an agent?

Answer 32

Someone who acts under the order of an authority figure

Question 33

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 33

We are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us. This authority is justified by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy, such as a teacher, parent, or police.

Hofling et al - Nurses were hold to administer a drug by an unknown doctor, and told to give a dose that was likely to cause harm to the patient. 21/22 nurses obeyed.

Question 34

What is destructive authority?

Answer 34

When people in positions of power manipulate their authority for dangerous, destructive, and sometimes devastating purposes (Hitler).

Question 35

What are the characteristics of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 35

• Rigid beliefs
• Intolerant of ambiguity
• Submissive and shows extreme respect to authority
• Dismissive of those of lower status / members of an out-group
• Conventional attitudes towards sex, race, and gender
• Believe we need strong, powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country, religion, and family
• Especially susceptible to obeying people in authority

Question 36

What are the origins of an authoritarian personality?

Answer 36

The authoritarian personality forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting.
Parenting style identified by Adorno:
- strict discipline
- expectation of absolute loyalty
- impossibly high standards
- severe criticism of perceived failings
- conditional love

• These experiences create resentment and hostility in the child, but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because of fear of reprisals
• These fears are displaced on others who are perceived to be weaker

Question 37

Outline Adorno et al’s research into the authoritarian personality

Answer 37

Aim:
To investigate the causes of the obedient personality

Procedure:
- 2000 white, middle class Americans
- they developed the potential for fascism scale (F-scale), which measured, among other things, unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

Findings:
- those who scored high identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the weak
- they were very conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect, deference, and servility to those of higher status
- there was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 38

What are situational factors?

Answer 38

Explanations that focus on the influences that stem from the environment in which the individual is found.

Question 39

What are dispositional factors?

Answer 39

Internal, innate characteristics like personality.

Question 40

What is resistance to social influence?

Answer 40

The ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or obey an authority figure. This ability to withstand social pressure is influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.

Question 41

What are the factors affecting resistance to social influence?

Answer 41

• Social support
• Locus of control

Question 42

Outline social support

Answer 42

• Situational factor
  Conformity:
• Support from an ally can help someone build their confidence and resist conformity in a peer pressure situation
• Helps challenge NSI
• Asch -> conformity dropped to 5% when someone else agreed with the participant, and to 9% when someone else disagreed with the majority by saying a different answer to the pt and majority
  Obedience:
• When there is support there is no longer fear of ridicule and are more likely to disobey orders as they don’t feel independent in their actions
• Rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% in a Milgram replication with another confederate who disobeyed

Question 43

Outline locus of control

Answer 43

• Rotter (1966)
• Dispositional factor
• Internals believe the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves
• Externals believe what happens is out of their control
• Internals are more likely to be able to resist pressure to conform or obey

Question 44

What is an internal locus of control?

Answer 44

• The belief that what happens in their life is largely due to their own behaviour
• Tend to be more self-confident and achievement oriented
• Often have higher intelligence and less need for social approval
• More likely to resist pressures to conform and obey

Question 45

What is an external locus of control?

Answer 45

• Believes what happens to them is due to external factors such as fate, luck, religion.
• Do not have complete control over their life
• More likely to succumb to pressure to conform and obey

Question 46

What are other factors affecting resistance to social influence?

Answer 46

Systematic processing: less likely to obey if they are given time to consider the consequences

Morality: internal belief of what is right and wrong way overpower idea of authority

Personality: combination of past experiences and characteristics forming an individuals nature

Question 47

What is minority influence?

Answer 47

When a small group changes the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours of a majority group. This often leads to internalisation or conversion, in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours.

Suffragette movement
Civil rights movement in the US

Question 48

Outline Moscovici et al’s study in relation to minority influence

Answer 48

• 1969
• Minority influence in a study with six people who were asked to identify the colour of 36 slides
• All the slides were blue
• 2 confederates always said green, said green 2/3 of the time, or there were no confederates in the group
• In the always category participants gave the same wrong answer in 8.42% of the trials and 32% gave the same answer as the minority on at least one trial
• In the 2/3 of the time group 1.25% gave the wrong answer
• With no confederates, 0.25% gave the wrong answer

Question 49

What are the factors affecting the success of minority influence?

Answer 49

Consistency
Flexibility
Commitment

Question 50

Outline the role of consistency in minority influence

Answer 50

Diachronic - maintaining same beliefs over a long period of time
Synchronic - all members of the same minority are sharing the same belief

A minority must be stable in their opinion over time and there must be agreement among the members of the minority

Makes social influence more effective because it draws attention to the idea

Nelson Mandela

Question 51

Outline the role of commitment in minority influence

Answer 51

A minority must be dedicated to their cause. The greater their dedication, the greater the influence.

Augmentation principle: When members of a minority will do something extreme/risky to draw attention to the group.

Rosa Parks → arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus for a white man

Question 52

Outline the role of flexibility in minority influence

Answer 52

Although a minority must be consistent, they must show willingness to compromise when expressing their opinions. Being extremely consistent and repeating the same arguments and behaviours again and again can be seen as rigid, which can be off-putting to the majority. Members of the minority need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments.

Nemeth (1986):
When inflexible, the minority had little to no effect
When flexible, the majority was much more likely compromise.

Question 53

What is the snowball effect?

Answer 53

Minority influence initially has a relatively small effect, but then spreads more widely until it eventually leads to large scale social change.

Question 54

What is social cryptomnesia?

Answer 54

People have a memory that change has occurred but cannot remember how it has happened.

Question 55

What is social change?

Answer 55

This happens when entire societies adopt new attitudes and beliefs.

Question 56

What are the stages of social change?

Answer 56

1. Drawing attention to an issue through social proof
2. Consistency
3. Deeper processing of the issue by the majority
4. Augmentation principle → when people take risks and make sacrifices for their cause
5. Snowball effect
6. Social cryptomnesia

Question 57

What are the three ways social change can occur?

Answer 57

Minority influence:
1. Drawing attention to an issue through social proof
2. Consistency
3. Deeper processing of the issue by the majority
4. Augmentation principle → when people take risks and make sacrifices for their cause
5. Snowball effect
6. Social cryptomnesia

Conformity:
- Asch highlighted the importance of dissent in one of his variations, in which one Confederate gave correct answers throughout the procedure
- This broke the power of the majority, encouraging others to do likewise
- Such dissent has the potential to ultimately lead to social change
- A different approach is being used by environmental and health campaigns, which exploit conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence
- They do this by providing information about what others are doing:
-> reducing letter by printing normative message on litter bins, such as ‘bin it - others do’
-> preventing young people from taking up smoking by telling them that ‘most other young people do not smoke’
- In other words, social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing

Obedience:
- Milgram’s research demonstrates the importance of disobedient role models
- In the variation where a confederate teacher refuses to give shocks to the learner, the rate of obedience in the genuine participants plummeted
- Zimbardo suggested how obedience can be used to create social change through the process of gradual commitment
- Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes much more difficult to resist a bigger one
- People essentially ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour

Question 58

Evaluate types and explanations of conformity

Answer 58

One strength of normative social influence is that there is evidence to support it as an explanation of conformity. Evidence comes from Asch’s study, where participants conformed and gave the wrong answer when they had to speak it because they were afraid of disapproval from the rest of the group. When they wrote the answers down, conformity fell to 12.5% because there was no normative group pressure. This shows that at least some conformity is due to a desire not to be rejected by the group.

A strength of informational social influence is that there is research evidence to support it as an explanation of conformity. Lucas et al found that when maths problems were difficult, more participants conformed to give the incorrect answer. This is because the situation became ambiguous and they did not want to be wrong, so they believed others were correct. This shows that informational social influence is a valid explanation because the results are as informational social influence would predict. However, it is often difficult to know whether it is normative social influence or informational social influence that is the cause.

A limitation is that normative social influence does not predict conformity in every case. Some people have a strong need for affiliation, which is being liked by others. They tend to be called nAffiliators and are found to be more likely to conform. This shows that normative social influence underlies conformity for some people more than others, and therefore this one general theory of situational pressures cannot fully explain individual differences in conformity.

A limitation is it is difficult to distinguish between compliance and internalisation. The relationship between compliance and internalisation is complicated because of difficulties in knowing when it is actually taking place. For example, it is assumed that a person who publicly agrees with the majority yet disagrees with them in private must be demonstrating compliance rather than internalisation. However, it is also possible that acceptance of the groups views has occurred in public yet dissipates later when in private. This could be because they have forgotten information given by the group or because they have received new information that changes their mind. This demonstrates the difficulty in determining what is and what is not simple compliance rather than internalisation.

Question 59

Evaluate Asch’s research

Answer 59

One issue with Asch’s research is that it is gender and culture biased, because it lacks population validity. Asch’s sample consisted of 123 male college students from America. This means the study is alpha biased, as it assumes the findings on conformity from American males can be generalised to women and other cultures, minimising differences. This matters because we are unable to generalise the results to females or collectivist cultures, as we do not know if they would have behaved in a similar way. Other research suggests that women are more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted than men. Also, similar studies conducted in collectivist cultures such as China have found that conformity rates are even higher than Asch’s results. This may be because such cultures are more oriented to group needs. This shows that Asch’s findings may only apply to American men as he didn’t take gender or culture into account.

A limitation of Asch’s conformity research is that the results may have been unique to one culture and one era - a child of its time due to McCarthyism. In 1956, the US was in the grip of McCarthyism, a strong anti-Communist period when people were scared to go against the majority and so much more likely to conform. Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK and only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials. This was maybe because engineering students felt more confident with the task and so were less conformist. This is a limitation of Asch’s study as it means that the effect is not consistent across situations and may not be a consistent across time so therefore may not be a fundamental feature of human behaviour.

A limitation of Asch’s study is the confederates may have been unconvincing. It would’ve been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer, which is something that would pose serious problems for the validity of the study. Mori and Arai overcame the confederate problem by using a technique where participants wore glasses with special polarising filters. Three participants in each group wore identical glasses and a fourth wore a different set with a different filter. This meant that each participant viewed the same stimuli, but one participant saw them differently, causing them to judge that a different comparison line matched the standard line. For female participants, although not male participants, the results closely match those of the original Asch study. This suggests that the confederate in the original study had acted convincingly, reinforcing the validity of Asch‘s findings. However, the fact that the male results were different to female reiterates the fact that there may be gender differences in conformity.

• lab experiment so variables were controlled -> no extraneous variables
• only 0.7% error in control group so measured raw conformity

Question 60

Evaluate conformity to social roles

Answer 60

A limitation of research into conformity to social roles is Haslam and Reicher challenge Zimbardo‘s belief that conformity to social roles is automatic. They pointed out that in the Stanford prison experiment guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic to there being a few good guards who did not degrade or harass the prisoners and even did small favours for them. Haslam and Reicher argue that this shows that the guards choose how to behave rather than blindly conforming to their social role, as suggested by Zimbardo.

A limitation of Zimbardo study as it was unethical. There was a lack of informed consent which resulted in the prisoners suffering psychologically. From the very beginning, the participants showed signs of anxiety and psychological harm and they started acting like prisoners. The writings of the study suggests that the prisoners actually internalised their situation, believing they were supposed to be there and be prisoners, both in group settings and in private, which shows the extent of the psychological harm. However, Zimbardo carried out extensive group and individual debriefing sessions and the participants returned post experimental questionnaires several weeks, several months and then at yearly interviews. They showed no lasting effects of the experiment, suggesting that whilst the participants may have suffered some short-term psychological damage whilst taking part, there was no real damage done and the experiment was worth it for the results and their applications.

A limitation is that Zimbardo has admitted to getting caught up in his own research. He acted more like a superintendent than an experimenter and he put his research interests before the psychological health of his participants. This also means that the results could be biased because he was too involved and he started looking for the answers he wanted to see instead of just observing the whole experiment. Therefore the results may lack validity because of experimenter bias.

A limitation of Zimbardo‘s research is psychologists have argued that the behaviour of participants in the study was more a consequence of demand characteristics than conformity to the roles. They presented some of the details of the Stanford prison experiment procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The large majority correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned to the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, and they predicted that guards would act in a hostile domineering way, and that prisoners would react in a passive way. They suggest that that 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 the experimental situation itself.

Question 61

Evaluate Milgram’s research on obedience

Answer 61

A strength of Milgram’s research is it has historical validity. Blass carried out a statistical analysis of obedience studies carried out between 1961 and 1985. By carrying out a correlational analysis relating each studies year of publication and the amount of obedience it found he discovered no relationship whatsoever i.e. the latest studies found no more or less obedience than the ones conducted earlier. Burger conducted a study in 2009 and found levels of obedience almost identical to those found by Milgram 46 years earlier. These findings suggest that Milgram’s findings still appear to apply as much today as they did back in the early 1960s, meaning they have historical validity.

A strength of Milgram study as it has good external validity. At first glance, it may appear to lack external validity because it was conducted in a lab. However, the central feature of the situation what is the relationship between the authority figure and the participant. Milgrim argued that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life. Other research supports this argument, for example, Hofling et al studied nurses on a hospital ward and found that levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors were very high, with 21 out of 22 nurses obeying. This suggests that the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in Milgram’s lab study can be generalised to other situations so his findings do have something valuable to tell us about how obedience operates in real life.

A limitation of Milgram’s study is it has low internal validity. Orne and Holland argue that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe the set up, and they guessed it wasn’t real electric shocks. In which case, Milgram wasn’t testing what he intended to test and the study lacked internal validity. Perry’s research confirms this. She listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that many of them expressed their doubts about the shocks. However, Sheridan and King conducted a similar study where real shocks were given to a puppy. Despite the real shocks, 54% of the male student participants and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock. This suggests that the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved the same way with real shocks. Milgram himself reported that 70% of his participants said they believed the shocks were genuine.

Question 62

Evaluate situational variables affecting obedience

Answer 62

A strength of Milgram’s research is that his findings have been replicated in other cultures. For instance, Meeus and Raaijmakers used a more realistic procedure than Milgram’s to study obedience in Dutch participants. The participants were ordered to say stressful things in an interview to someone desperate for a job. 90% of the participants obeyed. The researchers also replicated Milgram’s findings concerning proximity. When the person giving the orders was not present, obedience decreased dramatically. This suggests that Milgram’s findings about obedience are not just limited to Americans or men, but are valid across cultures and apply to women too. However, replications of Milgram’s research are not very ‘cross-cultural’. Smith and Bond identified just two replications between 1968 and 1985 that took place in India and Jordan, which are both countries that are culturally quite different from the US. However, the other countries involved, such as Spain, Australia, and Scotland, are culturally quite similar to the US. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to conclude that Milgram’s findings apply to people in all or most cultures.

One strength is that other studies have demonstrated the influence of situational variables on obedience. In a field experiment in New York City, Bickman had three confederate dress in different outfits; a jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit, and a security guard’s uniform. The confederate individually stood in the street and asked passers-by to perform tasks such as picking up litter or handing over a coin for the parking meter. People were twice as likely to obey the security guard than person dressed in a jacket and tie. This supports the view that a situational variable such as uniform does have a powerful effect on obedience.

One limitation is that participants may have been aware the procedure was faked. Orne and Holland made this criticism of Milgram’s baseline study. They point out that it is even more likely in his variations, because of the extra manipulation of variables. A good example is the variation where the experimenter is replaced by a ‘member of the public’. Even Milgram recognised that the situation was so contrived that some participants may well have worked out the truth. Therefore, in all of Milgram’s studies, it is unclear whether the findings are genuinely due to the operation of obedience, or because the participants saw through the deception and responded to demand characteristics.

Question 63

Evaluate the agentic state and legitimacy of authority

Answer 63

A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is research support. Blass and Schmitt showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner, Mr Wallace. The students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant. The students also indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority, as the ‘experimenter’ was top of the hierarchy, but also due to expert authority, as he was a scientist. In other words, they recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting this explanation.

A limitation is that the agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience. For example, it doesn’t explain the findings of Rank and Jacobson’s study. They found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient. The doctor was an obvious authority figure, but almost all the nurses remained autonomous, as did many of Milgram’s participants. This suggests that at best, the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.

Although there are many positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority, it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as the basis for justifying the harming of others. If people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate to conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct. As a result, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions people are alarmingly willing to do so. A consequence of this is that people may readily engage in unquestioning obedience to authority, no matter how destructive and immoral are the actions called for .

A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedience to authority. For example, Kilham and Mann replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale. On the other hand, Mantell found a very different figure for German participants which was 85%. This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals. This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures. Search support of findings from cross cultural research increase the validity of the explanation.

Question 64

Evaluate the authoritarian personality

Answer 64

A limitation of the authoritarian personality explanation is that social context is more important. Although Milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and disobedience, he did not believe the evidence for this was particularly strong. Milgram showed the variations in the social context of the study, such as proximity, location and uniform, were the primary causes of differences in participants level of obedience, not variations in personality. He believed that the specific social situation participants found themselves in cause them to obey or resist regardless of their personalities. Relying on an explanation of obedience based purely on authoritarianism lacks the flexibility to account for these variations.

One strength is evidence from Milgram supporting the authoritarian personality. Milgrim, together with Elms, interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and been fully obedient. They all completed the F-scale as part of the interview. The 20 obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants. This finding supports Adorno et al’s view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian personality. However, when the researchers analysed the individual subscales of the F-scale, they found that the obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians. For example, unlike authoritarians, Milgram’s obedient participants generally did not glorify their fathers, did not experience unusual levels of punishment in their childhood, and did not have particularly hostile attitudes toward their mothers. This means that the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex. The obedient participants were unlike authoritarians in so many ways that authoritarianism is unlikely to be a useful predictor of obedience.

Research has shown that education may determine authoritarianism and obedience. Researchers generally found that less educated people are consistently more authoritarian than the well educated. Milgram also found that participants with lower levels of education tended to be more obedient than those with higher levels of education. This suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible for both authoritarianism and obedience. As a result, any apparent causal relationship between authoritarianism and obedience may be more illusory than real.

Question 65

Evaluate locus of control and social support

Answer 65

A limitation is that locus of control is related to normative but not informational social influence. Spector found a correlation between locus of control and predisposition to normative social influence, with externals more likely to conform to this type of influence. However, his research found no relationship with informational social influence and locus of control. This is contradictory, as external locus of control means you rely on other people’s opinions for validity, and if true, there should be clear links between locus of control and both explanations of conformity.

A strength of the locus of control explanation is that it has a research support. Holland repeated Milgram’s baseline study, measuring whether the participants had an internal or external locus of control. He found 37% of internals didn’t continue to the 450 V, whereas only 23% of externals did not continue. Research support increases the validity of the locus of control explanation, and why internals can resist obedience and conformity better than externals.

A strength of the social support explanation is it has a research support. Allen and Levine found conformity decreased with one dissenter in an Asch - type experiment. The decrease in conformity occurred even when the dissenter was wearing thick glasses and said he had vision issues. This supports the view that it doesn’t matter what the dissenter or ally says, just that it frees someone from the social pressures of the group, hence social support.

A strength of social support explanation is research evidence supporting the role of dissenting peers in resisting obedience. Gamson et al’s participants were told to produce evidence that would be used to help an oil company run a smear campaign. The researchers found high levels of resistance in the study than Milgram did in his. This is probably because the participants were in groups, so could discuss what they were told to do. 29 out of 33 groups of participants (88%) rebelled against their orders. This shows that peer support can lead to disobedience by undermining the legitimacy of an authority figure.

Question 66

Evaluate minority influence

Answer 66

A limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved, such as identifying the colour of a slide, are as artificial as Asch’s line judgement task. Research is therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. In cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are vastly more important, sometimes even literally matters of life or death. This means the findings of minority influence studies, such as Moscovici et al’s are lacking in external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life social situations.

Despite the evidence for higher quality decision-making, Nemeth claims it is still difficult to convince people of the value of dissent. People accept the principal only on the surface i.e. they appear tolerant but quickly become irritated by a dissenting view that persists. They may also fear creating a lack of harmony within the group by welcoming dissent, or be made to feel repercussions including being ridiculed by being associated with a deviant point of view. As a consequence, this means that the majority view persists and the opportunities for innovative thinking associated with minority influence are lost.

Xie et al discovered a tipping point where the number of people holding a minority position becomes sufficient to change majority opinion. They developed computer models of social networks with individuals free to chat with each other across the networks. Each individual held a traditional view, but the researchers also added some individuals representing an alternative point of view which they expressed consistently. If the listener held the same opinion as the speaker, it reinforced the listeners belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another individual. If that individual also held the new belief, the listener adopted it. After while opinion suddenly began to shift. This study concluded that the percentage of committed opinion holders necessary to tip the majority into accepting the minority position was just 10%. This is referred to as the snowball effect.

A strength of minority influence is there as research support for consistency. There is research evidence that demonstrates the importance of consistency. Moscovici et al’s study showed that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Wood et al carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies, and found that minorities who are seen as being consistent were most influential. These studies suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

Question 67

Evaluate social influence and social change

Answer 67

A limitation is social change through minority influence is very gradual. The role played by minority influence may be limited since minorities such as the suffragettes rarely bring about social change quickly. Because there is a strong tendency for human beings to conform to the majority position people are more likely to maintain the status quo rather than engage in social change. This suggests, therefore, that the influence of a minority is frequently more latent than direct i.e. it creates the potential for change rather than the actual social change.

Another limitation is being perceived as deviant limits the 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 than a message itself. In trying to bring about social change, therefore, minorities faced the double challenge of avoiding being portrayed as deviant and also making people directly embrace their position.

One limitation is that deeper processing may not play a role in how minorities bring about social change. Some people are supposedly converted because they think more deeply about the minority’s views. Mackie disagrees, and presents evidence that it is majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views. This is because we like to believe that other people share our views and think in the same ways as us. When we find that a majority believes something different, we are forced to think long and hard about their arguments and reasoning. This means that a central element of minority influence has been challenged, casting doubt on its validity as an explanation of social change.

There is research support for normative influences leading to social change. Nolan et al investigated whether social influence processes led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community. They hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for one month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy, but made no reference to other people’s behaviour. Nolan et al found significant decreases in the energy usage in the first group. This is a strength because it shows that conformity can lead to social change through the operation of normative social influence. However, some studies show that people’s behaviour is not always changed through exposing them to social norms. Foxcroft et al reviewed social norms interventions. This review included 70 studies where the social norms approach was used to reduce student alcohol use. The researchers found only a small reduction in drinking quantity, and no effect on drinking frequency. Therefore, it seems that using normative social influence does not always produce long-term social change.