Social influence Flashcards
Kelman (1958) Types of conformity
•Internalisation- a public and private change in views/behaviours. This change is permanent because attitudes have been internalised, and persists in the absence of the group.
•Identification- public change of views/behaviours, but don’t privately agree with everything that is said. There is something about the group that is valued.
•Compliance- public change of views, but not privately changing opinions. This is only ‘going along with the group’ and is only temporary.
Variables affecting conformity
Asch (1955)
•Group size- Asch varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15. Found that conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point. With 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but soon dropped off.
•Unanimity- Introduced a confederate who went against the group answer. The participant would conform less in the presence of a dissenter, and appeared to free the naïve participant to be independent.
•Task difficulty- He increased the difficulty of the line judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar. Conformity increases as the differences were harder to see ( more ambiguous) so it is natural to look to others in order to be right.
Explanations for conformity
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) two process theory
•ISI- Informational social influence. We follow the group (majority) behaviour because we want to be right. This leads to internalisation(permanent change) in opinion or behaviour. Is most likely to happen in a new or a crisis situation. COGNITIVE
•NSI- Normative social influence. We go along with the majority so we don’t appear foolish and become liked. Leads to compliance (temporary change) in opinions/ behaviour. Most likely to occur in social settings with strangers or friends. EMOTIONAL
Conformity to social roles
Zimbardo (1973) Stanford Prison Experiment
•SPE- Randomly assigned 21 ‘emotionally stable’ volunteers to either prisoner or guard. Encouraged to conform through uniforms and behavioural instructions. Prisoners were referred to by numbers, and guards wore sunglasses to avoid eye contact.
•Findings- The guards took up to their role with enthusiasm and often highlighted the division in social roles by creating opportunities to enforce the rules/ punishments. The prisoners became subdued, depressed, and anxious. 3 were prematurely released due to psychological disturbances. As the guards became more violent the more they identified with their role. Zimbardo ended the study after 6 days instead of 14.
•Conclusions- Social roles appear to have a strong influence on behaviour. Each volunteers who came in to perform specific functions found themselves behaving as if they were in a prison rather than in a psychological study.
Obedience: Agentic state- Milgram (1974)
> Autonomous state- When you are free to behave according to their own principles and are responsible for their own actions.
There is an agentic shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state in obedience.
The agentic shift happens when a person perceives someone else as an authority figure.
People often submit to the legitimate authority of the person in charge.
Milgram argues that the reason why people remain in the agentic state is due to binding factors (things that minimise the moral strain of what they are doing such as denying the damage they did or ‘victim blaming’)
Obedience: Legitimacy of Authority- Milgram (1974)
> We are more likely to obey someone who we perceive to have higher authority over us. Most of us accept that authority figures are allowed to exercise social power over us.
A consequence of this is that those with legitimate authority are granted permission to punish others.
Legitimate authority can become destructive and become cruel or dangerous.
Situational variables for obedience. Milgram (1974)
> Proximity-Teacher and learner are put in the same room, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%.
~Touch proximity- Teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto an electroshock plate if he didn’t himself when answer was wrong. Dropped to 30%.
~Remote proximity- Experimenter left room and gave instructions over the phone. Dropped to 20.5%.
Location- Conducted in a run down office instead of Yale. Dropped to 47.5%. Gave study legitimacy.
Uniform- Experimenter wore grey lab coat but stepped out and was replaced by an “ordinary member of the public” (confederate) in everyday clothes. Dropped to 20%.
Dispositional explanation: Authoritarian personality
Adorno et al
> Adorno et al argued that people with an AP show an extreme respect to those who authority and are dismissive to those they view as weaker than them. Like traditional values and typically have a black or white viewpoint. More likely to obey orders from a source of authority.
Origins of AP- Developed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting . This usually involved very strict parenting , an expectation of absolute loyalty, severe criticisms of failure, and impossibly high standards.
These create resentment, and so their fears are displaced on to those ‘weaker’ than them.( known as scapegoating)
Adorno et al (1950) research on Authoritarian Personality.
> Procedure- Studied 2000+ middle class white Americans’ unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups. Used the F-scale (fascism) to measure authoritarian personality.
Findings- People who scored high on the F-scale identified with ‘strong’ people and generally opposed the ‘weak’. They were very conscious of status and showed extremely high respect for those of higher status. They also found they had fixed stereotypes and found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
Resistance to social influence: social support
> Resisting conformity- The pressure to conform is resisted if there are other people present who are not conforming. (Asch’s research variation). The confederate acts as a ‘model’ of independent behaviour, and shows the majority is no longer unanimous.
Resisting obedience- The pressure to obey can be resisted if there is another person who is seen to disobey.( Obedience dropped from 65% to 10% in Milgram’s study when joined by a disobedient dissenter). Acts as a ‘model’ of dissent for the participant to copy. The disobedient model challenges the legitimacy of the authority figure, and makes it easier to disobey.
Resistance to social influence: Locus Of Control
Rotter (1966)
> Internals have an internal LOC and believe that the things that happen to them are controlled by themselves and down to their own behaviours.
They are more likely to resist social influence as they take personal responsibility for their actions and base their decisions on their own beliefs/opinions.
Externals have an external LOC and believe that things that happen to them are outside of their control and are fatalistic.
They are less likely to resist social influence as they have less self-confidence and have less leadership qualities.
Moscovici’s study
-Randomly selected participants and confederates
* It was a lab experiment. Participants were in a group where there were two confederates(the minority) and four participants (the majority).Everyone was shown 36 blue slides, each with a different shade of blue.They were each asked to say whether the slide was blue or green. Confederates deliberately said they were green on two-thirds of the trials, thus producing a consistent minority view. The number of times that the real participants reported that the slide was green was observed. A control group was also used consisting of participants only – no confederates.
-Found that when the confederates were consistent in their answers about 8% of participants said the slides were green. However, when the confederates answered inconsistently about 1% of participants said the slides were green. This shows that consistency is crucial for a minority to exert maximum influence on a majority.
Factors influencing Minority influence
> consistency- the minority has to be consistent in their views as over time it increases the amount of interest from other people. A consistent minority makes other people start to rethink their own views.
Commitment- The minority must demonstrate commitment to their cause or views. Sometimes minority groups go to extreme lengths and take great risks in order to show greater commitment. This leads to the majority playing them more attention.
Flexibility- Nemeth (1986) argues that too much consistency can be off-putting, so also must be seen as flexible. If people appear too rigid and unbending in their views are not likely to attract many views. members need to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable/valid counterarguments.
> It is the deeper processing that leads to the conversion of the majority.
Social influence processes in Social change
> Drawing attention through social proof- such as civil right marches that drew attention to the situation, through social proof of the problem.
Consistency- Have to keep spreading the messages throughout time and agree the same in the minority.
Deeper processing- Change of views leads the majority to deeply think about the minority view and the reason for it.
The augmentation principle- Individuals sometimes risk their lives and get harmed in order to spread their cause and reinforces their message through personal risk.
The snowball effect- More and more people begin to convert to the minority at greater speed until it becomes the majority.
Social cryptoamnesia- People have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it has happened (eg recycling).
Research support for ISI
- Lucas et al (2006) asked students to give answers to mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than the easy ones. This was most true for students who said their maths was poor.
Study shows that people conform in situations where they feel they don’t know the answer, which is exactly tho outcome predicted in ISI. We look to others and assume they know better than us.
Individual differences in NSI
Research shows that NSI doesn’t affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way.
People who don’t care about being liked are less affected by NSI than those who want to be liked. nAffiliators are people who have the greater need to ‘affiliate’ or need to be in a relationship with others.
For example McGhee and Teevan (1967) found that students in high need of affiliation were more likely to conform.
Shows that desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. Therefore there are individual differences in the way people respond.
NSI and ISI work together
More often than not both processes are involved, and it is not exclusive to either one. For example, conformity is reduced when there was a dissenter in Asch’s study. This may reduce NSI (provides social supprt) or reduce ISI ( alternative source of information).
This shows that it isn’t always possible to be sure whether NSI or ISI is at work. This is true in real life conformity, which casts serious doubt over the view of NSI and ISI as two processes operating independently.
Asch’s research may not be valid
Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK. Only one student conformed out of 396 trials. This may have been because when Asch did his study in 1950s America, it was an especially conformist time and therefore made sense to conform to expected social norms. Society has changed today, so we may live in a less conformist time.
This means that Asch’s study may lack temporal validity as the findings cannot be generalised to today’s society, so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour.
Asch used an artificial task and situation.
Participants knew they were taking part in a study and may have just gone along with the situation ( DEMAND CHARACTERISTICS). the task of identifying lines is not one that would happen in everyday life, and people may not have seen a reason to resist conformity to such a trivial task. Although the naive participants were members of a group, it didn’t really resemble groups that are found in day to day society. This is a limitation as it means there is no ecological validity or mundane realism. the results cannot be generalised to everyday situations.
