social influence

Question 1

what are the 3 types of social influence

Answer 1

compliance
identification
internalisation

Question 2

what’s complaince

Answer 2

This refers to instances where a person may agree in public with a group of people, but the person privately disagrees with the group’s viewpoint or behavior. The individual changes their views, but it is a temporary change.

For example, a person may laugh at a joke because their group of friends find it funny but deep down the person does not find the joke funny.

For a study on compliance refer to Asch’s Line Study

Question 3

whats internalisation

Answer 3

Publicly changing behavior to fit in with the group while also agreeing with them privately. An internal (private) and external (public) change of behavior. This is the deepest level of conformity were the beliefs of the group become part of the individual’s own belief system.

An example of internalisation is if someone lived with a vegetarian at university and then decides to also become one too because they agree with their friend’s viewpoint / someone converting religions would also be a good example.

For a study on internalisation refer to Jenness (see below).

Question 4

whats identification

Answer 4

Identification AO1
Identification occurs when someone conforms to the demands of a given social role in society. For example, a policeman, teacher or politician. This type of conformity extends over several aspects of external behavior. However, there still be no changed to internal personal opinion.

A good example is Zimbardo’s prison study .

Question 5

what are the two types of majority influence

Answer 5

informative social influence
and normative social influence

Question 6

what model shows the different types of social influence

Answer 6

dual process dependency model Deutsch and Gerard (1955) developed the Dual-Processing Dependency model which suggested that people conform for one of 2 reasons: Normative social influence (NSI) (explanation of compliance) Informational social influence (ISI) (explanation of internalisation)

Question 7

what is informative social influence

Answer 7

isi is a cognitive process because it is to do with what you think. IsI is an explanation of conformity that says we agree with the explanation of the majority because we believe its correct
We accept it because we want it to be correct aswell
we change our veiws both publicly and privately
to be consistent with the majority

Question 8

what is normative social influence

Answer 8

NSI is an emotional process rather than a cognitive one. NSI is an emotional process rather than a cognitive one. NSI is an explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked
person may publicly change there behaviour but privately disagree

Question 9

what is sherrif study

Answer 9

sheriff study was a laboroty experiment using a repeated measures design
participants were shown a dot of light and this was known as the autokinetic effect
participants were asked to measure how far the light had moved
they were tested first individually then in groups then individually

Question 10

what were the results of sheriifs experiment (1935)

Answer 10

when tested individually the participants arrived at their own answers (personal norms)
when tested as a group the participants converged towards the mean (they conformed)
when tested again individually the participants stuck to these group norms

Question 11

ash sheffirs research show

Answer 11

participants had been influenced by the information gained from others therefore informative social influence was present

Question 12

What is asch study

Answer 12

This was a laboratory experiment using an “independent groups “ design
- Participants were asked to state which of three lines matched a “standard line”
-Participants were placed in groups of 8, but were not told that the other 7 people in the group
were actually confederates (people working for the researcher)
- They gave their answer last or next to last. The confederates gave deliberately wrong answers
- In the control group, participants only got it wrong about 1% of the time: this was a trivial task
with little difficulty

Question 13

what we’re the results of asch study

Answer 13

The confederates gave deliberately wrong answers
- In the control group, participants only got it wrong about 1% of the time: this was a trivial task
with little difficulty
- In the groups with confederates, participants gave a wrong answer 32% of the time: they
were influenced by the confederates and conformed to the wrong answers going before them

Question 14

What type of social influence did this show

Answer 14

Participants were influenced by the developing social “norm”: Normative Social Influence
(NSI) had occured

Question 15

Criticisms of this experiment

Answer 15

However, this was a trivial task with little ecological validity, and participants were deceived
by not being told the other 7 in their group were confederates

Question 16

Name situational factors affecting conformity

Answer 16

Group Size: Asch found that a larger group is more influential and makes people
more likely to conform, but that this only happens up to a certain point. After this
point, the group size has no effect
- Social Support: Having others present who are supportive and are also prepared to
dissent from the wider group makes it much more likely that any single individual
will also not conform.
- Task Difficulty: When the task is harder, people are much less likely to dissent.
They feel less confident and therefore look to others in the group for guidance

Question 17

Name dispositional factors (factors that may vary from person to person) affecting conformity

Answer 17

• Gender: Gender may be a factor in conformity, but research has not provided a
  strong conclusion. The traditional view was that women were more likely to
  conform, but this was discredited in the 1980s
• Experience and Expertise: Individuals with more experience or expertise in a given
  area are much less likely to conform to a group when doing a task in that area. They
  feel more confident in their own ability or knowledge and are therefore much more
  likely to dissent from the wider group.

Question 18

What are social roles

Answer 18

A social role is a position within society
- Some of these are roles we choose to take on and are voluntary, such as being a
teacher, a waiter or a charity volunteer
- Some of these are roles given to us without our consent, such as being a sister, son,
teenager or prisoner
- Each role carries a given set of expected behaviours: social “norms” to which
people are expected to conform.
- These norms vary with different time periods and different cultures
- Not everyone is always going to follow every social norm: sometimes they will not
conform to their social role
You can have more than one social role Eg father son uncle

Question 19

What is the spe

Answer 19

Zimbardos prison experiment

Question 20

What was zimbardos prison experiment trying to investigate

Answer 20

The conformity of social roles

Question 21

What was the procedure of Zimbardos experiment

Answer 21

• A mock prison was set up, and a set of volunteers were randomly assigned the role of either
  guard or prisoner
• Conditions were strict, and the guards had a lot of power over the prisoners
• The experience was made authentic to the prisoners with a mock arrest, strip search and
  forced transport to the prison
• Both prisoners and guards conformed to their social roles, and exhibited extreme behaviour
  such as rioting, violence and aggression.

Question 22

What did zimbardo conclude from this experiment

Answer 22

Participants were conforming to their social roles:they were exhibiting the expected behaviour of prisoners and guards

Question 23

What we’re the evaluations of this experiment

Answer 23

Experiment was effectively under lavatory conditions and therefore a cause and effect relationship could be established
However severe ethical issues with the experiment
Both Garuda and prisoners suffered severe mental and physical health problems and the spe was called off and abandoned early

Question 24

what was Orlando’s experiment

Answer 24

Orlando, in 1973, set up a mock psychiatric ward in a real hospital. Hospital staff
volunteered to become “patients” within this psychiatric ward
- Within a short amount of time, they began to behave like real patients in a real
psychiatric ward: despite knowing they were not real patients and not in a real ward
- They became despondent, depressed and felt that lost a sense of identity
- Orlando concluded that they were conforming to the expected behaviour of
prisoners in this type of institution
- The study was also useful in helping to explain the behaviour of real patients in real
psychiatric wards, and helping with their treatment and conditions

Question 25

Why were Reicher and Haslam interested in further experimenting conformity

Answer 25

Following the catastrophe of the holoucaust in the World War 2, psychologists have been trying to explain how so many people could have obeyed and complied with the genocide
One of these investigations was filmed for BBC television in 2006 and was similar to the SPE

Question 26

What was the Reicher and Haslam experiment

Answer 26

• As with the SPE, volunteers were randomly assigned the status of either “prisoner” or “guard”:
  but were told that one prisoner would become a guard after 3 days
• Unlike in the SPE, neither prisoners nor guards conformed to expected behaviour
• The prisoners formed a strong and united group: especially after the point where one of them
  was promoted to guard status
• The guards never formed a strong or united group: they felt uncomfortable with the power
  imbalance
• The conclusion drawn was that social roles are flexible, and not everyone will always conform
• Unlike with the SPE, there was good ethical oversight by an independent ethics panel to
  ensure that participants did not suffer mentally or physically
• Like the SPE, however, the experiment did have to be abandoned early for ethical reasons

Question 27

Who was milgram and what did he investigate

Answer 27

• In 1963, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of landmark experiments regarding obedience to
  authority
  -Obedience is usually thought of as “acting in order to respond to a direct order”

Question 28

What was the experiment provider and results

Answer 28

• In this experiment, participants were volunteers responding to a flyer
• They were told they would be randomly assigned the role of “learner” or “teacher”: in fact they
  were always a “teacher”
• These participants were instructed to deliver an electric shock to the “learner” everytime the
  “learner” got a question wrong
• The “learner” was actually a confederate: someone working with the researcher and will full
  knowledge of how the experiment worked
• The shocks were also fake, although the participants did not know this. The labelled buttons on
  the machine ranged from 15v (slight shock) to 450v (danger - severe shock)
• Another confederate, known as the “experimenter” and wearing a lab coat, would instruct the
  participant to continue if they hesistated
• The participants genuinely thought that ,they were delivering large, harmful and

Question 29

What were the key results and conclusions and evaluations of this experiment

Answer 29

• Incredibly, all the participants delivered shocks up to at least 300v, and most went
  up to 450v. 300v was the point where the fake “learner” would bang on the wall in
  rage and pain
• Milgram concluded that people will obey orders when they seem to be legitimate,
  even if it goes against their normal patterns of behaviour and thinking
• There were, obviously, severe ethical issues with this experiment: participants
  showed stress and tension, and some even had nervous breakdowns
• Participants were also deceived multiple times over the course of this experiment:
  they were falsely told that their role was random, that the “learner” was real and
  that the shocks were real. None of these were true
• The study also had limited ecological validity: delivering a series of painful electric
  shocks is an unlikely scenario in the real world
• The study also had limited internal validity: it is entirely

Question 30

What 4 key situational factors were identified when concerning obedience

Answer 30

Proximity: When Milgram changed the experiment so that the participant and “learner” were in the
same room obedience dropped sharply: when the participant could clearly see the effect of their
actions they were less likely to obey
- Allies: When an ally was present who refused to deliver the shock, participants were much less likely
to obey: they too refused
- Proximity of Authority: When Milgram removed the “experimenter”, and therefore the source of
authority from the experiment, obedience also went down sharply. People were less likely to obey
when there was no immediate source of authority
- Location: The experiment had initially been done in the grand, trusted and impressive Yale
University. Milgram theorised that so that the participant andsed obedience rates. When the experiment
was repeated at an inner-city office block obedience fell sharply

Question 31

What theory did milgram present after his research

Answer 31

The agency theory

Question 32

What is the agency theory

Answer 32

• This theory held that people obeyed ordered because they were in an “agentic state”
• An “agentic state” is when someone feels they are acting on behalf of a higher responsibility
  which has issued the orders and will take responsibility
• They therefore feel that the are an “agent” of this higher authority, not an autonomous and
  independent individual

Question 33

How do people move from an independent to agentic state

Answer 33

Most people begin any task or experience in an “independent” state, but move to an “agentic”
state when given orders. This is known as “agentic shift*

Question 34

What three binding factors that keep an individual in an agentic state

Answer 34

1. Reluctance to disrupt the experiment
2. Pressure of grand and trusted surroundings
3. Pressure from the authority figure

Question 35

What is the idea of legitimate authority

Answer 35

• Most people are taught from a young age that certain people groups have “legitimate” forms of
  authority: they have a “right” to issue orders to us
• Examples include: The Police, Parents, Teachers, The Government
• People are much more likely to obey orders from a source of authority they regard as “legitimate”

Question 36

What are the 3 main ways people decide if an authority figure is legitimate

Answer 36

1. Legal process: Groups like the Police and Government have legal backing to their authority: it
   falls within a defined social norm that most people accept
2. Knowledge or experience: Groups like doctors and teachers gain their legitimacy from their
   knowledge and experience. Most people trust the advice of, and obey the orders of, medical
   professionals because of their knowledge.
3. Social norms: Groups like scientists and senior business executives derive their authority from
   social norms: how they dress, how they speak, how they act. Milgram noticed that people are more
   likely to obey the “experimenter” and even the experimenter is wearing a lab coat

Question 37

What is the authoritarian personality

Answer 37

Some people will over the orders of their superiors and issue orders to their inferiors

Question 38

How did Adorno prove the authoritarian personality

Answer 38

• Adorno et al (1950) used a series of statements to place participants on an “F-
  Scale”: a measurement of their authoritarian personalites. F stood for fascism, and
  much of this research was aimed at understanding and preventing fascism.
• This theory held that some people, usually due to overly strict parenting, had been
  unable to challenge their parents or any authority, leading to feelings of constraint.
• They therefore directed their aggression towards those they regarded as being
  “inferior” or “lesser”, while unquestioningly obeying those they thought of as being
  “superior”.

Question 39

What 2 main factors make us more resistant to social influence and make us more likely to act independently

Answer 39

1. Social Support: Having someone present in the group who agrees with you and is
   prepared to support you in dissenting from the group makes it more likely that you
   will dissent from the wider norms and consensus.
2. Aspects of Personality: Research done by Rotter (1966) found that people who
   have an “internal locus of control” (they believe that they are in control of their life,
   rather than it being down to luck) are more likely to be able to resist social
   influence.

Question 40

Describe moscovis experiment

Answer 40

• In 1969, Moscovici et al investigated how a minority can influence a much larger majority.
• Participants (192 women) were asked to name the colors of 36 slides. All of the slides were
  actually blue.
• In the control group, participants only got this wrong 0.25% of the time
• In actual groups, a minority of 2 confederates gave the wrong answer - they called some or all
  of the slides green.
• When this happened, many of the participants also said the slides were green: they had been
  influenced by the minority.

Question 41

What were the strengths and weaknesses of this exam

Answer 41

This experiment was under controlled laboratory conditions, but had little ecological validity
(it was an unlikely task in the real world).
- This was also a trivial task with no consequences: participants had nothing to lose by changing
their answer
- There was also an ethical issue: participants were decieved into thinking their entire group
was made up of participants when there were actually 2 confederates present
-

Question 42

What theory was presented after moscovis experiment

Answer 42

Moscovici put forward “Conversion Theory”, which said that members of the majority are
converted to the minority view, as an explanation for minority influence

Question 43

What factors affect minority influence

Answer 43

Consistency: When a minority is consistent and unchanging, it becomes more likely that members of
the majority will be swayed or persuaded.
- Flexible: When a minority is flexible and willing to compromise or alter their approach, it becomes more
likely that they will change the mind of the majority

Question 44

What three factors change the EXTENT of minority influnce

Answer 44

• Strength: A stronger, more vocal or more powerful minority is more likely to influence a majority
• Numbers: A larger minority is much more likely to influence the majority
• Immediacy: If a minority is close to majority in terms of physical distance or personal relationships, then
  the influence of that minority increases.

Question 45

What is the snowball effect

Answer 45

When people in a group agree with a minority, then the minority starts to excert influence
- As this happens, more and more members of the majority will start to agree with the
minority and convert to their viewpoint.
- This is called the “snowball effect”: and eventually the minority becomes the majority,
and the majority becomes the minority
- At this point, the minority had exerted influence to such as extent that it has become
dominant

Question 46

What are examples of the snowball effect

Answer 46

1. Civil Rights in the US: The idea of racial equality was a minority view until the 1960s. The
   actions of the vocal, strong minority gradually changed this view until racial equality
   became a majority view.
2. LGBT Rights in the UK: The idea of homosexuality was repulsive and repugnant to many
   before the 1970s. This was a strong majority view that was gradually changed by the
   actions of an immediate, numera They switched places-ity.