Social Influence Flashcards
Abortion
the 1803 Ellenborough Act made abortion punishable by death. After this, the ALRA group formed to legalise abortion and raise awareness of backstreet abortions. In 1861, the Offences Against the Person Act made abortion punishable by life imprisonment. In 1929, the Infant Life Preservation Act made abortion legal if the mother’s life was at risk. In 1967, abortion was made legal after the biggest rally since the women’s suffrage campaigns.
Abu Ghraib
Zimbardo’s study was a lab experiment and lacks ecological validity. Psychologists questioned whether people really behaved like this in the real world, as participants know it was an experiment. However, there are real-world parallels. Abu Ghraib was an American prison where prisoners were tortured and killed despite this being against thee law. All the guards conformed to this and it was only one person who stopped it. This shows that it does have validity as it can be seen in the real world.
Adolf Eichmann
a Nazi war criminal who was tried at the Nuremberg trials, and was said to be the inspiration for Milgram’s obedience experiment, as Eichmann claimed he was “just following orders” and Milgram wanted to test the validity of his defence
Agency Theory
sees people as socialised to obey authority to keep stability in society and sees obedeince as occurring in heirarchical social systems, where individuals act as agents for those of higher social ranks
Agentic State
individual carries out the orders of another person, acting as their agent with little personal responsibility
Anti-Conformity
a consistent movement away from social conformity, such as adopting the behaviour and norms of the minority
Artificial Situation
where a situation has low ecological validity and cannot be generalised to real-life situations
Asch Effect
the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgement
Attracting Attention
minorities attract the attention of the majority to the issue
Augmentation Principle
the appeal of the minority is strengthened if they are perceiveved to suffer for their views
Authoritarian Personality
a person who has extreme respect for authority and is obedient to those who have power over them
Autokinetic Effect
an experiment done by Muzafer Sherif in 1935 to ascertain whether people conform to a group on an ambiguous task. Sherif showed a group of people the autokinetic effect and asked how far they thought the spot of light moved. All participants gave similar answers, and when asked again individually, they still stuck to the group norm. Sherif then repeated the experiment, asking participants individually first, then as a group and found that people changed their answers when in the group
Autonomous State
where individuals are seen as personally responsible for their actions
BBC Prison Experiment
This was an experiment that mimicked Zimbardo’s prison study, but in 2006. They wanted to observe how dynamics between the group evolved over time. Like Zimbardo’s experiment, but it was a controlled observation set in a mock prison and filmed for broadcasting. 15 male volunteers took part who were assigned roles randomly, with five being guards and ten being inmates. Compliance, stress and depression levels were measured daily. They were told that one random prisoner would be promoted and become a guard on day three. An ethics committee was set up. It could stop the experiment at any point. The guards did not form a group, did not always use their authority and did not identify with their assigned role. The unequal system eventually failed because the guards had a weak group identity and the prisoners formed a strong group identity.
Bond and Smith Experiment 1996
Williams and Sogon repeated Solomon Asch’s experiment with people from different cultures, and found that people from collectivist cultures, such as China, conform more than people from individualistic cultures, such as America
Child Labour
The Factory Act 1833 was introduced by Ashley Cooper and Michael Sadler although most people were against it because it would take away a large amount of workforce and informce for families. It wasn’t until 1901 that a law was passed stating that all children had to attend school. This happened around the same time as slavery was abolished in America.
China’s One Child Policy
introduced in 1979, the One Child Policy was implemented to fix overpopulation and starvation issues in China. The Chinese government manipulated people by seeming flexible -making it the one birth policy, so families with multiples were exempt, allowing families to have a second child if their first child was disabled or allowing families in rural areas to have a second child if their first child was a boy. If people had more than one child, they were taxed heavily and if they could not pay, they had their belongings stolen ad homes smashed. In 2016, it was changed to a Two Child Policy because the Chinese workforce had shrunk so much and there was a disproportionate amount of boys. In 2021, it was changed to the Three Child Policy, but due to social cryptoamnesia, people no longer see the point in having more than one child. Due to the communist ideology in China, any protests would not be known about across the wider country.
Cognitive Conflict
a conflict is created between the message of the minority and the belief already held by the majority, causing the majority to process the message of the minority more deeply
Cognitive Dissonance
unpleasant feeling of anxiety created when simultaneously holding two contradictory ideas
Collectivist Cultures
cultures such as China, which generally emphasise the needs of the group over the individual
Commitment
consistency in the face of abuse shows that minorities are committed and helps motivate individuals to consider their viewpoint
Compliance
people change their behaviour but not their minds; they know what they are doing is wrong; compliance is always separate from other forms of conformity
Confidence
another personality factor that can explain differences in conformity as the more confident an individual is, the less likely they are to conform
Conformity
changing what we do, think or say in response to others
Consistency
minorities continue to express their message over time and are perceived as united on the message, consistent minorities are persuasive and create doubt about established viewpoints and beliefs
Conversion
where majorities become gradually won over to a minority viewpoint
Critical Mass
the moment at which a minority viewpoint becomes mainstream
Degradation Process
the process of degrading a person, causing them to decline to a low, destitute or demoralised state
Dehumanisation
degrading people by lessening their human qualities
Deindividuation
the opposite of individuation; a process by which a person becomes so immersed in the norms of the group that they lose sense of self and personal responsibility
Deutsch and Gerrard (1995)
categorised motivation to conform into two types: normative social influence and informational social influence
Diachronic Consistency
where members of a minority continue to express their message over time
Disobedient Models
provide social support by modelling that disobedience is possible, therefore could be seen as a form of conformity
Dispositional Attribution
explanation of individual behaviour as a result caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual
Dissenters
those who go against the majority, providing social support and thus making it easier for individuals to also resist social influence
Ethnocentrism
the attitude that one’s ethnicity or nationality is superior to other ethnicities or nationalities
Falchikov (1990)
content analysis into children’s ideas about old age using drawings made for the purpose and found evidence of stereotyped perceptions of older people in children
Fascist Scale
created by Adorno in 1950 and measured by a questionnaire to measure how many authoritarian personality characteristics a person has
Flexibility
minorities that compromise and are slightly inconsistent are more persuasive, but this questions the importance of consistency
Heaven’s Gate Cult
a Californian cult which combined elements of Christianity with a belief in UFOs. In March 1997, 39 members of the group committed suicide in the belief that their souls would be transferred to a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Most of the cult members had severed contact with their families and had sold their worldly belongings. They had committed themselves to a celibate life with eight of the men submitting to voluntary castration, seemingly in preparation of a new gender-free level of existence
Henri Tajfel Experiment 1971
the same as the Robber’s Cave experiment, but took place online with people who had never met in real life, but the results were the same
Hofling Hospital Experiment 1966
Involved 22 real nurses on night duty at a psychiatric hospital. The investigator phoned them and asked if they had the drug astrolen. When the nurse checked she could see that the maximum dosage is supposed to be 10mg. When they spoke with the doctor, they were told to administer 20mg of the drug to a patient. The doctor would say that they were in a hurry and would sign the authorization form later on. When asked previously what they would do in that situation ninety-three percent of the nurses stated they wouldn’t obey, but in reality ninety-five percent obeyed.
