Social Influence

Question 1

Abortion

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Abu Ghraib

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Adolf Eichmann

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Agency Theory

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Agentic State

Answer 5

individual carries out the orders of another person, acting as their agent with little personal responsibility

Question 6

Agentic Shift

Answer 6

when someone goes from an autonomous state to an agentic state

Question 7

Allen and Levine (1968)

Answer 7

showed that the social acceptance of the minority group is important in resisting conformity by repeating Asch’s line judgment task but introduced a dissenting confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses, thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired

Question 8

Anti-Conformity

Answer 8

a consistent movement away from social conformity, such as adopting the behaviour and norms of the minority

Question 9

Artificial Situation

Answer 9

where a situation has low ecological validity and cannot be generalised to real-life situations

Question 10

Asch Effect

Answer 10

the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgement

Question 11

Attracting Attention

Answer 11

minorities attract the attention of the majority to the issue

Question 12

Augmentation Principle

Answer 12

the appeal of the minority is strengthened if they are perceiveved to suffer for their views

Question 13

Authoritarian Personality

Answer 13

a person who has extreme respect for authority and is obedient to those who have power over them

Question 14

Autokinetic Effect

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Autonomous State

Answer 15

where individuals are seen as personally responsible for their actions

Question 16

Bashir et al (2013)

Answer 16

found that some minority groups live up to the stereotypes associated with those groups, making them act as a barrier to social change

Question 17

BBC Prison Experiment

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Berkowitz (2004)

Answer 18

defined a social norm as a group’s expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behaviour for its members, such as how they are supposed to behave and think

Question 19

Binding Factors

Answer 19

a concept theorised by Milgram, who stated there are factors that bind someone to a commitment even if they don’t want to do it, for example, if Milgram’s participants had stopped, they would be admitting what they had done was wrong

Question 20

Bond and Smith Experiment 1996

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Child Labour

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

China’s One Child Policy

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Cognitive Conflict

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 24

unpleasant feeling of anxiety created when simultaneously holding two contradictory ideas

Question 25

Collectivist Cultures

Answer 25

cultures such as China, which generally emphasise the needs of the group over the individual

Question 26

Commitment

Answer 26

consistency in the face of abuse shows that minorities are committed and helps motivate individuals to consider their viewpoint

Question 27

Compliance

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Confidence

Answer 28

another personality factor that can explain differences in conformity as the more confident an individual is, the less likely they are to conform

Question 29

Conformity

Answer 29

changing what we do, think or say in response to others

Question 30

Consistency

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Conversion

Answer 31

where majorities become gradually won over to a minority viewpoint

Question 32

Critical Mass

Answer 32

the moment at which a minority viewpoint becomes mainstream

Question 33

Degradation Process

Answer 33

the process of degrading a person, causing them to decline to a low, destitute or demoralised state

Question 34

Dehumanisation

Answer 34

degrading people by lessening their human qualities

Question 35

Deindividuation

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Deutsch and Gerrard (1955)

Answer 36

defined a social norm as a group’s expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behaviour for its members, such as how they are supposed to behave and think

Question 37

Deutsch and Gerrard (1995)

Answer 37

categorised motivation to conform into two types: normative social influence and informational social influence

Question 38

Diachronic Consistency

Answer 38

where members of a minority continue to express their message over time

Question 39

Disobedient Models

Answer 39

provide social support by modelling that disobedience is possible, therefore could be seen as a form of conformity

Question 40

Dispositional Attribution

Answer 40

explanation of individual behaviour as a result caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual

Question 41

Dissenters

Answer 41

those who go against the majority, providing social support and thus making it easier for individuals to also resist social influence

Question 42

Ethnocentrism

Answer 42

the attitude that one’s ethnicity or nationality is superior to other ethnicities or nationalities

Question 43

Falchikov (1990)

Answer 43

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

Question 44

Fascist Scale

Answer 44

created by Adorno in 1950 and measured by a questionnaire to measure how many authoritarian personality characteristics a person has

Question 45

Flexibility

Answer 45

minorities that compromise and are slightly inconsistent are more persuasive, but this questions the importance of consistency

Question 46

Hare (2003)

Answer 46

described a social role as a pattern of behaviour that is expected of a person in a given setting or group

Question 47

Heaven's Gate Cult

Answer 47

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

Question 48

Henri Tajfel Experiment 1971

Answer 48

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

Question 49

Hofling Hospital Experiment 1966

Answer 49

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.

Question 50

Identification

Answer 50

people change their behaviour and mind for a time, but it is later changed back; people switch from internalisation to identification

Question 51

Individualistic Cultures

Answer 51

cultures such as the United States, which generally emphasise the needs of the individual over the group

Question 52

Individual Variables

Answer 52

personal characteristics that affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures

Question 53

Informational Social Influence

Answer 53

behaviour that is done to be right when you are unaware of what to do and follow the group norm and conform

Question 54

Individuation

Answer 54

the process by which a person develops an understanding of self, developing an individual from the universal

Question 55

Ironic Deviance

Answer 55

takes place when we believe that the behaviour of the majority is the result of unreasonable pressure from authority

Question 56

Internalisation

Answer 56

people change their behaviour and their mind and believe that what they are doing is right; they may later switch to identification

Question 57

Jeness (1932)

Answer 57

this is an experiment where participants are asked to estimate how many jelly beans are in a jar and then discuss their answers. The participants are then asked again what they think. The study found that most participants changed their answers.

Question 58

Jobsworth

Answer 58

do everything by the book and enjoy watching others being punished, often have authoritarian personalities

Question 59

Jonestown

Answer 59

a cult set up by Jim Jones in the 1960s in California which relocated to the Guyanese Jungle. Over 930 people died at Jonestown. 909 of them died in a mass murder-suicide, making the Jonestown murder-suicide the greatest single loss of American civilian life until 9/11 in 2001

Question 60

Kilham and Mann (1974)

Answer 60

replicated Milgram’s experiment in Australia and found only 16% went al the way

Question 61

LaVoy et al (2001)

Answer 61

conduct analysis examined the drawings made by groups of seven- and eight-year-old children from Japan and the US. They found significant cultural differences, for example, the Japanese children added significantly fewer smiles, created larger figures and had a higher number of details in their pictures

Question 62

Legitimacy of Authority

Answer 62

the degree to which indviduals are seen as justified in having power over others due to individuals being socialised to accept the power and status of authoirty figures, an example of which is army officers, who are seen as having legitimate authority to issue orders and wear insignia to show legitimate authority, which puts emphasis on doing your duty

Question 63

Leonard Bickham Experiment (1974)

Answer 63

Bickman designed an experiment to ascertain whether appearance of the person will have an effect on obedience. He dressed his experimenter up as a guard, milkman and civilian and got him to give people orders. 89% obeyed the guard, 57% the milkman and 33% the civilian.

Question 64

Lifton (1986)

Answer 64

studied German doctors at Auschwitz and they way they slowly shifted from autonomous to agentic state, suggesting this is a very slow process

Question 65

Location

Answer 65

can add to or subtract from the legitimacy of an authority figure

Question 66

Locus of Control

Answer 66

extent to which individuals believe they can control events in their lives, individual differences in a person’s beliefs and expectations about what controls events in their lives

Question 67

Continuum of Locus of Control

Answer 67

people are not either internal or external; there is a spectrum and on one side is highly external and one side is highly internal and low locus of control is in the middle

Question 68

External Locus of Control

Answer 68

where a person believes that what happens to them is largely down to luck and chance, so are more likely to conform because their personal opinions are limited

Question 69

Internal Locus of Control

Answer 69

where a person believes that what happens to them is largely the result of their own behaviour and that they have control over their lives because they think for themselves and control their own behaviour, meaning they are less likely to conform

Question 70

Low Locus of Control

Answer 70

the middle point on the continuum of locus of control, whereby someone is neither highly internal or highly external

Question 71

Mai Lai Massacre

Answer 71

a real world parallel of the Milgram experiment, when American soldiers killed 405 innocent unarmed civilians in the Vietnam village of Mai Lai, purely because they were told to

Question 72

Majority Influence

Answer 72

alternative term for conformity

Question 73

Mantell (1971)

Answer 73

repeated Milgram’s experiment in Germany, found that 80% went all the way

Question 74

Margaret Singer Hypothesis 1995

Answer 74

cult bonds are often created through such factors as the emotional attachment to the group and fear of powerful leaders making people feel dependent on the group

Question 75

Margaret Wetherell Experiment 1982

Answer 75

involved the Robber’s Cave experiment being repeated in different cultures, and found cultural differences. Children in New Zealand, North America and Britain show far more in-group favouritism than Pacific Island, Maori and Polynesian children

Question 76

Middendorp and Meleon (1990)

Answer 76

found that less-educated people are more likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics than well-educated people, therefore levels of education lead to obedience, not authoritarian personality characteristics

Question 77

Milgram's Obedience Experiment

Answer 77

an experiment designed to ascertain how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, where sixty five percent of participants attempted to shock an innocent stranger with 450V of electricity, purely because an authority figure told them to. All participants went past 300V, which is enough to kill a person

Question 78

Milgram Paradigm

Answer 78

experimental procedure for measuring obedience rates

Question 79

Minority Influence

Answer 79

where an individual or small group influence attributes and behaviour of a larger group

Question 80

Mock Psychiatric Ward Study

Answer 80

– In 1973, Norma Orlando looked at how people conformed to roles given to them in an experiment in a mock psychiatric ward. The ward was open for three days and 51 staff members took part, 29 as mock patients and 22 by working their normal jobs. The mock patients quickly began acting like normal hospital patients. They conformed to their given roles. Lots of patients showed signs of having withdrawal and depression. Six mock patients attempted to escape the ward. Some mock patients admitted to feelings of lost identity. This study gave an insight into real patients' experiences in hospital, which influenced hospital staff to empathise more with patients.

Question 81

Morality

Answer 81

decisions and behaviour based upon the perception of proper conduct

Question 82

Murder of Kitty Genovese 1964

Answer 82

an example of social conformity, in 1964, a 28-year-old bartender, Kitty Genovese, was raped, robbed and stabbed in Central Park. 38 witnesses heard a disturbance (though most of them assumed it was nothing serious) but none of them called for help. This is an example of social conformity

Question 83

Nemeth (1986)

Answer 83

found that when participants were asked to agree on compensation for a victim lift accident, minorities were successful when they were flexible

Question 84

Neto's Experiment 1995

Answer 84

Neto repeated Solomon Asch's experiment with both men and women and found that women are more likely to conform than men

Question 85

Nolan et al (2008)

Answer 85

found that saying ‘everyone is reducing energy consumption’ had a bigger impact than just information about energy consumption

Question 86

Normative Social Influence

Answer 86

behaviour that is done to be liked when you want to fit in with a group and be socially accepted, such as how people are more likely to smoke or vape if all of their friends are doing that even though they know the health risks

Question 87

Obedience

Answer 87

complying with demands of an authority figure

Question 88

Oliner and Oliner (1998)

Answer 88

interviewed non-Jewish survivors of the Second World War, found that those who were in the resistance were more likely to have a high internal locus of control that those who obeyed Nazis

Question 89

Perrin and Spencer Experiment 1980

Answer 89

Perrin and Spencer repeated Solomon Asch's experiment with UK engineering students and only 1 in 396 conformed. This shows that Asch's research is not consistent across situations and time so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour, as people were more likely to conform to established societal norms in the 1950s. This shows that Asch's experiment does not have temporal validity.

Question 90

Personality

Answer 90

combination of characteristics that forms an individual's distinctive nature

Question 91

Plastic Straws to Paper Straws

Answer 91

the Be Straw Free Movement was launched by Milo Cress, an American 9-year-old. It was picked up by Figgener who launched the hashtag #StopSucking, because every year 500 million straws are discarded in America alone and take 200 years to decompose whereas paper straws only take 6 weeks to decompose and don’t kill 1000000 sea turtles a year. Plastic straws were banned in the UK in 2020

Question 92

Prior Commitment

Answer 92

once a person publicly commits themselves to an opinion, they are less likely to change their minds

Question 93

Reactance

Answer 93

occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives

Question 94

Resistance

Answer 94

the ways in which individuals attempt to withstand perceived attempts to threaten freedom of choice

Question 95

Robber's Cave Experiment 1961

Answer 95

a series of experiments conducted by Muzafer Sherif involving a boys’ summer camp. The experimenters divided the boys into two groups. The groups became quite cohesive, involving norms of behaviour, jokes and secret codes. They set up a competition in the form of a tournament. Within the group, the boys were loyal, cooperative and had great solidarity, but between the groups, they were aggressive and prejudicial. The experimenters then introduced activities which required both groups to cooperate and work together.

Question 96

Robinson and Anderson

Answer 96

conduct analysis that looked at the prevalence of stereotypical representations of old age in a sample of American cartoon programmes

Question 97

Rotter's Questionnaire

Answer 97

a 13-part questionnaire to measure locus of control

Question 98

Schank and Abelson (1977)

Answer 98

defined a script as a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting

Question 99

Script

Answer 99

a person's knowledge about a sequence of events expected in a specific setting

Question 100

Situational Variables

Answer 100

features of an environment that affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures

Question 101

Smoke-Filled Room Experiment

Answer 101

this experiment was conceived following the Woolworth’s fire. In this experiment, one participant is put in a room with several confederates, under the illusion that they are filling out a survey. A fire alarm is then sounded and smoke is pumped into the room. The confederates are told to ignore the fire. Due to informational social influence, most people stay in the room long enough to die of smoke inhalation.

Question 102

Snowball Effect

Answer 102

minority influence slowly spreads to greater number of people until a tipping point is reached

Question 103

Social Approval

Answer 103

when an idea is accepted in society

Question 104

Social Change

Answer 104

the process by which attributes, beliefs and norms of acceptable behaviour vary over time

Question 105

Social Cryptoamnesia

Answer 105

where people forget the original source of the opinion change, as it just seems normal

Question 106

Social Disapproval

Answer 106

when an idea is unaccepted in society

Question 107

Social Impact

Answer 107

where people change their behaviour because they are under a certain amount of pressure

Question 108

Social Norm

Answer 108

a group expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable for its members, such as how they are supposed to behave and think

Question 109

Social Roles

Answer 109

the parts individuals play as part of a social group

Question 110

Social Support

Answer 110

perception of assistance and solidarity available from others

Question 111

Solomon Asch's Conforming and Normative Social Influence Experiment 1951

Answer 111

an experiment to ascertain whether people conform to a group even if they know the group is wrong. Participants were shown four lines and asked to identify which of the two lines are the same length. Each person at the table would answer wrongly and the participant would be the last but one to speak. All Asch’s participants were white male American college students. Asch found that 33% of the time, participants conformed to the obviously wrong answer. They were more likely to conform if the task difficulty was increased and less likely to conform if one confederate went against the group.

Question 112

Spector (1983)

Answer 112

found that individuals with a high internal locus of control were less likely to conform than those with a high external locus of control, but only in situations with normative social influence

Question 113

Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 113

one of the most ethically debatable experiments in history, done to ascertain whether people would conform to social roles of a prison guard or prisoner, when placed in a mock prison experiment. The experiment had to be shut down after six days because the guards had begun torturing the prisoners.

Question 114

Stanley Milgram

Answer 114

a psychologist who was the son of two Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany and the rest of his family were all sent to concentration camps. Milgram was interested in investigating the Nazi Hypothesis and what makes a person commit atrocities, so designed his Obedience experiment

Question 115

Status

Answer 115

the position of an individual within a hierarchical group; conformity is easier to resist if people perceive themselves to be of a higher status

Question 116

Synchronic Consistency

Answer 116

where members of a minority can be perceived as united on their message

Question 117

Systematic Processing

Answer 117

analysis based on critical thinking, if people have time to consider the consequences of obeying, they are more likely to disobey orders that have negative consequences

Question 118

Tarnow (2000)

Answer 118

found that flight crew were overly dependent on pilot’s perceived authority, for example, wouldn’t criticise pilots even if they were doing something dangerous because they assume the pilot must know what they were doing

Question 119

Uniform

Answer 119

gives the impression of legitimacy to authority figures, for example, in Milgram’s experiment, the researcher wore a white lab coat

Question 120

Veganism

Answer 120

founded by Donald Watson in 1944. He believed eating animals was cruel and would lead a decrease in the animal population. He founded the Vegan Society in 1944 with 25 subscribers. There are now 600000 vegans in the UK alone. Most people now know what vegan means and there are vegan options in most restaurants and supermarkets, as well as vegan clothes, shoes, cars and make-up. Vegans were originally called dairy-free vegetarians.

Question 121

Wiesenthal's Experiment 1976

Answer 121

Wiesenthal repeated Asch’s experiment, but was focusing on the effect of confidence on conformity, and showed that participants who were confident in their ability to complete a task were less likely to conform

Question 122

Williams and Sogon Experiment 1984

Answer 122

Williams and Sogon repeated Solomon Asch's experiment with groups of strangers and groups of friends and found conformity was higher amongst groups of friends than strangers

Question 123

Woolworth's Fire 1979

Answer 123

on 8th May 1979, a fire broke out in the Manchester branch of Woolworth’s, which killed 11 people. Later investigations found that the main reason people died was because they ignored alarms, instructions from staff and even the smell and visibility of smoke, but instead followed the social norm and waited to pay their restaurant bills

Question 124

Zeitgeist

Answer 124

means spirit of the time, related to what things were happening at the time that made people think a change was needed