Social influence

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

When a persons private or public views are influenced by the majority.
- eg. a change in attitude or forming a new attitude for the first time. Their private and public views don’t match.

Question 2

Name the three types of conformity

Answer 2

Compliance
Identification
Internalisation

Question 3

What is compliance?

Answer 3

When a person conforms publicly but not privately, to be accepted by a group and avoid social rejection. Their private and public views usually don’t match.

Question 4

What is identification?

Answer 4

When a person conforms to be like their role model or a social role that they admire its called identification because they have identified. Their private and public attitudes match.

Question 5

Things in identification

Answer 5

• views change publicly and privately
• Their attitudes don’t last; they depend on admiring the social role or role model

Question 6

What is internalisation?

Answer 6

Internalisation is when you conform to an attitude and believe its correct.(They conform privately and publicly, because they are persuaded that the attitudes of the majority are correct)

Question 7

Things about Internalisation

Answer 7

• People conform publicly and privately
• Long lasting attitudes which are hard to change

Question 8

How long does each type of conformity last?

Answer 8

• Compliance: Doesn’t last when the majority isn’t there and so its known as a weak type of conformity
• Identification: When people conform by identification, their changes in attitudes and behaviours only last while they admire the social role or role model its a medium form of conformity
• Internalisation: When people conform by internalisation their changes in attitudes and behaviours last even if the majority change their minds, so we say it is astrong type of conformity

Question 9

Real life explanations for conformity :

Answer 9

Zimbardo’s Prison study (Phillip Zimbardo was a professor at Stanford University).He wanted an explanation to why people do bad things

Question 10

In what year did Zimbardo’s study take place

Answer 10

In 1971

Question 11

What was the aim of zimbardo’s experiment?

Answer 11

To investigate if prison brutality happens because of the personality of guards and prisoners or because they are conforming to social roles

Question 12

What did Zimbardo do?

Answer 12

• He converted the basement of his University into a mock prison
• 75 Male university students responded to Zimbardo’s news paper adverts.
• Out of these volunteers 21 were recruited to take part in the investigation
• Participants were then randomly divided into the role of either prisoner or guard.
• The prisoners were arrested fingerprinted stripped off their clothes and given clothes that looked like prisoner clothes.
• The guards were dressed in Guard uniform and sunglasses they were given handcuffs bats
• ## Their behaviour was then observed in the controlled enviroment

Question 13

What method of data collection was he using?

Answer 13

He was conducting a closed overt observation (which is when the group involved in the study knows that they are being observed)

Question 14

Findings…

Answer 14

When normal men were given new social roles that gave them more power and encouraged violent behaviour, they become brutal.

Prison brutality = driven by situation, not personality

Question 15

1 criticism of Zimbardo’s study

Answer 15

UNETHICAL (psychologically harmed) (participants didn’t give informed consent)

Para Example:
Some may argue that Zimbardo’s experiment was unethical for two reasons. Firstly due to the fact participants were psychologically harmed as there was a lot of crying and distress caused during the experiment and secondly that the participants did not know what they were consenting to and so could not give informed consent and they werent informed about the traumetic experiences that were coming their way.

2.

Question 16

Counter argument:

Answer 16

Lack of awareness

Zimbardo argued that he selected psychologically healthy people, and that he didn’t know that the study would turn out so violent and therefore he stopped the experiment before it got any worse.

Question 17

2nd Criticism

Answer 17

Lack of generalisability

Zimbardo recruited mainly white middle classed men, therefore it cannot be generalised to everyone as for example his findings tell us nothing about why maybe a ten year old asian girl may conform.

Question 18

Counterargument:

Answer 18

Zimbardo’s study could explain brutality in the real world meaning they didnt lack mundane realism and therefore suggesting that his results did generalise to an extent.

Question 19

3rd criticism

Answer 19

Lacked ecological validity

the study didnt seem realistic and so the participants may have not believed that it was real and so didnt behave as they would in the real world.

Question 20

Counterargument

Answer 20

Zimbardo stated that the participants did take it seriously as they presented real strong reactions furthermore it was argues that during the experiment 90% of the conversations were about life in prison.

Question 21

4th criticism

Answer 21

Investigator effects

Zimbardo also played the role of prison warden in his own study, therefore it can be said that he might have biased the experiments by influencing the behaviour of his participants, the participants may have been more brutal when zimbardo was around to impress him with their acting skills perhaps.

Question 22

What three variables can affect conformity?

Answer 22

1. Group size
2. Unanimity
3. Task difficulty

Question 23

How does group size affect conformity?

Answer 23

The size of the majority group effects how likely a person is to conform.

When the size of the majority group is bigger it makes the influence greater as well making people more likely to conform.

When the size of the majority group is smaller people are less likely to conform as the influence is also smaller.

the bigger the majority the smaller the effect of increasing the group size as Rob’s conformity levels will not be changed.

Question 24

How does unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 24

Unanimity is how close the group is to all having the same one attitude.

As the Unanimity of the group increases conformity levels also increase

However as the unanimity of the group decreases conformity levels also decrease.

Question 25

How does task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 25

When the difficulty levels of a task are high people are more likely to conform.

However, when the task difficulty levels are low people are less likely to conform.

Question 26

What are situational variables?

Answer 26

These are factors in the environment that can unintentionally affect the levels of a study.

Variables that change the environment.

e.g.
group size
unanimity
task difficulty

Question 27

What are individual/ dispositional variables?

Answer 27

Individual variables are personal characteristics that affect conformity.

Eg.
- Mood
- Personality
- Culture
- Gender

Question 28

Name the 2 explanations to why people conform…

Answer 28

1.Normative social influence (NCS)
2.Informational social influence (ISC)

Question 29

What is Normative social influence?

Answer 29

When someone conforms because they want to be liked and accepted by the group, and they avoid rejection from the group.

i.e. people do what they consider is normal so that they are accepted.

People will always conform by compliance

Question 30

What is Informational social influence?

Answer 30

When someone conforms when they are unsure of what to do and what to think, so they look at the majority because we think that they are likely to be correct.

People will conform by identification or internalisation.

Question 31

Strengths of Normative social influence.

Answer 31

Normative influence is greater when there is

-explains why people conform when there is high social pressure
-Normative social influence explains Compliance- when people comply its always due to normative social influence

Question 32

Weakness for Normative social influence

Answer 32

• It can’t explain why people conform when social pressure is low

Question 33

Strengths of Informational social influence

Answer 33

• ICS explains why majority effects conformity levels
  -ICS also explains why we conform when we are uncertain about what to do or think.
• ICs also suggests the reasons behind internalisation

Question 34

Jenness’s Jelly Beans Experiment

Answer 34

• Arthur jenness
• In 1932
• recruited male and female psychology students
• he asked them how many jelly beans there were in a given jar.
• then he put the individual people in groups and asked them to discuss and put their estimates together.
• then Jenness privately asked them how many jelly beans they think wa in each jar and to make them say the correct answer he said that whoever guesses the closest number will win a prize.
• it was later seen that their estimates had completely changed after the group discussions showing that they had all conformed, and were influenced by the other group members.
• this showed informational social influence because social pressure was low and uncertainty was high

Question 35

Criticism of Jenness’s study

Answer 35

• it mights have involved normative social influence as after telling their estimates they were asked to make a brief report on what had happened in th group and because they feared that the report may be later shown to the rest of their group and in order to not get seen as someone who dissaproved with the group and to be liked by the group they may have given the total estimate to the number discussed within the group.
• Ambiguity. Their was no clear correct answer and so it may seem more natural for people to work together and copy each other.
• lacked mundane realism and ecological validity

Question 36

What year was aschs line study conducted in?

Answer 36

Soloman Asch’s line study was conducted in 1951

Question 37

How many participants were in in asch’s study

Answer 37

123 male American undergraduates.

Question 38

His aim

Answer 38

The aim of Asch’s experiment was to investigate whether people will conform with a majority when the majority are obviously wrong

Question 39

what he did

Answer 39

18 trials groups of 6 5 were confederates and 1 was the real participant

• the confederates were asked to give the wrong answer 12 out of 18 times.
• he did the experiment with a control group privately in which he found out that the task was realitivly easy as the control group had a 0.04% error rate.

Question 40

findings

Answer 40

• 75% conformed on at least once on trial
• 36.8% they conformed overall
• 5% conformed on every trial
• participants were conforming to fit in with the majority
• showed that they were complying
• supports normative social influence

Question 41

1 criticism of Aschs line study

Answer 41

• Lacked ecological validity: The study might not be relevant to how people behave in real life

Question 42

Response to the criticism

Answer 42

• Laboratory studies have better control over extraneous variables as the experimenter can easily control all the variables.
  
  • eg
    
    • the time of the day
    • the lines that the participants
      had to look at
    • The amount of time that the
      confederates had to think.
• Laboratory studies help to establish a cause and effect relationship
• therefore showing that asch could establish a cause and effect relationship between the presence of an incorrect majority.
• Because the study was conducted in a lab it can be replicated.

Question 43

2nd criticism

Answer 43

-Demand Characteristics

The participants may have found put that the confederates were lying, so they thought that was the right thing to do.

Question 44

Response to the criticism:

Answer 44

Post study interview suggested that the participants really did conform.

Question 45

3rd criticism:

Answer 45

Ignored the power of individual variables.

25% of the participants didn’t even conform once, this doesn’t match the conclusions that people conform even when they are correct, it doesn’t suggest that not everyone will conform he ignored that fact that other people are just more likely to conform, regardless of the situation.

• variable that make other people more likely to conform are called Dispositional variables, individual variables, participant variables.

Question 46

Response

Answer 46

75% of the people did conform at least once which outweighs the 25% who didn’t

Question 47

What year did asch do more experiments

Answer 47

1953

Question 48

What were the changes made in the study (variable 1)

Answer 48

variable 1: 1 of the confederates gave the same right answer as the participants.

• this was done to to see if unanimity can lead to the conformity level decreasing. Which it did.

Question 49

What were the conformity levels in Variable 1:unanimity

Answer 49

5.5%

Question 50

Variable 2?

Answer 50

One confederate and one participant. then he kept on adding more and more confederates until he reached up to 15 confederates.

• This time he was testing how group size affects conformity levels.
• as group members increased conformity levels also increased however this only happened up to three people after those three people conformity levels weren’t affected.

Question 51

conformity levels in variable 2: group size

Answer 51

(2 confederates) increased to 13%
(3 confederates) increased to 32%

Question 52

Variable 3?

Answer 52

He made the task difficult by making the lines harder to match by making them just about the same lenth

• As task difficulty went up conformity levels also sent up as it increased the participants uncertainty, as they were unsure about the answer and so assumed that the majority knew best.

Question 53

conformity levels in variable 3: task difficulty

Answer 53

it increased

Question 54

what are individual variables?

Answer 54

Individual variables, also called dispositional variables, are variables that describe personal characteristics of a person.

Question 55

Authority meaning

Answer 55

When a person has the power to give orders.

Question 56

What is obedience?

Answer 56

Following the direct orders of someone with authority.

Question 57

What are the 4 situational variables affecting obedience?

Answer 57

1. The proximity of authority figure.
2. The proximity of the victim.
   3.The location
3. The presence of uniform.

Question 58

How does proximity affect obedience.

Answer 58

If the authoritative figure is closer to you are more likely to obey their orders.

Question 59

How does location affect obedience?

Answer 59

We are more likely to obey in locations which carry authority.

Question 60

How does power affect obedience?

Answer 60

If someone is wearing uniform it shows that they have more power and authority and so therefore someone is most likely to obey their orders.

Question 61

How does the proximity of the victim affect obedience

Answer 61

if the person obeying is aware of what their actions can do to the victim such as the consequences then the person is less likely to conform.

Question 62

Real life application

Answer 62

Hofling’s Nurse study

• Nurses on night duty
• ## Doctor calls and asks the nurses to see if there is the availability of the drug called astroten

Question 63

What is a social hierarchy

Answer 63

A social group where the power structure is unequal.

Question 64

Name the three explanations for authority

Answer 64

1. Legitimacy of authority.
2. Agency theory
3. Authoritarian Personality

Question 65

What year did Milgram’s study come around?

Answer 65

1974

Question 66

What explanation of obedience did Milgram try studying

Answer 66

Legitimacy of authority.

Question 67

What does the legitimacy of authority

Answer 67

Because we grow up in social hierarchies, we learn from a young age to obey people who are higher up in the social hierarchy.

• according to milgram we obey to the people who are higher up in the social hierarchy, because we see their authority as legitimate.

Question 68

What is the agency theory:

Answer 68

people will obey the authoritative figure if they feel like the the authoritative figure will take responsibility for the oncoming consequences.

Question 69

What is moral strain:

Answer 69

When someone feels they need to obey the authority figure, but they don’t want to be responsible for the horrible consequences, as they feel like they are an agent to the authoritative figure.

Question 70

What is the Agentic state?

Answer 70

When a person shifts responsibility and sees themselves as an agent acting on behalf of an authority figure this is called the agentic state.

Question 71

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 71

When a person act out of their own free will and takes responsibility for their own actions this is called the autonomous state.

• This comes from the word auto which means self. = your taking responsibility for yourself.

Question 71

When a person shifts from an Agentic state to an Autonomous state we call this shift a…

Answer 71

Agentic shift.

Question 72

What are the personality characteristics of someone who has an Authotarian personality?

Answer 72

-These people look absolutely down on the people that are lower than them in the social hierarchy.

-They tend to be
- Aggressive
- Strict
- Rigid

Question 73

Who came up with the theroy that supports the fact that we obey if we have an authtarian personality

Answer 73

Adorno

• he came up with these findings because he wanted to explain obedience in the second world war when geraman nazis followed the hitlers order to kill millions of jews.

Question 74

What does Adorno say about from where this Authotarian personality comes from

Answer 74

Adorno argues that the authotarian personality comes from an over strict childhood parenting.

Because stricty