Social Influence

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

How people act around eachother and how their thoughts, behaviour and feelings are effected by the presence of others.

Question 2

What is conformity?

Answer 2

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group.

Question 3

What is compliance?

Answer 3

To do what you are told by others, once away from group, individual returns to “normal”- public but not private acceptance of behaviours.

Question 4

What is identification?

Answer 4

There is something they value about the group, they change behaviours publicly but temporarily hold those beliefs privately.

• links to Zimbardo

Question 5

What is internalisation?

Answer 5

When an individual genuinely believes and accepts a group norm, it becomes part of the way they think, even when not in the group

Question 6

What is the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 6

He wanted to examine how social pressure from a majority could effect someone’s behaviour using a ‘visual perception’ test

• use confederate

Question 7

What was the procedure in Asch’s experiment?

Answer 7

. 123 male students believed they were taking part in a visual perception test
. Asch used a line judgement test where he placed real, naive participants with seven confederates
. The real participant always sat second to last or last
. Each person had to say out loud which line was most like the target line in length, the correct answer was obvious
. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trails, called critical trials

• group size
  unanimity
  task difficulty

Question 8

What were the findings in Asch’s experiment?

Answer 8

. The real participants conformed on 36.8% of the critical trials
. 75% of participants conformed on at least one trial and 25% did not conform at all
. Asch used a control group, one real participant completed without confederates and less than 1% conformed
. Asch interviewed after experiment: went along with group in order to fit in or because they knew that they would be ridiculed.

Question 9

What were the conclusions of Asch’s experiment?

Answer 9

. Individual judgement based on majority judgement
. Participants conformed due to normative social influence and desire to fit in and avoid rejection

Question 10

What does the acronym G.R.A.V.E stand for?

Answer 10

. Generalisability
. Reliability
. Applicability
. Validity
. Ethics

Question 11

What were the ethical issues of Asch’s study?

Answer 11

.Asch deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity.
.However, the participants had to be decieved in order to give an incorrect answer.
. Had the participants known that there were confederates that were frequently giving the wrong answer they may have given different answers, meaning that the findings from the experiment were not valid

Question 12

What was the reliability of Asch’s study?

Answer 12

Subsequent replications of Asch’s
conformity study have not found the same results. Perrin and Spencer (1980) recreated Asch’s
study and found that only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials.This is very different to the 36.8% conformity rate in Asch’s original study.However, these results could be explained by societal changes in conformity levels. 1950’s
America when Asch’s original study occurred was much more conformist than in 1980 when Perrin and Spencer completed theirs.

Question 13

What was the validity of Asch’s study?

Answer 13

The task of identifying which of three lines matched the target line is trivial. This meant that the task lacked mundane realism as it was not similar to tasks that would be completed in everyday situations. However, this experiment did show that people conformed to a obviously incorrect answers simply to fit into a group.This is an important fact to know about human behaviour.

There was a high degree of control
in Asch’s research. For example, in the task difficulty variation, everything apart from the
length of the lines remained the same. This meant that he was able to see exactly how different variations of the experiment impacted on conformity levels.However, increasing the internal validity of a study, decreases the external validity. As Asch’s experiment was so controlled, it did not replicate everyday situations and therefore lacked external validity

Question 14

What is the generalisability of Asch’s study?

Answer 14

The findings from Asch’s research are not representative of all genders. 123 males were used in the experiment,
with no female participants. This means that the findings from the
experiment cannot be applied to everyone as the conformity rates of men and women may not be the same. This is an example of beta bias where it is thought that there is little difference between male and female behaviour suggesting that male behaviour is the “norm”, but Eagly and Carli (1981) carried out a meta-analysis of research into conformity and found that women were more likely to conform than men

Question 15

What is the aim of Zimbardos study?

Answer 15

. Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the social roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life
. He also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal disposition factors- the people themselves, or external situation factors- the environment and the conditions of the prison

Question 16

What was the procedure in Zimbardos study?

Answer 16

. To study the roles that people play in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of Stanford University’s psychology building into a mock prison
. He advertised for 24 male students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight
. Participants were randomly assigned to either role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment
. Prisoners were blindfolded, strip-searched, de-loused, issued a uniform and referred to by their number only. Guards were issued a khaki unform, together with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses to make eye contact impossible
. The guards worked shifts of 8 hours while the others were on call, no physical violence was permitted
. Zimbardo observed the behaviour of the prisoners and guards and also acted as a prison warden

Question 17

What were the findings of Zimbardos study?

Answer 17

. Following a rebellion by the prisoners where they ripped their uniforms and shouted and swore at the guards, the guards and prisoners settled into their new roles
. Some guards began to harass prisoners. They behaved in a brutal and sadistic manner, apparently enjoying it, other guards joined in and other prisoners were also tormented.
. The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behaviour. They talked about prisoner issues most of the time. They told tales on eachother and began to side with the guards against prisoners who did not obey the rules
. As prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and they demanded great obedience. The prisoners were dependent on the guards and would find ways to please the guards.
. Guard behaviour became a threat to prisoners psychological health and the study was stopped after 6 days instead of 14

Question 18

What were the conclusions of Zimbardos study?

Answer 18

. Zimbardo concluded that people quickly conform to social roles, even when the role goes against their moral principles
. Situational factors were largely responsible for the behaviour found as none of the participants had ever demonstrated these behaviours previously

Question 19

What was the aim of Milgrams study?

Answer 19

Wanted to know if the Germans were different and more obedient to authority figures than people in other countries. He also wanted to find out if ordinary Americans would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to.

Question 20

What was the procedure of Milgrams study?

Answer 20

40 male participants from a range of occupations
Laboratory at Yale University
Experimenter, learner and teacher
Randomly assigned
Learner wasn’t actually strapped to chair and had predetermined answers
Learners screams got louder
Set of word pairs to test their recall
Up to 450 volts
“The experiment requires that you continue”

Question 21

What were the findings of Milgrams study?

Answer 21

All real participants went up to 300 volts and 65% went up to 450
Signs of extreme tension
14 students predicted 3% up to 450

Question 22

What were the conclusions of Milgrams study?

Answer 22

Ordinary people will obey unjust orders
Germans are not different to other people from different countries, Holocaust would’ve still happened

Question 23

What are situational variables?

Answer 23

Features of an environment that impact the degree to which individuals obey

Question 24

What is proximity?

Answer 24

The physical closeness or distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving an order to, it also refers to the physical closeness of the person carrying out an order to their “victim”

Question 25

What is location?

Answer 25

The place where an order is issued, the status of prestige of the place can impact on obedience

Question 26

What is uniform?

Answer 26

The clothes an authority figure wears that symbolise their position of authority

Question 27

What is the right to withdraw?

Answer 27

The participants were not given a right to withdraw as every time that the participants refused to administer the shock, the experimenter would state “the experiment requires that you continue”
Participants felt like they could not withdraw- some disobeyed
Indicated very clearly that they could leave

Question 28

What is lack of consent?

Answer 28

Could not give fully informed Consent because they did not know what the procedure involved
Participants were decieved
Many psychological studies could not occur unless blurred consent
Other options not possible

Question 29

What is Deception?

Answer 29

Electric shocks were fake
Allocation of teacher and learner were fixed
Consequences too severe- unjust
No lasting damage and debrief was throughout
Follow up questionnaires showed study as valuable

Question 30

What is failure to protect from harm?

Answer 30

Some degree of anxiety
Some participants believed it was for real
Should be judged by consequences to participant
Lack of long term harm, debriefing and follow up questions were valuable

Question 31

Give two explanations of conformity

Answer 31

Informational Social Influence (ISI) - desire to be right. Occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure on how to behave (i.e. occurs in ambiguous situations)

Normative Social Influence - desire to be liked. Done to gain social approval from a group and can lead to compliance.

Question 32

Evaluate Asch’s research and variations

Answer 32

(-) Ethical issues (deception) - Asch made the naive ppts believe that all the confederates were actually real people, and also told them that the experiment researching “visual perception”
(+) However, without deceiving the ppts, Asch could never have found these results, and the insight it gives us into majority influence is significant.
(-) Only used male students so can’t generalise to whole population as women are more interested in social bonds so would presumably conform more; low population validity
(-) Only used American students; Smith and Bond (1998) point out that some Asian collectivist cultures would show much higher rates of conformity than the western individualistic attitudes of American students
(-) Artificial task so can’t generalise findings to everyday life
(-) Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch’s study using UK engineering students and found that out of 396 trials, only 1 student conformed; 1950s America was a very conformist culture and society has changed a lot since then; suggests that the “Asch effect” isn’t consistent over time and so therefore isn’t a central component of human behaviour

Question 33

Describe Asch’s variations and findings of those variations

Question 34

Evaluate conformity

Answer 34

(+ NSI) Asch interviewed the naive ppts after the experiment and found that most of them gave the wrong answer due to a desire to be liked by the group; supports the idea of NSI
(- ISI) Perrin and Spencer (1980) found that UK engineering students were far less conformist, i.e. were far more confident in their precision; doesn’t apply to everyone i.e. not a general rule for human behaviour
(- NSI) McGhee and Teevan (1967) found that nAffiliators (people who have a greater need for social relationships) were far more conformist, i.e. NSI doesn’t affect everyone in the same way
(+ ISI) Lucas et al (2006) gave students easy and difficult maths problems and found that conformity rose with the difficulty of the problems, especially for those who rated their maths ability as poor; shows that in a more ambiguous situation, ISI has a stronger effect

Question 35

Evaluate Zimbardo’s research

Answer 35

(+) Some control over variables; all ppts were emotionally stable and were randomly assigned to roles so increased validity.
(-) Banuazizi and Mohamed (1975) suggest that ppts were just play acting and hadn’t really internalised their roles, with one guard saying he based his behaviour on a film he had seen called Cool Hand Luke; questions the validity of the findings
(-) Reicher and Haslam (2006) replicated Z’s experiment and found that the prisoners took control; acts as contradictory evidence, lowering validity.
(-) Ethical issues; Z also played the role of the superintendent and so couldn’t remain objective and also could’t look after the psychological well-being of his ppts.