Social influence Flashcards
Social influence
How individuals effect others and how others are effected
Conformity
-also known as majority influence
-conformity is yielding to group
pressure
-our behaviours and beliefs are influenced by larger groups of people
3 types of conformity
-compliance
- identification
-internalisation
COMPLIANCE
- a person goes along with others peoples attitudes and beliefs but does not believe them to correct
-comply publicly but there private opinion does not change
-they go along with beliefs to keep peace and gain approval
-temporary when in the presence of the group
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IDENTIFICATION
-individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions of the group as membership of the group is desirable
-both private and public - but often temporary
INTERNALISATION
- The individual accepts the group view and believes the view to be correct
-conforming to other peoples views both publicly and privately in the genuine view they are correct
- permanent
What are the two reasons people conform
-Informational social influence
-normative social influence
Informational Social influence
- humans have a need for certainty (need to be right)
-When uncertain they look for others
-happens in unfamiliar and ambiguous situations
Normative social influence
- humans have a need to be liked / be in certain social groups
-agreeing with the majority group view because we want to be liked ,accepted and gain social approval
-occurs when you fear rejection from the group/strangers
What was the original theory of conformity ?
psychologists said people conform because of either NSI OR ISI not both
Research support for ISI
Lucas et al
what did Lucas et al find - does this support or oppose ISI
Lucas et al asked students to give answers to mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult .
There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than when they were the easier ones . This was most true for students who rated there mathematic al ability as poor .
This study shows people conform in situations where they feel like they don’t know the answer
which is exactly the outcome predicted by the ISI explanation . We look to other people and assume they know better than us and must be right .
What is a nAffilator ? How does it link to NSI?
nAffiliator is the character description for people who are more concerned about being liked and therefore more effected by NSI than those who care less about being liked . These people have a greater need for affiliation - a need for being in a relationship with others.
For example McGee and Teevan (1967)found that students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform . This shows the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others .
Therefore there are individual differences in the way people respond . Not everyone effected by NSI equally
Research support for NSI
Asch’s study
Research support - Ash study
-One strength of NSI is that evidence supports it as an explanation of conformity
-For example when Asch interviewed participants some said they conformed because they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer and they were afraid of disapproval
when participants wrote their answers down conformity fell to 12.5%
-This is because giving answers privately meant there was no normative group pressure
-This shows that at least some conformity is due to a desire to no be rejected by the group for disagreeing with them
Asch baseline procedure
Asch devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others , even in a situation where the answer is certain
Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test.
Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed areal participant in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance.
The real participant wasdeceivedand was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last.
In turn, each person had to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length.
Asch Baseline findings
-On average the genuine participants agreed with confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time (i.e they conformed about 1/3 of the time )
-There were individual differences - 25% of the participants neve gave the wrong answer - (i.e never conformed)
Variables investigated by Asch
-group size
-unanimity
-task difficulty
What was Asch investigating with these variables
Ach extended his baseline study to investigate variables that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity
group size
what did Asch want to test
Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group
How did Ach test group size
-varied the number of confederates from 1-15
-Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
-conformity increased with group size -but only up to a certain point
-with three confederates - conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
-the presence of more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate soon levelled off
This suggests most people are very sensitve towards the views of others bevuase just one or two confederates was enough to wsay opinons
unanimity
What did Asch want to test
Asch wondered if the presence of a non-conforming person would effect the naïve persons conformity
How did Asch test unanimity and what were the conclusions ?
- he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates
-In one variation of the study this person this person gave the correct answer and in another variation he gave a different wrong one
-The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
-The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
-the presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naiive participant to behave more independently
-This suggests that the influence of majority depends to a large extent on being unanimous
-and non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majorities unanimous view
task difficulty
What did Asch want to test
Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would effect the degree of conformity