Social Influence Flashcards
Conformity
A change in a persons behaviour or opinion as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people
Majority influence
Yielding to group pressure
Compliance
Changing beliefs publicly and not privately to fit in
Identification
Confirming publicly and privately but temporarily because you value something eg you value their friendship
Internalisation
Public and private genuine belief and a permanent change
Aim of Asch’s study
Examine how social pressure from a majority could effect someone’s behaviour
Procedure (5 points)
123 male students
Visual perception task
Seven confederates (actors)
18 trials
12 critical trials (wrong answers)
Findings
Real participants conformed on 37% of critical trials.
75% of participants conformed on at least one critical trial
25% never conformed
Most knew their answers were incorrect but wanted to fit in as they thought they’d be ridiculed
Two process model
The need to be right (ISI)
The need to be liked(NSI)
Aims of Zimbardos study
To investigate how readily people would conform to social roles of guard and prisoner
Examine weather behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors or external situational factors
Procedure zimbardos study
Converted Stanford university basement into a mock prison
21 male student volunteers
Prisoners were referred to by a number,issued a uniform, and strip searched
Guards were given ‘symbols of power’
No physical violence was permitted
Findings of zimbardos study
Guards began to harass prisoners.
Acted in a brutal and sadistic manner.
Prisoners adopted prisoner like behaviours and became submissive
Guards became aggressive and assertive
The guards became a threat to the prisoners psychological and physical health
social influence
the process by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behavious
obedience
when an individual follows a direct order from a person who is usually a figure of authority who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour doesn’t occur
destructive obedience
when an individual obeys an order to do something immoral which causes the individual carrying out the order distress and regret
aims of Milgram’s experiment
to know if Germans were different and more obedient to authority than people in other countries.
to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain in another.
Milgram’s findings
all real participants went to at least 300 volts and 65% continued to 450
participants showed extreme tension three even had seizures
Stanford prison experiment aims
to investigate how readily people would conform to the social roles of guard and prisoner in a stimulation of prison life.
to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prison was due to internal dispositional factors or external situational factors
situational variables
features of an environment that impact the degree to which individuals obey
proximity
the physical closeness or distance of an authoritative figure to the person they are giving an order to
