Social influence Flashcards
What is social influence?
The influence that others can cause individuals to change their behaviour
What is conformity?
When the behaviour of an individual or small group is influences by a larger or dominant groups
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Internalisation, compliance and identification
What’s internalisation as a type of conformity?
Means accepting the majority’s views as your own, accepting and internalising then so they are now your own
What’s compliance as a type of conformity?
Means going along with things even if you disagree with them, doing this to appear normal
What’s identification as a type of conformity?
Conforming to what expected of you to fulfil a social role trying to imitate the role model
What did Sherif (1935) research?
Whether people are influenced by others when they are dong an ambiguous test
What did Asch (1951) study?
Designed an experiment to see whether people would conform to a majority incorrect answer in an unambiguous task
What were the 3 situational factors that Asch’s participants influenced by?
Group size, unanimity/social support and task difficulty
How do we know Asch’s participants influenced by the group size?
With only 2 confederates the real participant conformed on only 14% of the critical trials, with 3 confederates conformity rose to 32%
How do we know Asch’s participants influenced by Unanimity/social support?
Ran the experiment again but this time with a supporter meaning one of the confederates chose the right answer it was easier for the participant to resist conforming (fell to 5.5%)
How do we know Asch’s participants influenced by the task difficulty?
When that task was made more difficult more people conformed, people are more likely to conform when they are less confident in their answer
What did Asch find in his debrief?
He found a common factor of confidence in those people that didn’t conform
What are social roles?
Behaviours that society expects from you, set of behaviours and expectations that come with holding these positions
What did Zimbardo et al (1973) investigate?
Conformity to social roles, created a mock prisons to determine how people would conform to assigned roles of prisoner or guard
Who replicated Zimbardo et al’s study?
Orlando (1973)
What did Orlando (1973) do in their study?
Set up a mock psychiatric ward in a hospital for 3 days 29 staff volunteered to be ‘patients’ 22 staff just carried out their normal tasks only took a little while for people to start acting like patients, conforming to their given roles
What were Reicher and Haslam (2006) interested in investigating through Zimbardo’s study?
How the group dynamic changes over time
What did Milgram (1963) study?
Obedience
What is good about Milgram’s study?
High internal validity it was shown that participants did think it was real and showed stressed reactions
What is bad about Milgram’s study?
Low ecological validity, ethical issues (lacks informed consent)
What are the 4 situational factors that Milgram identified to affect abedience?
Presence of allies, proximity of the victim, proximity of the authority and location of the experiment
What’s meant by Presence of allies, in Milgram’s study?
When there were 3 teachers (1 participant and 2 confederates) the real participant was less likely to obey if the others refused to obey, having allies can make it easier to resist orders
What’s meant by Proximity of the victim, in Milgram’s study?
Milgram’s results suggest an important factor was the proximity of the learner. In the condition described above, 65% gave max shock. Dropping to 40% with the learner in the same room and 30% when they had to put the learners hand on the shock plate
What’s meant by Proximity of the authority, in Milgram’s study?
When the authority figure gave prompts by phone from another room, obedience rates dropped to 23%, when closer together orders were harder to resist
What’s meant by location of the experiment, in Milgram’s study?
When the participants were told the study was being run by a private company, and the experiment was moved to a set of run-down officers in a nearby town, the proportion of people giving the max shock fell to 48%.
When his association with a prestigious uni was removed, authority of the experimenter seemed less legitimate, so the pariticipants were more likely to question it.
What is meant by an agentic state?
When people behave on behalf of an external authority, meaning they act as someone’s agent than taking personal responsibility for their actions.
What’s the opposite of agentic state?
Autonomously (not following orders)
What does Milgram’s agency theory state?
That when we feel we’re acting out the wishes of another person we feel less responsible for our action
This agentic state was also encouraged by what?
Experiment’s set-up, participants voluntarily entered a social contact with the experimenter to take part and follow the procedure of this study.
In Milgram’s Agency Theory (1973) that explains obedience whats meant by reluctance to disrupt the experiment?
Participants had already been paid, so may have felt obliged to continue.
In Milgram’s Agency Theory (1973) that explain obedience whats meant by the pressure of the surrondings?
The experiment took place in a presigious university, this made the experimenter seem like a legitimate authority
