social influence

Question 1

Obedience or Conformity

Milgram?

Answer 1

Obedience

Question 2

Obedience or Conformity

Adorno?

Answer 2

Obedience

Question 3

What did Milgram do?

Answer 3

A shock study:
with 40 participants and 2 confederates where the student had to administer shocks to the experimenter every time they answered a question wrong. Volts started from 15V going up to 450V

Question 4

What did Milgram find in his shock study?

Answer 4

65% of participants went up to maximum shock of 450V which would result in the death of someone. Whereas 12.5% stopped at 300V

Question 4

What does it mean by a ‘situational factor’?

Answer 4

Something in the environment that influences/changes a persons behaviour

Question 5

What are the 3 situational factors that Milgram identified in his shock study?

Answer 5

1. Proximity
2. Location
3. Uniform

Question 6

What is the Agency Theory?

Answer 6

When a person changes from being in an Autonomous State to an Agentic State, in relation to obeying.

Question 7

What is the Autonomous State?

Answer 7

A state when we perceive ourselves to be responsible of our own actions and behaviour. Allowing us to feel guilt

Question 8

What is the Agentic State?

Answer 8

A state when we perceive someone else to be responsible for our actions, therefore feeling no guilt. We are an agent of someone else’s will

Question 9

What does it mean by a ‘dispositional factor’?

Answer 9

Where behaviour id due to the individuals own personality and characteristics

Question 10

What is an Authoritarian Personality and what traits does a person have with this?

Answer 10

What it is:
When an individual follows and obeys another person who they believe has authority

Traits:
- Obedience to those in legitimate authority
- Rigid in their beliefs
- Aggressive to those who think/behave differently to them
- View their own group as better than others

Question 11

What is the F-scale?

Answer 11

A test done on 2000 white American males by Adorno to determine how authoritarian their personality was. The higher the score the more likely they were to obey and respect legitimate authority.

Question 12

Who studied diffusion of responsibility and what did they find?

Answer 12

Latane & Darley:
Participants where sat in a booth with a confederate who pretended to have a heart attack.
Findings:
1 person = 85% likely to go and get help
2 people = 62% likely to go and get help
4+ people = 31% likely to go and get help

Question 13

What did Altemeyer do?

Answer 13

Studied Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA)

Question 14

What are the 3 characteristics linked with Right Wing Authoritarian?

Answer 14

1. Conventionalism - high adherence to traditional and established societal norms
2. Authoritarian aggression - aggression against “outgroups” and “deviants”
3. Authoritarian submission - submission/acceptance of people who are deemed as legitimate authority figures in society

Question 15

Evaluation of Milgram’s shock study findings

Answer 15

Strengths:
- Hofling et al (1966): tested to see if nurses would administer a lethal dose when told to do so by doctors. Found 21/22 nurses obeyed. Supports Milgram’s idea of situational factors (proximity and uniform)
- Burger (2009): found that obedience levels were almost identical to those found by Milgram back in the 1960s, showing temporal validity.
Limitations:
- Perry (2012): discovered that some participants within Milgram’s study were skeptical as to whether the shocks were real. Split groups, doubters and believers and found the latter group were more obedient. This shows the experiment lacks internal validity as it doesn’t seem real.

Question 16

What is social force?

Answer 16

When behaviour is generated/changed due to persuasion, threat, humour, embarrassment and other influences

Question 17

What are the 3 factors of social force?

Answer 17

1. Number - the more people there are putting pressure on someone, the more likely they will obey
2. Strength (legitimacy of authority) - how much power you believe the person influencing you has
3. Proximity - how recent the influence is and how close to you it is

Question 18

What are the 3 types of conformity?

Answer 18

1. Compliance - when an individual goes along with a groups belief to gain approval but doesn’t agree with their actions
2. Internalisation - when an individual can accept the views a group has but doesn’t necessarily believe in it
3. Identification - when an individual adopts the beliefs and behaviours of the group

Question 19

What is normative social influence?

Answer 19

When an individual conforms to the expectations of the majority to gain approval

Question 20

What is informational social influence?

Answer 20

When an individual has the desire to be right and fit into their environment. They look for information regarding their surroundings

Question 21

What did Asch do?

Answer 21

Line study:
123 male US undergraduates were tested and asked to match 2 lines that were the same height. On 12 of the 18 trials confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answers and during this they found that 33% of participants conformed

Question 22

Obedience or Conformity

Asch?

Answer 22

Conformity

Question 23

Obedience or Conformity

Zimbardo?

Answer 23

Conformity

Question 24

What are the 4 factors that effect the conformity rate?

Answer 24

1. Group size - in larger groups (those being 3+) conformity jumped to 30%
2. Unanimity - when given support on their answers the conformity dropped from 30% to 5.5%
3. Difficulty of task - in Asch’s study for example, if the lines were too similar in size the conformity dropped
4. Anonymity - this significantly drops the rate of conformity

Question 25

What did Zimbardo do?

Answer 25

Stanford Prison Experiment:
He used 24 male students that were assessed and then split into 2 groups randomly: prisoner or guard. The ‘prisoners’ were arrested from their homes and taken to the makeshift prison where they were given uniforms and ID numbers which they were referred to be. Guards were also given uniforms, whistles, batons and reflective sunglasses; the study supposed to last 2 weeks but was cut short after 6 days as guards were becoming too sadistic and cruel and the prisoners were becoming more passive and accepting of the behaviour exhibited toward them

Question 26

Evaluation of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison study

Answer 26

Strengths:
- Real life application, showing the impact and ecological validity of experiment as in Abu Ghraib (a prison in Iraq notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraq prisoners by American soldiers in 2003/2004), US soldiers were able to defend themselves due to the results found in Zimbardo’s study
Limitations:
- Elicits demand characteristics, therefore decreasing the validity of the experiment. A group of people with no prior knowledge of the SPE accurately guessed that 24 participants has to either act as prisoners or guards showing they were portraying powerful demand characteristics

Question 27

Evaluation of Ashe’s Line study

Answer 27

Limitations:
- The confederates were unconvincing, would have been difficult to act convincing when giving the wrong answer - this would pose problems for the validity of the study

Question 28

What does it mean by resistance?

Answer 28

The ability to withstand social pressure to conform to the majority or o obey authority. Involve both situational and dispositional factors

Question 29

What is social support?

Answer 29

Having an ally who is willing to join the minority, this makes people more resistant to obedience as it breaks unanimity

Question 30

What are the two types of Locus of Control (LOC) and what do they mean for an individual?

Answer 30

Internal LOC - this means you believe you are responsible for your behaviour and outcomes (free will POV), e.g. “I make things happen”, this means you are less likely to obey
External LOC - this means you believe your behaviour and outcomes are caused by events outside of their control (fate/deterministic POV), e.g. “Things happen to me”

Question 31

What is social change?

Answer 31

When society adopts new beliefs or behaviours which eventually become accepted as the norm. Minority groups play a role in facilitating this as they help change attitudes, behaviours and beliefs.

Question 32

What are the 5 ways in which minority groups can facilitate social change?

Answer 32

1. Snowball Effect - when an issue starts small but grows in size until it reaches a tipping point for social change (consistency/commitment)
2. Augmentation Principle - when a significant cost is willing to be paid by the minority, showing the issue is serious to the majority (commitment)
3. Consistency of Position - minorities who remain consistent over time which has a bigger impact on the majority (consistency)
4. Drawing attention to the issue - when you highlight an issue and provide an alternative viewpoint about it (consistency/commitment)
5. Cognitive Conflict - when you present an inconsistency between what the majority currently believe and with what the minority believe can cause deeper thought of the minority issue(commitment)

Question 33

What are the 3 factors effecting minority influence?

Answer 33

1. Consistency - when minorities keep expressing their views until they are taken more seriously
2. Commitment - shows confidence as the minority display commitment to their views
3. Flexibility - when minorities bargain their views as they are generally taken more seriously

Question 34

What does Diachronic Consistency mean?

Answer 34

Consistency over time - the minority stick to their guns and doesn’t change its views

Question 35

What does Synchronic Consistency mean?

Answer 35

Consistency between its member - all members agree and back each other

Question 36

What did Nemeth do?

Answer 36

Investigate the idea of flexibility; 4 groups had to agree on an amount of compensation they would give a victim of a ski-lift accident. Each group having two confederates.
They were given two conditions:
1. When the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change their position (inflexibility)
2. When the minority argued the same thing but compromised on a slightly higher rate (flexibility)
Found that in the inflexible condition the minority had little to no effect, whereas in the other condition the majority were more likely to be influenced