social influence Flashcards
what’s conformity
a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group
what’s obedience
the person is following a direct order and the person issuing the order is normally an authority figure
different types of authority
1.compliance- going along with a group without accepting their point of view no change in underlying attitudes, only in public behaviour.
- Internalisation- going along with a group because we accept that their perceptions and beliefs are accurate. Both our underlying attitudes and public behaviour changes. Deepest level.
- Identification- we adopt an attitude because we want to be associated with a group. Include both internalisation and compliance.
normative social influence
conforming to gain social approval as we feel we are watched by the group
informational social influence
we are not sure how to behave and believe the majority to be correct
support for internalisation
Fein (2007) - carried out research and asked participants to watch president candidate debates and judge their performance. Participants could see reaction of other participants which influenced their own judgements as they didn’t want to look like they had wrongly assess candidates performances.
sherifs study:
+easy to replicate
+standardised procedure
- low in ecological validity and wouldn’t be carried out everyday
AIM of Asch’s study
an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
PROCEDURE of Asch’s study
123 male students in the USA participated in a vision test.
Using a line judgement task, one naïve participant was put in a room with seven confederates.
Confederates agreed response in advance.
Each person in room stated aloud which comparison line was most like the target line. Answer was obvious.
Confederates gave wrong answer on the 12 critical trials.
18 total trials.
Control condition- no confederates.
RESULTS of Asch’s study
1/3 conformed on avg.
Over 12 critical trials about 75% conformed at least once.
In control group less then 1% gave wrong answer.
CONCLUSION of Asch’s study
people conform because of normative and informational influence
confederates
pseudo-participants
naïve participants
a participant to a study which is not aware of the experimental hypothesis and who hasn’t participated in the study before.
variations in Asch’s study
Group size- carried experiment out with 2 confederates and 1 real participant and only 14% conformed in critical trials. with 3 confederates conformity rose to 32%.
Breaking unanimity- Asch ensured a confederate gave a real answer and conformity levels dropped to just 5.5%.
Increasing task difficulty- Asch made differences between line lengths smaller and conformity levels increased.
evaluation of Asch’s study
+Lab experiments so good control over variables
-Ethical issues as participants were deceived as they didn’t know other participants were confederates.
-Low population validity so is a bias sample that cannot be generalised.
-Culturally and historically bias as only done in individualist America in 1950s.
social norms
How an individual is expected to behave in a certain social situation.
Dispositional factors in Zimbardo’s research
they were born with a sadistic personality which meant they behaved badly
Situational variables in Zimbardo’s research
prison environment
AIM of Zimbardo’s research
To investigate how readily people would conform to roles of guard or prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life. He was interested in finding out whether brutality reported among American guards was due to dispositional factors or situational variables.
PROCEDURE of Zimbardo’s research
Converted basement of Stanford uni psychology building into a mock prison.
Advertised asking for volunteers to participate in a study of the psychological effects of prison life. More then 70 answered the ad and were given interviews and diagnostic tests.
24 male students paid $15 a day. Assigned randomly to role of guard or prisoner.
2 reserved and 1 dropped out.
Solitary confinement cell for prisoners who misbehaved.
Prisoners were arrested at own homes and taken to local police station where they were blindfolded and taken to Stanford uni. Deindividuation process began. Prisoners were stripped naked, deloused, had all possessions taken away and were given prison clothes which was a smock, nylon cap and chain on one ankle. They were referred to by only a number to make them feel anonymous. Guards wore khaki uniforms and sunglasses to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.
No physical violence was permitted.
Zimbardo acted as a prison warden.
FINDINGS of Zimbardo’s research
guards and prisoners settled into roles with guards adopting theirs very quickly.
CONCLUSION of Zimbardo’s research
People will readily conform to their expected social roles especially if they’re strongly stereotypes. The prison environment was an important part of creating the guards brutal behaviour (no guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study). Findings support situational explanation.
Evaluation of Zimbardo’s research
+considered ethical as followed guidelines of Stanford Uni
- Phycological harm and deception as they didn’t know when the study was taking place so the initial shock of being arrested one morning put them in a mild state of shock.
- Zimbardo was also conforming to his role of prison warden so wasn’t able to fulfil his main ethical responsibility.
+real world applications (guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (2003) were affected by an ‘evil situation which led them to behave in ways they would normally reject
- Contradicting research as attempt to recreate the experiment and findings were different.
AIM of Milgram’s study
Researching how far people who go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
PROCEDURE of Milgram’s study
40 males aged 20-50. Jobs ranged unskilled to professional. From New Haven area.
Paid $4.50 for turning up.
They were introduced to a confederate and they drew stars to determine their roles-learner or teacher- was fixed and confederate was always the learner.
There was an experimenter dressed in a grey lab coat played by an actor.
Two rooms in the Yale Lab were used. One for learner with an electric chair and one for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.
The learner was strapped to the electric chair and after he has learnt a list of word pairs the teacher tests him by naming a word and asking him to recall it’s pair from four possible choices.
Teacher administers an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of each time. It goes from 15v to 450v. Learner gave mainly wrong answers so when teacher refused to administer shock the experimenter gave prompts.
RESULTS of Milgram’s study
2/3 of teachers continued to 450v . All continued to 300v. Carried out 18 variations.
