Social influence Flashcards
Who is Kelman(1958)
suggested 3 types of conformity
What are the 3 types of conformity?
-compliance
-identification
-internalisation
What is compliance?
-publicly changing views but privately disagreeing
What is identification?
-publicly and privately changing beliefs and behaviour but is is temporary
What is internalisation?
-an individual publicly and privately changes their beliefs and behaviour because they have genuinely accepted the views of the group
What did Deutsch and Gerard (1955) propose?
-The 2 process theory-2 reasons why people conform
What is informative social influence(ISI)
-people conform due to the desire to be right
-it is a cognitive process
-it is a form of internalisation
What is normative social influence(NSI)
-people conform due to the desire to be liked
-it is an emotional process
-it is a form of compliance
What are some features of Asch’s baseline study?
-lab experiment
-123 male American participants
-volunteer sampling was used
What was the procedure of Asch’s experiment?
-pps saw 2 large cards, one with a standard line and 1 with a comparison line. Each person in the room had to state which comparison line was the same length as the standard line
-each naive participant was tested with a group of 6-8 confederates
What were the results to Aschs study
-pps gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time
-25% never conformed
-74% conformed at least once
-in the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer
-this shows there were high levels of conformity when the situation was unambiguous
What was the conclusion to Aschs study
-participants conformed due to fear of rejection(NSI)
What were Asch’s variations?
-Group size, unanimity, task difficulty
How did variating the group size affect the results?
-when there were2 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6%
-3 confederates caused conformity rising to 31.8%
-further increases to the majority made little difference to conformity
How did unanimity affect the results?
-Asch introduced a dissenting confederate-someone who gave the wrong answer sometimes and the right answer sometimes but always disagreed with majority
-conformity reduced by 1/4
How did task difficulty affect the results?
-Asch made the line-judging task harder by making the stimulus line and comparisons lines more similar in length
-conformity increases
What are some limitations of Asch’s study
-lacks temporal validity(1950’s was a conformist time in America)
-situation and task was artificial so demand characteristics could have occured
-it was biased-Men and American
-ethical issues
What is a strength of Asch’s study?
-it is easy to replicate
-standardised procedures
How can Lucas et al.(2006) support Asch’s study?
-carried out the math experiment and found people were more likely to conform when they were not confident in their own math abilities
What is conformity?
-a change in a person’s behaviour or beliefs as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people
What is a social role?
-A set of behaviour that are expected of someone who holds a particular status
What did Zimbardo(1971) argue?
-argued that it is the situation that makes people act the way they do rather than their disposition(personality)
What was the method for the Stanford prison experiment?
-controlled observation: mock prison was created in the basement of Stanford University
-Zimbardo played the role of lead researcher and prison superintendent so it was also a participant observation
-participants responded to a newspaper ad so it was a volunteer sample
What was the sample for Zimbardo’s experiment?
-24 ‘emotionally stable men who were also white and middle class students
What was the procedure for Zimbardo’s experiment?
-prisoners were arrested in their homes and delivered to the prison
-some of their basic civil rights were gone
-prisoner’s names were not used just their numbers
-the guards had their own uniform consisting of a wooden club, handcuffs, keys. They worked in teams of 3 for 8-hour shifts and were allowed off site after their shift
What were the results for Zimbardo’s experiment?
-the guards humiliated and punished the prisoners. This threatened the prisoner’s psychological and physical health
-prisoners had begun to rebel, ripping their uniforms and swearing at the guards.
-prisoners had become to show signs of mental distress
-study was stopped after 6 days
What was the conclusion of this study the Zimbardo experiment
-it rejects the dispositional hypothesis
-it is the power of the situation that was more important than personality
-the more the guards had identified with their roles, the more aggressive their behaviour had become
What are some weaknesses of Zimbardo’s study?
-cultural bias
-gender bias
-age bias
-lacks ecological validity
-lacks temporal validity
-could be some extraneous variables
-major ethical issues
What is a strength of Zimbardo’s experiment?
-had some control over variables
What is the agentic state?
–When someone acts as an agent
-an agent is someone who acts for or in place of another
-they experience moral strain when they realise that what they are doing is wrong, but feel powerless to disobey
What is the autonomous state?
-it is the state of being free to behave according to their own principles and therefore, feel a sense of responsibility for their own actions
What is the agentic shift?
-shift from autonomy to agency
What are binding factors?
-aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging affect of their behaviour and thus reduce the ‘moral strain’ they are feeling
What is legitimacy of authority?
-people legally have the right to punish others
-destructive authority refers to when legitimate authority becomes destructive. For example, Hitler.
Where do we learn authority?
-our childhood
What was Milgram(1963)’s baseline obedience study?
-was interested in why the holocaust happened so he tried to see if ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure
What was the method in Milgram’s study?
-controlled observation in a lab at Yale university in the USA, participants were told it was a study of memory and learning
-40 American male participants
-a confederate was always the learner whilst the true participant was always the teacher
-another confederate dressed up as an experimenter
What was the method in Milgram’s study pt2?
-learner had to learn words
-teacher had to give an increasingly severe ‘electric shock’ each time the learner made a mistake on the test
-after 315 volt shock, the learner pounded on the wall
-in reality, no shocks were being given.
-when teacher asked experimenter for guidance, standard instructions were given
What were the results of Milgram’s study?
-65% of participants continued to the full 450 volts
-participants showed signs of extreme tension
-ordinary people will obey unjust orders from someone perceived to be a legitimate authority figure
How did proximity affect the results?
-when the teacher and the learner were in the same room, the obedience rates fell from 65% to 40%
-touch proximity-teacher forces hand onto shock plate obedience dropped to 30%
-remote instruction-instructions via telephone, obedience dropped to 20.5%
How did location affect the results?
-the study was conducted in a run down building afterwards and cpnformity fell tp 47.5%
How did legitimacy of authority affect the results?
-experimenter wore grey lab coat and was then called awat. He was taken over by an ordinary member of the public in everyday clothes and obedience dropped to 20%
Who is Bickman(1974)
-had 3 confederates wearing different outfits asking passer bys to do things. Found that people were over twice as likely to obey the one dressed like a security guard
What are some limitations of Milgram’s situational variables?
-low internal validity
-Milgram’s conclusions provide an obedience alibi
Who was Theodore Adorno et al
-argued the authoritarian personality was susceptible to obeying people in authority
What was the sample size for Theordore et al study?
-2000 middle class white americans
What was the method for authoritarian investigation
-questionnaires were developed with questions such as ‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues a child can learn’
What were the findings of his experiment?(Theordore et al)
-authoritarians identified with ‘strong people’ and were conscious of their own and others’ status
-they were more obedience to an authority figure
where does the authoritarian personality originate from?
-formed from experiences of harsh parenting in childhood and conditional love
Who is Rotter(1966)
-proposed the concept of locus of control
What is the internal locus of control?
-they believe they are mostly responsible for what happened to them
what is the external locus of control?
-believe everything is a matter of luck, blame others for situations rather than themselves.
What is minority influence?
-form of social influence in which a small group or sometimes just one person persuades to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours
What are the 3 processes of minority influence?
-consistency, commitment and flexibility
What is consistency?
-synchronic consistency: all people in minority agree/they hold the same belief/ are delivering the same message
-diachronic consistency: they have held these beliefs/conveyed the message over time
What is commitment?
-showing deep involvement
What is the augmentation principle?
-the minority carries out behaviours that can put them at risk in order to demonstrate their commitment to the cause
What is flexibility?
-showing willingness to listen to others
What is deeper processing?
-individuals think deeply about the minority position. Over time, more people convert to that, referred to as the snowball effect
What was Nemeth(1986) study?
-investigated the idea of flexibility in which participants in groups of 4 had to agree on the amount of compensation they would give to a victim of a ski-lift accident
What was Moscovici et al(1969)’s study?
-sample of 172 female students were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. There were 4 naive and 2 confederates and they were shown 36 slides which varied in intensity
-confederates declared all the slides were green-they were consistent
-confederates declared 2/3 of the slides were green-inconsistent minority
What were the results?
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what is social cryptomnesia?
-social change came about but people have no memory of the above events that led to that change
