Social Influence

Question 1

What pneumonic would you use to evaluate a study such as Aschs

Answer 1

GRAVE

Generalisation- is it representative of a target population

Reliability- replicability

Application- practical applications, is it relevant in real life situations

Validity- natural?

Ethics- breaching guidelines, risks or violations?

Question 2

What is conformity

Answer 2

The process of giving into group pressure from the majorities influence

Question 3

NAME THE TYPES OF COMFORITY and also the explanations

Answer 3

Compliance identification internalisation

NSI- normative social influence which is what people do
ISI- informational social influence which is why people do what they do

Question 4

Give me the reasons why NSI occurs and what conformity it links to

Answer 4

To gain approval or be liked due to fear of rejection
Links to= compliance

Question 5

Name the reason why ISI occurs and what conformity it links to

Answer 5

Because they truly believe the other person is right and fully accept their norms and values due to the fact there is no answer to the ambiguous question

Links to= internalisation

Question 6

What is compliance

Answer 6

Required behaviour or opinions that stops when you’re not in a group due to a fear of rejection
Public but not private
Temporary and weak

Question 7

What is identification

Answer 7

Views that are maintained when in a group but aren’t when they leave
Permanent views and strong (but only when in group)

Question 8

Is internalisation views permenant or temporary

Answer 8

Permanent views that are strong

Question 9

What was Jennesses study 1932

Answer 9

Participants were given a task with no obvious answer and where asked to make an individual estimate- jelly beans in a jar!

They where then asked to make a group estimate, and finally asked to make a second private estimate

These estimates often tended to move towards the group estimate!

Question 10

What was the aim of Ash’s research

Answer 10

Influenced by sheriffs 1935 conformity experiment, Asch believed there was no clear answer to the ambiguous question so he made sure his did meaning if participants gave a wrong answer it was due to group pressure

Question 11

How many participants did Ash use in his study

Answer 11

123 male undergraduate students

Question 12

What was the one participant called in ash’s study an what was the name of the task they completed

Answer 12

Naive participants completing a line judgement task with 7 other confederates

Question 13

Data results on arch’s study please and thank you x

Answer 13

On average about 1/3 (33%) of participants conformed

3/4 of participants conforming to at least 1 of the 12 incorrect answers

Question 14

What are some strengths of Ash’s study

Answer 14

Lab study- controlled, standardised, high replicability and validity as Asch himself was able to replicate the study multiple times
Meaning it also had high internal validity due to high control

Also ethical guidelines didn’t exist till 1970 so researchers where unaware of the possible harm participants where at risk of

Question 15

Weaknesses of ash’s study

Answer 15

Demand characteristics lowered percentage as participants may have recognised the pattern of ion correct answers and deliberately not conformed

Can’t be generalised as its only done on Americans = Not representative
Male= gender bias
American= cultural bias = individualistic
(Can’t explain conformity in collectivist cultures- lacking population validity)

Deception, no informed consent

Mundane realism- task is artificial and can’t be generalised to real life situations.

Question 16

Aschs evaluationnnnnnnnnn

Answer 16

Low temporal validity
Perrin and Spencer (1981) carried out Asch’s study 25 years late
with engineering students in the UK and only one student
conformed in a total of 396 trials. Perhaps Asch’s results were due to the fact that in the 1950s American society was in the grip of McCarthyism (named after US politician Joseph McCarthy) which is when America was strongly anti-communist. Many were scared to go against this view and so conformed.
However, when Perrin and Spencer repeated the study with youths on probation and probation officers acting as confederates, they found similar conformity rates to Asch’s study, Could this be due to the perceived cost of not conforming

Supports NSI and compliance - seek approval from confederates

Gender and culture bias lacking population validity due to individualistic research.

Question 17

Three variations of Aschs experiments

Answer 17

Unamity
Group size
Task difficulty

Question 18

Explain the findings of aschs study when differing group sizes

Answer 18

Aschoff found that as group size increased so did conformity. With 1 confederate in the group conformity was 3%, with 2= 13%, and 3 or more increased to 32%

He found little change in groups of 4-5 concluding 3 was the optimal group size

Question 19

Unamity in aschs research

Answer 19

Whether confederates would have an affection the naive participants conformity
He introduced a confederate who disagreed with others
This lead to a decrease in conformity by 1/4

Question 20

How did task difficulty affect aschs study

Answer 20

Asch made the line judgement task more difficult to judge the eggect
Line A,B, and C similar= hard to distinguish
As we are uncertain we look to others for conformation as we believe they are right=
Informational social influence

Conformity increased under these conditions

Question 21

What are social roles (definition)

Answer 21

Parts that people play as m,embers of different social groups. There give us expectations on how we should behave and how others should behave in their given role

Question 22

What was the aim of Zimbardo study

Answer 22

To investigate whether people would then conform to the roles of guards and prisoners- playing simulation prison

To test whether similar behaviour in real life environment is due to dispositional (bad apples) or situational (bad baskets)

Question 23

Explain to me what Zimbardo procedure was ples x

Answer 23

A mock prison was set up in basement of a psychology department in Stanford university (California, USA)
Male students were both psychologically and physically screen = 24 of 74 most stable were selected- then randomly assigned roles!

Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested
Then stripped and finger printed
Prisoners= id number, numbered smods
Guards= sunglasses/ avoid eye contact and handcuffs

Also ZIMBARDO HIMSELF was the role of superintendent

Question 24

What did Zimbardo find out from his study

Answer 24

Both settled into roles
Prisoners initially rebelled, but dehumanisation became apparent; guards gave prisoners taunts and sardonic tasks such as cleaning toilets with their hands

Guards became enthusiastic and volunteered to stat for extra hours
People asked for parole instead of asking to leave
5pp left study= extreme reactions
A postgraduate student (later Zimbardos wife) reminded zimbardo that this was a psychology study and of his ethical duty to pp as researcher and not as superluitenant

Question 25

What was the modern experiment modelled off of zimbardos research

Answer 25

BBC prison study

Question 26

What was the procedure of the BBC prison study

Answer 26

15 male pupils split into 5 groups of 3 and closely matched on personality variables

From each group 1 was the guard and 2 prisoners

Study ran for 8 days

Question 27

Findings of the BBC prison study

Answer 27

Participants didn’t automatically conform to assigned roles over the course of the study:
Prisoners increasingly identified as a group and collectively challenged the authority of the group, establishing more egalitarian set of social relations. The guards also were reluctant to impose authority on prisoners which led to a shift of power

Question 28

Strengths of zimbardos research

Answer 28

High real world application- Abu Ghraib conformity shown as military group notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers= powerful external validity

High internal validity as they used random allocation to assign roles of prisoners and guards

Question 29

Weaknesses of zimbardos research

Answer 29

Non representative
Gender bias and cultural bias= lacking population validity meaning its cannot be generalised

Lack of standardisation die to the non existent IV and DV meaning lower levels of contra;, results can therefore be affected by extraneous or co founding variables. As well as this guards hard the option to chose their own prison and punishments

Zimbardo was the superintendent of the study- not acknowledging his own ethical duty as researcher- had to be told this by his future wife

Deception, informed consent- psychological + physical harm

Question 30

What was the aim of MILGRAMS STUDYYYYY x

Answer 30

How far people would go in obeying instructions if it involved harming another person

Question 31

Describe the procedure of milgrams stydy

Answer 31

Volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment investigating learning (ethics:deception?)

MIlgram has a total of 40 male participants who he introduced to an experiment and another confederate posing as a volunteer participant
The participants drew lots to decide roles however it was always rigged so the real participant became the teacher and the fake participant became the teacher.
The leaner has to recall paired word lists and if they got one wrong, the teacher had to administer increasing strong shocks from 15-450 volts!
Learner gave purposeful wrong answers receiving fake shocks in silence till 300volts

Question 32

What did participants in milgrams study start doing at 300 volts

Answer 32

Banging on the walls and screaming, then not responding to the following question

Question 33

Wheat were the pods experiment has to repeat if teacher wanted to leave the experiment

Answer 33

“You have no other choice, you must go on”
“It is absolutely essential that you continue”

Question 34

What were the results if milgrams study??????

Answer 34

Psychiatrist students predicted that very few would go over 150 volts with only 1 in 1,000 going to the full 450 volts

However this was not the case with 26 in 40 pp (65%) going for the full 450 volts even though it was labelled XXX

Question 35

What was Milgrams proximity study show

Answer 35

With the experiment or absent experiment, experiment or gave instructions over a telephone, only 20% continued to max shock, with some even repeatedly admitting the lowest shock level whilst telling the experiment or they were following procedure

Question 36

Location resultssss milgram

Answer 36

Milgram moved his experiment from the prestigious Yale university to a run down office in Bridgeport, where results only slightly dropped to 48%

Question 37

What did milgram do to study the situational factor of the power of uniform

Answer 37

Original= grey lab coat
Alteration = member of the public in their own clothes where there was one of the biggest drops to only 20% going to max level, aswell as an external study using a female experimenter dressed in a police style outfit, who told random member of the public to give spare change to a male researcher for an expired ticket- 72% conformed

Question 38

What about the generalisability, reliability and application of Milgrams study

Answer 38

Gender and culture bias- non representative= decreasing validity

Controlled procedures- set prods for experimenter making experiment easy to repeat and measure consistency

Real world application- Nazis saw Hitler as an authority figure to follow

Question 39

Validity and ethics of Milgrams study

Answer 39

Validity- lacks ecological validity as it was an artificial task, however milgram argued that much alike the holocaust, people were dropped into unfamiliar situations.

Random allocation- was fake- deception betraying trust and possibly damaging psychology reputation

Question 40

What are situational variables of obedience

Answer 40

Situational variables affecting obedience include location and uniform, as investigated by milgram

Question 41

What did milgram find about situational factors

Answer 41

Situational factors might explain behaviour better than his original belief that obedience might be due to personality

Question 42

What are the three main situation variables

Answer 42

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 43

What is a weakness of the situational variables of obedience

Answer 43

Milgram findings support a situational explanation of obedience. However, this has been critiqued by researchers who argue that it offers an excuse or alibi for evil behaviour.

In some psychologists’ views, it is offensive to survivors of the Holocaust to suggest that the Nazis were simply obeying orders and were victims themselves of situational factors beyond their control.

The situational explanation of obedience therefore ignores the idea that people have personal responsibility for their actions = may cause psychological harms to victims.

Question 44

What is a strength in evaluating the situational variables of obedience

Answer 44

Milgram systematically altered one variable at a time (e.g. proximity) to see what effect it would have on the level of obedience.
All the other procedures and variables were kept the same as the study was replicated over and over again with over 1000 participants in total.

This means that we can see cause and effect i.e. that the situational variables of uniform, proximity and location cause obedience, supporting the internal validity of the situational explanation of obedience.

Question 45

What are social-psychological factors of obedience

Answer 45

Explanations concern the influences of others on an individual’s behaviours as opposed to external factors.

Agentic state and legitimacy of authority suggest that obedience lies within social hierarchies

Question 46

What is the agentic state?

Answer 46

‘Just following orders’ acting for an agent (authority) and not taking responsibility for your actions and shifting this onto your agent- reduced moral strain

Opposite to autonomous state.
The shift between the two is known as the agentic shift.
It is argued that it helps maintain a positive self-image, e.g. behaviour is due to these factors rather than themselves.

Question 47

What is a legitimate authority?

Answer 47

For the agentic shift to occur the person must be perceived as being an authority figure.
Agreed social hierarchy, which is learnt from childhood.
Certain symbols attached to a person/s in authority e.g. uniform and setting.
Destructive authority where power is used to get people to act in cruel/dangerous ways.

Question 48

Who is Adolf Eichmann?

Answer 48

had overseen the Nazi death camps used the defence that he was following orders at his war crimes trial.

Question 49

What is a strength of social-psychological explanations of obedience

Answer 49

One strength of legitimate authority is that there is research support.

Replications of Milgram’s study have found that some countries are more obedient that others. Kilham and Mann (1974) found obedience in Australian participants to be 16%. However, in German participants this figure is 85%.

This therefore suggests that they recognised that legitimate authority is a cause of obedience, which supports the validity this explanation of obedience.

Question 50

How can you use Blass and Schmitt’s 2001 study to evaluate the agentic state in social-psychological explanations of obedience to

Answer 50

Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed students a video clip of Milgram’s study and asked who was to blame. Student’s said the experimenter was to blame, as he had legitimate authority (top of the hierarchy) and because he is an expert (a scientist).

—> limitation of the agentic state is that the behaviour of the Nazis cannot explained by the agentic shift.

This therefore suggests that the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience, and so cannot be considered to be fully externally valid.

Question 51

Social-psychological factors and the legitimate authority is used to explain real-life scenarios, why is this a strength

Answer 51

A strength of both the social-psychological explanations of obedience (agentic state and legitimacy of authority) is that they can both be used to explain real-life scenarios.

Mandel (1998) outlined an incident in which the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a small Polish town. This was despite the fact they did not have direct orders to do so, they could have been given other duties.

This suggests that the explanations are externally valid and may help to prevent such occurrences from happing again.

Question 52

Social-psychological factors and the legitimate authority is used to explain real-life scenarios, why is this a strength

Answer 52

A strength of both the social-psychological explanations of obedience (agentic state and legitimacy of authority) is that they can both be used to explain real-life scenarios.

Mandel (1998) outlined an incident in which the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a small Polish town. This was despite the fact they did not have direct orders to do so, they could have been given other duties.

This challenges the idea of the agentic state as the men were not ordered to shoot the civilians, they were given a choice and therefore cannot blame authority for their actions, and shouldn’t experience the agentic shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state.Therefore, the explanation can’t be considered to be completely valid as it can’t explain obedience in every situation.

Question 53

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 53

This is a dispositional explanation of obedience i.e. it focuses on the importance of the individual’s personality in explaining their behaviour.

It is a collection of dispositions/traits that develop from strict parenting, such as being conformist, conventional and dogmatic.

Question 54

What was the procedure of Adorno et al.s 1950s study examining the unconscious views of Caucasian Americans towards other racial groups

Answer 54

2000 middle-class Caucasian Americans

Several scales were developed including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale).

Examples from the f-scale:

‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’

‘Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished’

‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’

Question 55

What were Adorno et al.s findings into the authoritarian personality

Answer 55

Authoritarians (who scored high on the F scale and other measures) identified with strong people and were intolerant of the weak. They also showed excessive respect and deference to those of higher status.
Authoritarian people also had a cognitive style where there were distinct and fixed stereotypes about other groups.
Individuals who scored high in the F-scale tended to be raised by parents with an Authoritarian parenting style

Question 56

What did Altemeyer do to the concept of the authoritarian personality

Answer 56

Altemeyer (1981) refined the concept of the Authoritarian Personality. He identified a group of three of the original personality variables which he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)

Question 57

What did Altemeyer suggest as the three important personality traits of RWA

Answer 57

Conventionalism – an adherence to conventional norms and values

Authoritarian aggression – aggression towards people that violate these norms

Authoritarian submission – uncritical submission to legitimate authorities

Question 58

What was the procedure of Elms and Milgrams 1966 follow up study int dispositional explanations

Answer 58

They carried out a follow-up study of Milgram’s experiments two months before.

They selected 20 ‘obedient’ participants who had continued to the final shock level, and 20 ‘defiant’ participants who had refused at some point in the experiment.

Each participant completed the MMPI scale + California F scale to specifically measure their levels of authoritarianism. Participants were also asked a series of open-ended questions, including questions about their relationship with their parents during childhood and their attitude to the ‘experimenter’ (authority figure) and the ‘learner’ during their participation in Milgram’s original study.

Question 59

What were the findings of Elms and Milgrams 1966 study

Answer 59

they did find higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient, compared with those classified as defiant. They also found significant differences between obedient and defiant participants that were consistent with the Authoritarian Personality.

This was not the case among defiant participants. These findings suggested to Elms and Milgram that the obedient group was higher on the trait of authoritarianism.