Social Influence Flashcards
How do you evaluate studies?
Generalisability
Reliability
Application
Validity
Ethics
How do you evaluate theories?
Supporting evidence
Conflicting evidence
Other explanations
Usefulness
Testable
What is conformity?
A change in a persons behaviour/opinions as a result of imagined/real pressure from a person or group of people.
What are the different types of conformity?
Compliance
Identification
Internalisation
What is compliance?
where you publicly conform with behaviours being shown
Weakest level of conformity. e.g. pretending to like a film in front of your friends.
What is identification?
Where an individual want to be apart of a group conforms with their views/behaviours.
Tends to be temporary. e.g. adopting the same music and fashion taste as your friends.
What is internalisation?
Where you show the behaviours in public and private. e.g. religion
What are the two explanations for conformity?
Normative social influence
Informative social influence
What is NSI?
Where you conform so others like you.
What is ISI?
Where you conform so you are right.
What is a study that supports normative social influence?
Asch
What procedures did Asch use?
123 male US students
All seated 2nd to last
All other participants were confederates.
What was the findings of Asch?
Average conformity was 33%
25% never conformed
75% conformed at least once
Half conformed on 6 or more critical trials.
What were the conclusions of Asch?
This shows that NSI can affect answers even when knowing they are wrong because the didn’t want to stand out.
What were the limitations of Asch?
Lacks ecological validity-Artificial environment, not an everyday task.
Lacks population validity-No other ethnicity nor gender.
Deception
Informed consent
Right to withdraw
Protection from harm.
What are the strengths of Asch?
Reliable results-Lab experiment
High control over extraneous variables
High internal validity
What were the variations of Asch?
Size of group
Non conforming role model
Difficulty of task
Giving answers in private.
How does size of the group affect conformity?
Decrease-Optimum conformity at 3-4, NSI is reduced when group is smaller.
How does a non conforming role model affect conformity?
Decrease-Less embarrassed as they aren’t the only one doing something alone, conformity dropped to 5.5% in Asch
How does task difficulty affect conformity?
Increase-Participant may get confused. Due to ISI they copy the confederates answers.
How does giving answers in private affect conformity?
Decrease-Participants don’t feel judged by other participants.
What study supports conformity to social roles?
Zimbardo
What was Zimbardo’s procedures?
Mock prison
24 male American participants
Most stable were selected
Randomly allocated role
Prisoners arrested in their class
Given uniform
Study planned to last 2 weeks.
What uniform was given to prisoners and guards?
Prisoners - Smock and nylon socks
Guards - Baton and reflective sunglasses
What are the findings of Zimbardo’s research?
Prisoners were obedient
Guards were abusive
Prisoners had to be released after 6 days due to bad mental health
What were the conclusions of Zimbardo’s study?
Revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour.
What are the strengths of Zimbardo study?
No bias-Random allocation
Practical Applications
Controlled Environment
How does Abu Gharib support Zimbardo?
Guards were victims of situational factors - lack of training, boredom no accountability to higher authority.
Soldiers brutally tortured Iraqis.
What are the weaknesses of Zimbardo’s study?
Informed consent
Protection from harm
Demand characteristics
What changes were made to the prison system after Zimbardo’s study?
Mandatory training for prison guards
What did Milgram’s study research?
How situational factors affect obedience
What were the aims of Milgram’s research?
Test if ‘All Germans are evil’
Investigate what factors in a situation led people to obey.
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
40 male volunteers, self-selected paid $4.50
P’s were told the aim was into the role of punishment on learning.
The teacher was a confederate
The range of volts went all the way up to 450 volts.
P’s were pressured to carry on shocking.
What were the findings of Milgram’s study?
All p’s went past 300 volts
65% went to the full 450 volts
Most p’s showed signs of anxiety such as bite their lips and stutter.
What are the conclusions of Milgram’s study?
Under certain situations most people will obey orders that go against their morals
It doesn’t take an evil person to do an evil act.
What are the strengths of Milgram’s research?
Reliability
High internal validity
What are the limitations of Milgram’s research?
Lacks ecological validity
Informed consent
Deception
Right to withdraw
Protection from harm
What are the different variations (situational factors) of Milgram’s study?
Touch proximity
Proximity
Remote instruction
Location
Uniform
What was the proximity variation?
Where teacher and learner were placed in adjourning rooms.
What were obedience levels in the proximity variation?
Dropped to 40%
What was the touch proximity variation?
Teacher forcefully placed learners hand onto the shock plate.
What were the obedience levels in the touch proximity variation?
Dropped to 30%
What was the remote instruction variation?
The P was pressured to shock the learner by the researcher via a phone call
What were the obedience levels in the remote instruction variation?
Dropped to 21%
What was the location variation?
Study was moved to a run down office block instead of Yale Uni.
What were the obedience levels in the location variation?
Dropped to 47.5%
What was the uniform variation?
The researcher had everyday clothes rather than a lab coat.
What were the obedience levels in the uniform variation?
Dropped to 20%
What are psychological explanations to obedience?
The agentic and autonomous state
Legitimacy of authority
What is the autonomous state?
Taking responsibility for your actions
What is the agentic state?
Passing off responsibility to another such as an authority figure
What is the agentic shift?
Where your you shift from the autonomous state to the agentic
What is legitimacy of authority?
Where you validate your actions due to having an authority figure to blame or wearing a uniform.
What are dispositional explanations of obedience?
Authoritarian personality
Who supports the existence of dispositional factors?
Adorno
What was the procedure of Adorno?
Study on 2000 white middle-class Americans
Asked them about their unconscious attitudes to other racial groups
Used the F-scale to measure their authoritarian personality
What were the findings of Adorno?
Found high level of correlation between authoritarianism and obedience.
Obedient p’s reported not being as close with their fathers.
What are the strengths of dispositional factors?
Milgram also found evidence of authoritarian personalities, but was with a small sample size and gives no cause and effect
What are the weaknesses of dispositional factors?
Authoritarian personalities cannot be generalised to collectivist cultures such as China.
What are the explanations of resistance to social influence?
Social support
Locus of control
What is independent behaviour?
Behaviour that is singular to everyone else’s, resists pressure to obey/conform.
What is social support?
You go against the crowd due to having an ‘ally’
Allows you to withstand social pressure
What studies support social support?
Asch - Non-conforming role model
Rosentrasse protest
What was Asch’s non-conforming role model variation?
Conformity rated decreased to 5.5%, when one other went against the majority.
What was the Rosentrasse protest?
Women stood up to the Germans, campaigned for their husbands and sons to be brought back from the Nazis.
What are the two locus’ of control?
External
Internal
What is the internal locus of control?
Take responsibility of your actions.
What is the external locus of control?
You blame others for your actions.
What LOC is most likely to resist conformity?
Internal, more self-confident, more achievement orientated, have less need for social approval.
What study supports the existence of LOC?
Holland - Recreated Milgram’s study and found external LOC gave the highest shocks where internal were more likely to resist.
How do the minority influence the majority?
Consistency
Commitment
Flexibility
How do the minority use consistency to influence the majority?
Shows the minority is not an error and that they are not going to go away.
How do the minority use commitment to influence the majority?
Shows you are devoted to the minority, bring attention to your cause.
How do the minority use flexibility to influence the majority?
Minorities are powerless so being flexible allows more people to get onboard.
What study supports minority influence?
Moscovici
What was Moscovici’s procedure?
3 conditions, 1 control, 2 experimental
Only done on women
Exp 1 - 2 confederates said the slide would be green 36/36 times
Exp 2 - 2 confederates said the slide would be green 24/36 times, 12/36 times is blue
Exp 3 Control
What were the findings of Moscovici?
Exp 1 - 8.4% yielded to the minority calling slide green
Exp 2 - 1.3% yielded to the minority calling the slide green
What are the conclusions of Moscovici?
Conformity isn’t as high as Asch
But consistency does have a significant affect.
What are the weaknesses of Moscovici?
No population validity
No ecological validity
No informed consent
Deception
How does minority influence create social change?
Attention
Consistency
Cognitive conflict
Augmentation principle
Snowball affect
Social cryptonesia
What study supports the existence of social change?
Nolan - hung messages on the front of houses in San Diego. Most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage, the control message however did not mention others behaviour.
They found decrease in energy in the experimental group.
