Social Influence

Question 1

Define Conformity.

Answer 1

A type of Social Influence describing how a person changes their attitude or behaviour in response to group pressure.

Question 2

Define Compliance.

Answer 2

When a person changes their Public behaviour, the way they act but not their private beliefs.
-Short-Term change.
-Result of Normative Social Influence (NSI)

Question 3

Define Identification.

Answer 3

When a person changes their public behaviour and private beliefs while they are in the presence of that group.
-Short-Term change.
-Result of Normative Social Influence(NSI)

Question 4

Define Internalisation.

Answer 4

When a person changes their public and private beliefs.
-Long- Term change.
-Result of Informational Social Influence(ISI)

Question 5

Define Normative Social Influence and Informational Social Influence.

Answer 5

NSI-When a person conforms to be accepted to feel as if they belong to the group.
Conform because it is socially rewarding or to avoid social rejection.
ISI- Conforms to gain knowledge or they believe someone else is ‘right’.
This semi-permanent change in behaviour and belief is the result of a person adopting a ew belief system, because they genuinely believe that their new beliefs are ‘right’ or that the majority are ‘experts’.

Question 6

Evaluate the Explanations for conformity (NSI and ISI).

Answer 6

Strength- Asch’s (1951) study into conformity provides research support for Normative social influence. Found that participants went along with the obviously wrong answer with the other group members. They did this to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group.-This clearly shows that compliance had occurred as the participants had conformed in order to fit in with the group. Further research in Asch (1955) study- when the pressure to publicly conform is removed by asking participants to write down their answer on a piece of paper rather than say them outloud conformity rates fell to 12.5% as fear of rejection became far less.
Jenness(1932) also is a strength.
LIMITATION- Individual differences may also play a role in explaining social influence , which means that the processes will not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way. For example Perrin and Spencer(1980) conducted an ACH style experiment.

Question 7

What was Jenness (1932) key study?

Answer 7

Aim: To examine whether individuals will change their opinion in an ambiguous situation, in response to group discussion.
Method: Used an ambiguous situation that involves a glass bottle filled with 811 white beans. His sample consisted of 36 students, who individually estimated how many beans that the glass bottle contained. Participants were then divided into groups of three and asked to provide a group estimate through discussion. After the discussion, the participants were provided with another opportunity to individually estimate the number of beans, to see if they changed their original answer.
Avegrage estimate before- males-790 females- 925
Average estimate after- males- 695 females- 878
average change- male- 256 female- 382
Results- It was found that nearly all participants changed their original answer when they were provided with another opportunity to estimate the nom. of beans. On average males hanges thier answer by 265 beans and females changed their answer by 382 beans.
Conclusion: These results suggest that individuals changed their initial estimate due to informstional social influence as they believe that the group estimates were more likely to be correct in comparison to their own.

Question 8

Define and Evaluate Asch (1951) study.

Answer 8

Aim: To examine the extent to which social pressure to conform from unanimous majority affects conformity in an ambiguous situation.
Method: Asch’s sample consisted 123 male undergraduate students (one sided) from Swarthmore College in the USA, who belived they were taking part in a vision test (ethical issues). Asch used a line judgment task, where he placed on real (naive) participant in a room with six to eight confederate(actors working on behalf of the experiment), who had agreed their answers in advance. The naive participant was decieved and was led to believe that the other people were also real participants. The real participant was always seated second from last.
in turn ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Results: On average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed. Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.
Conclusion: Asch interwived his participants after the experminet to find out why they conformed. Most siad they knew the answer was wrong but they went along with the group in order to fit in . This is due to NSI.
EVALUATION-
Limitation- Used a biased sample of 123 males. Lack of population validity.
Low levels of ecological validity/ mundane realisim.
Lacks historical validity and is ethically questionable.