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Social Influence Flashcards

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1
Q

Conformity

A

a change in a person’s behaviour or opinion as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people

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2
Q

Internalisation

A
  • the deepest form of conformity
  • when you permanently adopt the beliefs/behaviours of the group
  • eg. going to a religious school and becoming religious yourself
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3
Q

Compliance

A
  • the most shallow type of conformity
  • following the group’s ideas to avoid disapproval
  • agree in public, disagree in private
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3
Q

Identification

A
  • temporary/short-term change in beliefs and behaviour when with the group
  • eg. acting more professional when you arrive at your office to work
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4
Q

Informational Social Influence

A
  • conforming with a group because you want to be right - eg. following the direction of a crowd in an emergency even if they don’t know where they are going, as they assume everyone else is going to the right place
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5
Q

Normative Social Influence

A
  • conforming because you to be liked and part of a group
  • eg. starting to smoke after being surrounded by other people that smoke
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6
Q

Sherif’s study

A
  • lab experiment that aimed to investigate conformity in ambiguous situations
  • used the auto-kinetic effect: a small spot of light was projected into a dark room and appeared to move even though it was still (optical illusion)
  • put the ppts in groups of 3 and found that in an ambiguous situation, they copied the answers of the others (ISI)
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6
Q

Asch’s Study

A
  • 123 male American undergraduates were put in groups of 6 (1 ppt + 5 confederates)
  • presented with 4 lines and had to state which of the 3 lines was the same length as the stimulus line
  • ppt always answered last or second last
  • confederates gave the wrong answer in 12/18 trials
  • 75% of ppts conformed at least once
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7
Q

Variables affecting conformity

A
  1. Group size
  2. Unanimity
  3. Task difficulty
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8
Q

Group size

A
  • with just 1 confederate, conformity dropped to 3%
  • with 3 confederates, conformity was the same as in the original trial which shows that conformity reaches it’s highest level w/ just 3 confederates
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9
Q

Unanimity

A
  • Asch did a variation of his experiment in which one confederate gave the right answer throughout –> conformity dropped to 5%
  • if the real ppt. has an ally, they are more likely to resist group pressure
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10
Q

Task difficulty

A
  • in Asch’s original experiment, the correct answer was always obvious
  • in variations where the task was more difficult (difference between line length was significantly smaller) conformity increased
  • likely the result of ISI
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11
Q

AO3 Asch - Lab experiment

A
  • high internal validity
  • easily replicated
  • supports psychology as a science
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12
Q

AO3 Asch - Ethical issues

A
  • ppts. were deceived and couldn’t give informed consent
  • potential psychological harm as ppts. could be embarrassed after discovering the study’s true aim
  • however, ppts. were debriefed after
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13
Q

AO3 Asch - Low ecological validity

A
  • the task lacked mundane realism
  • cannot be generalised to real life
  • lab experiment
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14
Q

AO3 Asch - Low population validity

A
  • all male American undergraduate students
  • subject to both gender and culture bias and cannot be generalised to wider populations
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15
Q

Conformity to Social Roles - Zimbardo’s procedure

A
  • controlled observation
  • 24 American male undergraduate students volunteered to take part and were paid
  • either allocated the role of prisoner or prison guard
  • guards were given black out glasses, batons, and uniforms
  • prisoners were fake-arrested in their homes, deloused, and given uniforms
  • guards were empowered to do whatever they want, apart from physical violence
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16
Q

Conformity to Social Roles - Zimbardo’s findings

A
  • both prisoners and guards adopted their roles very quickly
  • the guards tormented the prisoners
  • although deemed psychologically healthy before the experiment, some prisoners experienced extreme adverse psychological problems and had to be removed
  • had to be cut short
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17
Q

AO3 Zimbardo - Ethical issues

A
  • prisoner ppts. experienced extreme psychological harm (1 was released on the first day due to uncontrollable crying and screaming, 2 released on the second day)
  • lack of informed consent due to the deception
  • however, they were debriefed after and the experiment led to the formal recognition of ethical guidelines
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18
Q

AO3 Zimbardo - Low population validity

A
  • all male American undergraduate students
  • both gender and culture bias present
  • low generalisability
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19
Q

AO3 Zimbardo - Demand characteristics

A
  • the ppts. volunteered themselves and were being paid, so could’ve played further into their roles to please Zimbardo
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20
Q

AO3 Zimbardo - Real life support

A
  • the horrors of Abu Ghraib support Zimbardo’s findings and theories on conformity to social roles
  • during the Iraq war, US military personnel raped, tortured, and violently abused the prisoners in the prison
  • in the military trials, Zimbardo was called as an expert witness
  • however, the BBC also recreated the experiment and found the prisoners didn’t conform to their roles
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21
Q

AO3 Zimbardo - Real life application

A
  • the research changed the way US prisons are run today, eg. young prisoners are no longer kept with adults to prevent bad behaviour being perpetuated
22
Q

Milgram’s procedure

A
  • 40 male volunteers
  • ppt. given role as ‘teacher’ and confederate given role of ‘learner’
  • the teacher asked the learner a series of questions, to which they answered wrong on person
  • the teacher (ppt) was then encouraged by the experimenter (who wore a white lab coat) to give an electric shock the learner
  • electric shocks went up 15V at a time, up to 450V (with 330V being lethal)
  • if the teacher resisted, the experimenter forcefully prompted him to continue (things like, ‘the experiment requires you to continue’, ‘you must continue’
23
Q

Milgram’s findings

A
  • 65% of ppts. went all the way to 450V
  • all ppts. went up to 300V
24
Q

Factors affecting obedience

A
  1. Proximity
  2. Location
  3. Uniform
25
Q

Proximity

A
  • when the teacher and learner were in the same room, obedience dropped to 40%
  • when the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto the shock plate, obedience dropped to 30%
  • when the experimenter gave instructions over the phone, obedience dropped to 21%
26
Q

Location

A
  • the original research was conducted in Yale University which is highly prestigious
  • when recreated in a run down building in Connecticut, obedience dropped from 65% to 48%
  • less credible locations lead to less obedience
27
Q

Uniform

A
  • in most of Milgram’s variations the experimenter wore a white lab coat
  • in a variation where the experimenter was called away and replaced with a confederate wearing ordinary clothes, obedience fell to 20%
28
Q

Further support for uniform - Bickman (1974)

A
  • field experiment with 3 actors dressed as a security guard, milkman, and normal pedestrian
  • the actors asked member of the public to pick up a bag, give someone money for parking, and stand at a sign that said ‘no standing’
  • security guard obeyed 76%
  • milkman obeyed 47%
  • pedestrian obeyed 30%
29
Q

AO3 Milgram - Low ecological validity

A
  • task lacked mundane realism
  • extremely unlikely that the average person would find themself in a situation like this, so isn’t a true measure of obedience
30
Q

AO3 Milgram - Ethical issues

A
  • the ppts. were deceived and could’t provide informed consent
  • showed signs of distress like sweating trembling, and nervous laughter and still were prompted to continue
  • they could’ve felt extreme guilt for inflicting pain on another person
  • however, they were debriefed after and follow-ups found that there was no lasting psychological harm (84% of ppts. were glad they took part)
31
Q

AO3 Milgram - Socially sensitive

A
  • findings suggested that those who are responsible for killing innocent people can be excused due to the situation they were put it in and difficulty when it comes to disobeying
  • this can be problematic, especially in a judiciary sense where individuals are supposed to take moral responsibility for their actions
32
Q

AO3 Milgram - Low population validity

A
  • all participants were American males, so the findings cannot be generalised to women or people from different cultures
  • however, a replication with women as ppts. found the same obedience levels as men
33
Q

AO3 Milgram - Real life support from My Lai massacre

A
  • in 1968 American soldiers killed 800 Vietnamese villagers due to orders from their lieutenant
  • in military court, the soldiers argued that they were only following orders from their superior
  • supports Milgram’s findings and also helps prevent future events like this as soldiers could be trained to report and refuse orders of such a violent nature
34
Q

Agentic state

A
  • a mental state in which a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions because they are acting on behalf of an authority figure
  • opposite of autonomous state
35
Q

Legitimacy of authority

A
  • we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
  • legitimacy is increased by factors like uniform
36
Q

AO3 Agentic state - Blass and Schmidt Research evidence

A
  • showed students a film of Milgram’s study and asked them who was to blame for the harm of the learner
  • they blamed the experimenter due to his legitimate authority as a scientist
37
Q

Authoritarian personality

A
  • dispositional explanation
  • makes people more prone to obedience
  • measured by Adorno’s F scale
  • thought to be caused by a strict upbringing
  • people with this personality are typically rigid thinkers and hostile to people they see as inferior to them
38
Q

AO3 F-Scale - Questionnaire

A
  • questionnaires are limited as a means of assessment as they use closed questions
  • produces only quantitative data
  • could lead to social desirability bias as ppts. taking the questionnaire knew their results would be seen by others
39
Q

AO3 AP/F-scale - Research support

A
  • Milgram and Elms gave the F-scale to 20 fully obedient and 20 disobedient ppts. of Milgram’s study
  • found that obedient ppts. scored higher on the questionnaire
40
Q

AO3 Authoritarian Personality - Low explanatory power

A
  • cannot explain obedient behaviour in large masses of people
  • eg. in WW2 the Germans had many different personalities (no way all of them had an AP)
  • AP explanation is limited because it cannot explain why they all obeyed the Nazi’s
41
Q

Resistance to social influence

A
  • a person’s ability to limit the social influence on them
  • eg. resisting peer pressure
42
Q

AO3 Authoritarian Personality - Politically biased

A
  • cannot explain obedience across the political spectrum as it only accounts for right-wing authoritarianism
    -doesn’t account for left-wing authoritarianism like Bolshevism
43
Q

Locus of Control (Rotter 1966)

A
  • the extent to which an individual believes they have control over their lives
  • internal: caused by their own decisions and efforts
  • external: caused by fate/luck
  • people with an internal locus of control are less likely to conform
44
Q

AO3 Locus of control - Research support

A
  • Atgis (1998) found a link between locus of control and conformity
  • a meta-analysis found that those with an external LoC were more likely to conform, supporting the explanation
  • however, this is merely correlational
45
Q

AO3 Locus of control - Contradicting evidence

A
  • Twenge et Al (2004) found that over time American’s have become more resistant to social influence but also more external in their LoC
  • weakens the explanation that having an internal LoC leads to resistance to social influence
46
Q

Minority influence

A
  • when a small group/individual influences the behaviour and beliefs of a larger group of people
47
Q

What do minorities need to be to have success?

A
  1. Consistency
  2. Commitment (eg. making a sacrifice)
  3. Flexibility
48
Q

Moscovici’s procedure

A
  • 172 female in groups of 6 (4 ppts and 2 confederates) were shown 36 slides of different shades of blue and asked to state the colour of each slide
  • in the first part of the experiment, the confederates said all slides were green, and in the second they said 2/3 were green
49
Q

Moscovici’s findings

A
  • in the first condition, the consistent minority caused 9% of ppts to state slides were green
  • in the second condition, the inconsistent minority caused only 1.25% of ppts to state they were green
50
Q

AO3 Moscovici - Low ecological Validity

A
  • lab experiment, task lacked mundane realism
  • in real life, minorities like Greenpeace often face much bigger opposition like political climate and the law
  • lab experiments cannot properly represent the power dynamic that there is between minorities and majorities in real life
51
Q

AO3 Moscovici - Low population validity

A
  • all female sample so cannot generalise findings to males
  • females are often considered to be more conformist than males which suggests there may be a gender difference in the way men and women react to minority influence
  • the sample was small (4 people in the group) and is not representative of the majorities in real life
52
Q

AO3 Moscovici - Ethical issues

A
  • the ppts. were deceived into thinking they were doing a colour-perception test and didn’t give informed consent to take part
  • however, this prevented demand characteristics so was necessary for the validity of the results, and the ppts. were fully debriefed after
53
Q

AO3 Minority Influence - Real life evidence

A
  • the suffragette movement is a real life experience of a minority influencing a majority
  • the campaigned for women’s rights and through being committed, consistent, and flexible they achieved suffrage for women
  • they were especially committed, with one suffragette Emily Davidson giving her life to the movement and forcing the majority to pay attention to their demands
54
Q

Social change

A

the ways in which a society develops over time to replace beliefs, attitudes and behaviour with new norms and expectations

Psychology (11 decks)

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