Social influence Flashcards
Evaluation of NSI
+ Research support: Asch
- Individual difference: McGhee and Teevan
What did Asch do ?
Completed an interview after study asking why people conformed
Found that they conformed due to feeling self conscious and afraid of disapproval
Increase validity
What did McGhee and Teevan do ?
Found that students who were high in need for affiliation were more likely to conform.
Not everyone concerned with being liked
Reduces validity
Why does NSI not effect everyone?
people who are not concerned with being liked are less affected by NSI than those who care more about being liked. Such people seek affiliations.
Evaluation of ISI
+ Research support: Jeness:
- Not easy to distinguish between the two:
What did Jeness do ?
Gave participants a jar of jellybeans and asked them to guess how many was in it. They were asked to come up with an answer individually and collectively as a group.
Found that many conformed to what the group average was when collectively answering.
Why is it hard to distinguish between ISI and NSI ?
E.g. in Asch’s research both NSI is shown due to participants wanting to be liked and ISI is shown due to participants want to be right.
Difficult to determine which explanation will influence their behaviour.
Evaluation of Asch’s Research
+ Scientific
E.g. Conducted in a controlled lab environment.
- Artificial setting
- Ethical issues: E.g. Deception
- Gender bias: E.g. 123 Males
- Culture bias: E.g. 123 American
Evaluation of Zimbardo Research
+ Scientific
E.g. Conducted in a controlled lab environment (Stanford university)
- Lacks realism
E.g. Banuazizi and Mohavedi - Ethical issues
E.g. Physical and Psychological harm - Research Refuting
E.g. Reicher and Haslam - Finding extricated
Banuazizi and Mohavedi
argued participants were acting rather than genuinely conforming to the roles and their performance was based off stereotypes of roles.
What did Reicher and Haslam do?
Replication of SPE known as BBC prison study
Findings different to Zimbardo’s prisoners took control subjecting guards to harassment
What does it mean by the findings were exadicate?
Actually only 1/3 of the guards actually behaved brutally
with one third applying rules fairly with my sympathising prisoners
Evaluation of Migram
+ Research support (Extended study)
E.g. Bickman
+ Scientific
E.g. Conducted in controlled lab environment
- Artificial setting
E.g. Controlled lab environment § - Ethical issues
E.g. Deception and Right to withdraw - Limited sample size: E.g. 40 participants
Bickman
dress in a jacket and tie, milkman outfit and a security guard.
perform tasks such as picking up litter or giving the confederates a coin for the parking meter.
Evaluation of Agentic state
+ Research support:
E.g. Milgram
+ Research support:
E.g Blass and Schmitt
- Individual differences:
- Alternative explanation: Legitimacy of authority
How does Milgram’s study show agentic state?
experimenter said that they would take responsibility.
shows that pp shifted to an agentic state when responsibility for their actions was removed. were acting on behalf of the experimente.
Blass and Schmitt
Showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner, Mr Wallace. The students blamed the “experimenter” rather than the participant.
Evaluation of Legitimacy of authority
+ Research support:
E.g. Bickman
+ Accounts for cultural differences:
E.g. Kilham and Mann
- Individual difference
+ Practical application:
E.g. Schools and Prisons.
- Alternative explanation: Agentic state
Kilham and Mann
replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participants went all the way to the top voltage scale, while Mantell found different figures for German participants 85%.
Evaluation of Authoritarian personality
+ Large sample
E.g. 2000 participants
- Culture bias
E.g. 2000 Middle class American white
+ Research support:
E.g. Milgram and Elms
- Problem with Research support:
E.g. Correlation - Individual differences
Milgram and Elms
Conducted interviews with a small sample of fully obedient participants, who scored highly on the F-scale believing there might be a correlation between obedience and authoritarian personality.
Evaluation of Social support
+ R.S: Asch
+ R.S: Milgram
- Bias sample
- Alternative explanations
- Doesn’t consider dispositional factors
Evaluation of Locus of control
+ R.S: Holland
- Limited role of LOC: Rotter
Holland
repeated Milgram’s baseline study and mesaured whether participants were internal or externals. He found that 37% of the internals did not continue to the highest level shock whereas only 23% of the externals did not continue.
