Social influence Flashcards

Question

Social-Psychological factors affecting obedience

Answer 1

Agentic state Legitimacy of authority

Answer 2

Obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsibility They believe they are acting for someone else An agent feels high anxiety when they realise they are doing something wrong but feel powerless to disobey From the Nazis - Eichmanns defence was he was obeying orderd

Answer 3

Opposite of agentic Free to behave according to their own principles Feels sense of responsibility for their own actions

Answer 4

Autonomy to agency Occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority

Answer 5

Why the individual stays in the agentic state Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damage opeffect of their behaivor Reducer moral strain E.g. shifting blame to victim, denying damage they doing to the victim

Answer 6

Agreed by society Allowed to exercise social power over others Consequences some people granted power to punish Willing to give up some independence and hand over control Destructive authority Shown in milligrams exp

Answer 7

Research support - Blass and Schmitt showed a film of milligrams exp to participants and asked who was responsible. Students blamed the experimenter, due to legitimate authority. Limited explaination - agentic shift doesn’t explain why some participants don’t obey, doesn’t explain Hifling et al. the nurses should have had a similar anxiety but they didn’t. Agentic can only account for some obediance Cultural differences - replicated in Australia Kilham and Mann obedience on,y 16%, Hermany Mantell 85%. Some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate Real life crimes - can explain obediance in real life war crimes. Kelman and Hamilton argue the My Lai massacre can be understood in terms of the US army’s power

Answer 8

Authoritarian Personality

Answer 9

Investigated white Americans unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. F - scale used to ensure AP

Answer 10

People w AP identified with strong people and were generally contemptuous of the weak Conscious of their own and others status s Show excessive respect and servility for people of higher status Cognitive style where categories of people are fixed and distinct stereotypes Strong positive correlation between AP and predujice

Answer 11

Tend to be especially obedient to authority Respect and submissiveness Show contempt for people they perceive as being inferior Inflexible with their views

Answer 12

Forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting Strict discipline, expectations of loyalty, impossibly high standards, severe criticism Conditional love from parents Creates resentment and hostility in the child Fears displaced onto others who perceived as weak - scapegoating

Answer 13

Research support - milligram measured Obediance and AP, found correlation between the two. Not enough evidence for causation Limited explaination - individual personality can’t explain obedient behaviour for the majority, e.g. pre war Germany all showed obedient rascist behaviour but they all would have had different personalities - can’t all have AP. Methological problems - based in flawed F-scale, all the items are worded in the same direction. High score by ticking all the boxes in the same column. Not necessarily AP but acquiescence biased, tendency to agree w everything. Low internal validity

Answer 14

Conformity Reduced if other people are not conforming as well Aschs dissenter allowed the person to think independently Effect of dissenter not long lasting Obediance Another person does not obey Milligrams variations dropped from 65% to 10% when joined by a disobedient confed

Answer 15

Internal control, rather than external Internals believe things that halogen to them are as a result of their behaivor Externals believe things that happen to them are out of their control Continuum - scale of LoC, low internal/external Internal are more likely to resist pressure to conform, takes responsibility for their actions Internals tend to be more self confident, more achievement orientated and less need for social approval

Answer 16

Research support - Allen and Levine found conformity decreased when there was one dissenter in an Asch type exp. Occurred when the dissenter stated he had poor vision, no place to judge the line, supports that resistance allows the person to think freely Research support - Gamson et al. higher levels of resistance than millgram. Participants were in groups. 88% resisted - peer support is linked to resistance Research support - link between LoC and Obediance. Holland repeated milligrams experiment and measured participants LoC. 37% of internals did not continue to highest shock. 23% of externals did not. Increases validity Contradictory research - Twenge et al. analysed data from American LoC studies over 40 year time period. Showed that people have become more resistant to Obediance and more external. If resistance was linked to internal, people should have become more internal

Answer 17

One person or a small group of people influence the beliefs/behaviours of others Consistency Commitment Flexibility Most likely to lead to internalisation

Answer 18

Consistency in minority views increase the interest of other people, Synchronic consistency - everyone saying the same thing Diachronic consistency - everyone saying the same thing for some time Ames people rethink their own views

Answer 19

Engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their views These activities are at some risk to the minority because it demonstrates commitment to the cause The majority pays more attention to- augmentation principle

Answer 20

Being extremely consistent can be seen as rigid, dogmatic and inflexible. Off putting to the majority unlikely to lead to conversions of beliefs Prepared to adapt their view and accept reasonable and valid counter argument Strike a balance between consistency and flexibility

Answer 21

Over time , increasing numbers of people,e switch their views to the minority. They have become converted. The more this happens the more the rate of conversion Called Snow balled effect Gradually the minority view has become the majority and change has occurred

Answer 22

Artificial tasks - identifying the colour of a slide are as artificial as Aschs experiment, research is far removed from how they attempt to change behaivor, lacks external validity

Answer 23

1 Drawing attention 2 Consistency 3 Deeper processing 4 Augmentative principle 5 Snowball effect 6 Social cryptomnesia

Answer 24

People have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened

Answer 25

Minority influence is only indirectly effective - social changes happen slowly, indirect and delayed. Majority is only influenced by matters related to the issue. Effects may not be seen for some time. Being perceived as deviant - the potential of minorities is often limited, majority may not want to align themselves with them. Would have little impact because the focus would be on them and not their message

Answer 26

Group of six asked to view 36 blue coloured slides of varing intensity, and state if blue or green. 2 confeds who consistently said the slides were green for 2/3 if the slides. 32% gave the wrong slide on at least one trial. A second group was exposed to an inconsistent minority, fell to 1.25% No confeds 0.25%