Social Influence

Question 1

What was the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 1

To investigate conformity through responses of participants to group pressure in an unambiguous situation.

Question 2

What was the method of Asch’s study?

Answer 2

123 American male students tested in a group of six to eight confederates.
Two large cards were shown, one with a single standard line and the other with three comparison lines.
Participants were asked to select the matching line.

There were 18 trials, 12 critical where confederates all selected the wrong line.

Question 3

What were the results of Asch’s study?

Answer 3

On the 12 critical trials the participant gave the wrong answer 1/3 of the time, agreeing with the confederates.
25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer.

Question 4

What is the conclusion of Asch’s study?

Answer 4

This shows people are influenced by group pressure.
Also shows a high level of independence as, despite group pressure, the majority went against group opinion.

Question 5

What are the evaluation points of Asch’s study?

Answer 5

A weakness of Asch’s study is it may only reflect conformity in 1950s America.
Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s study in 1980 in the UK and found just one conforming response in 396 trials.
This suggests that the Asch effect is not consistent over time.

Another weakness is that the task and situation are artificial.
Being asked to judge the length of a line (a trivial task) with a group of strangers doesn’t reflect everyday situations where people conform.
This means that the results may not explain more serious real-world situations.

A further weakness is that Asch’s research is more reflective of conformity in individualist cultures.
Studies conducted in collectivist countries such as China produce higher conformity rates than those carried out in individualist countries such as America and the UK (Bond and Smith).
This suggests that Asch’s results cannot be generalised to collectivist cultures.

Question 6

What are social factors?

Answer 6

‘Social’ means other people.
Conformity occurs because of real or imagined pressure from others.

Question 7

How did group size affect Asch’s study?

Answer 7

The more people there are in a group the greater the pressure to conform.
Asch found that with two confederates conformity was 13.6%, but with three confederates it was 31.8%.
Over three confederates made little difference.

Question 8

How did anonymity affect Asch’s study?

Answer 8

When participants could write down answers (they were anonymous) conformity was lower.

Question 9

How did task difficulty affect Asch’s study?

Answer 9

If the comparison lines are more similar to the standard, the task becomes harder and conformity increased.

Question 10

What are dispositional factors?

Answer 10

Characteristics of a person.

Question 11

How does personality affect conformity?

Answer 11

Internal locus of control leads to lower conformity.
When asked to rate cartoons, Burger and Cooper found that participants with a high desire for control (internals) were less likely to agree with a confederate’s ratings of the same cartoons.

Question 12

How does expertise affect conformity?

Answer 12

More knowledgeable people tend to be less conformist.
For example, self-confessed maths experts were less likely to conform to others’ answers to maths problems (Lucas et al.).

Question 13

What was Milgram’s study’s aim?

Answer 13

To see if people would obey an unreasonable order (to deliver electric shocks).

Question 14

What was the method of Milgram’s study?

Answer 14

40 males volunteered for a study on memory, aged 20–50.
‘Teacher’ paired with ‘learner’ (confederate).
Learner was strapped in a chair and wired with electrodes which could give an electric shock.
Teacher was instructed by the experimenter to give a shock to the learner when a mistake was made. Intensity increased from 15 to 450 volts.

Question 15

What were the results of Milgram’s study?

Answer 15

No participants stopped below 300 volts.
Five participants (12.5%) stopped at 300 volts when the learner pounded on wall.
65% continued to 450 volts.
Participants showed extreme tension, e.g. three had seizures.

Question 16

What was the conclusion of Milgram’s study?

Answer 16

Obedience has little to do with disposition.
Factors in the situation made it difficult to disobey, e.g. location of study, not wanting to disrupt experiment and being in a novel situation.

Question 17

What are the evaluation points of Milgram’s study?

Answer 17

One weakness is that participants may not have believed that the shocks were real.
Milgram’s participants voiced suspicions about the shocks (Perry).
This suggests that Milgram’s participants went along with the study because they didn’t want to spoil it.

One strength is that other studies have found similar obedience levels.
Sheridan and King found that 100% of females followed orders to give what they thought was a fatal shock to a puppy.
This suggests that Milgram’s results were not faked but represented genuine obedience.

One weakness is that Milgram’s participants experienced considerable distress.
He could have caused psychological damage to his participants because they thought they were causing pain to the learner.
Such ethical issues question whether his research should have been carried out.

Question 18

What is Milgram’s agency theory?

Answer 18

Explains obedience in terms of the power of others and social factors.

Question 19

What is an agentic state?

Answer 19

Person follows orders with no sense of personal responsibility.

Question 20

What is an autonomous state?

Answer 20

Person makes their own free choices and feels responsible for their own actions.

Question 21

What is an agentic shift?

Answer 21

The term ‘agentic shift’ is used to describe the change from autonomous to an agentic state.
The shift occurs when a person see someone else as a figure of authority.

Question 22

How did proximity affect Milgram’s study?

Answer 22

In Milgram’s further studies, if the teacher was physically closer to the learner, they were less obedient.

Question 23

What are the evaluation points of Milgram’s study?

Answer 23

One strength is that there is research support.
Blass and Schmitt showed a film of Milgram’s study to students who blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the ‘teacher’ for the harm to the learner.
Therefore the students recognised the legitimate authority of the experimenter as the cause of obedience.

One weakness is that agency theory can’t explain why there isn’t 100% obedience.
In Milgram’s study 35% of the participants didn’t go up to the maximum shock of 450 volts.
This means that social factors cannot fully explain obedience.

One weakness is that agency theory gives people an excuse for ‘blind’ obedience.
Nazis who were racist and prejudiced were doing more than just following orders.
This means that agency theory is potentially dangerous as it excuses people.

Question 24

What is Adorno’s theory?

Answer 24

Seeking to explain the causes of obedience in people’s personality.

Question 25

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 25

Some people have an exaggerated respect for authority.
They are more likely to obey orders and look down on people of inferior status.

Question 26

What are authoritarians cognitive style?

Answer 26

‘Black and white’, rigid style of thinking.
They believe in stereotypes and do not like change.

Question 27

Where does the authoritarian personality originate?

Answer 27

Originates from overly strict parenting and receiving only conditional love from parents.
Child identifies with parents’ moral values.
Also feels hostility towards parents which cannot be directly expressed for fear of reprisals.

Question 28

What is scapegoating?

Answer 28

Freud suggested that people who have hostility displace this onto others who are socially inferior in a process called scapegoating.
You offload anger to something else relieving anxiety and hostility.

Question 29

What are the evaluation points of Adorno’s theory?

Answer 29

One weakness is that the theory was based on a flawed questionnaire.
The F-scale used has a response bias as anyone who answered yes would end up with a higher authoritarian score.
This challenges the validity of the theory because it is based on poor evidence.

One weakness is that the evidence is based on correlational data.
We cannot claim that an authoritarian personality causes greater obedience levels.
Therefore, other factors may explain the apparent link between obedience and the authoritarian personality.

The authoritarian personality cannot explain all cases of obedience.
Millions of Germans displayed highly obedient and prejudiced behaviour but didn’t have the same upbringing and same personality.
This means that there are probably social factors that affect obedience as well as dispositional ones.

Question 30

What is prosocial behaviour?

Answer 30

Acting in a way that promotes the welfare of others and may not benefit the helper.

Question 31

What is bystander behaviour?

Answer 31

The presence of others reduces prosocial behaviour.

Question 32

What is the aim of Piliavin’s subway study?

Answer 32

To investigate if certain characteristics of a victim would affect whether people will help a bystander in a natural setting.

Question 33

What was the method of Piliavin’s subway study?

Answer 33

A male confederate collapses on a New York City subway train, either appearing drunk or disabled (with a cane).
103 trials.
One confederate acted as a ‘model’ if no one else helped.
Two observers recorded key information.

Question 34

What were the results of Piliavin’s subway study?

Answer 34

‘Disabled’ victim (with cane) was given help in 95% of the trials.
‘Drunk’ victim was helped in 50% of the trials.
Help was forthcoming as much in a crowded carriage as in a carriage with very few people.

Question 35

What is the conclusion of Piliavin’s subway study?

Answer 35

Characteristics of the victim affect whether they will receive help.
In a natural setting the number of people who witness an emergency doesn’t affect their willingness to help.

Question 36

What are the evaluation points of Piliavin’s subway study?

Answer 36

One strength of this study is that participants did not know their behaviour was being studied.
The subway train passengers did not know they were in a study and behaved naturally.
This means that the results of this study are high in validity.

One weakness of the study is that the participants came mostly from a city.
They may have been more used to these types of emergencies.
This means that their behaviour may not have been typical of all people.

One strength of this study was that qualitative data was also collected.
The two observers on each trial noted down remarks they heard from passengers.
This offered a deeper insight into why people did or did not offer help.

Question 37

What are the two social factors?

Answer 37

Presence of others

Cost of helping

Question 38

What are the two dispositional factors?

Answer 38

Similarity to the victim

Expertise

Question 39

What is crowd and collective behaviour?

Answer 39

Le Bon suggested that being in a crowd creates anonymity, leading to antisocial behaviour.
Behaviour is ruled by social norms so when we can’t be identified we lose our sense of responsibility and behave irrationally and aggressively.

Question 40

What was the aim of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 40

Zimbardo aimed to investigate deindividuation in a study similar to Milgram’s.

Question 41

What was the method of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 41

Four female undergraduates had to deliver a fake electric shock to another student.
Group 1: Individuated group – Wore their normal clothes, name tags and could see each other.
Group 2: Deindividuated group – Wore large coats with hoods, never referred to by name.

Question 42

What were the results of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 42

The deindividuated group was more likely to press the button to shock the ‘learner’ in the other room.
They held the shock button down twice as long as the individuated group.

Question 43

What was the conclusion of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 43

This supports the view that anonymity and deindividuation increases the likelihood of antisocial behaviour.

Question 44

What are the evaluation points of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 44

One weakness is that deindividuation doesn’t always lead to antisocial behaviour.
Johnson and Downing found that participants dressed as a nurse gave fewer and milder shocks than those dressed in a KKK outfit but more shocks than those in their own clothes.
This shows that people take on group norms.

One strength is that understanding deindividuation can be used to manage crowds.
At sporting fixtures crowd control can be achieved through using video cameras so people are more self-aware.
This can then reduce aggressive behaviour of the crowd.

One weakness is that antisocial behaviour may be due to crowding rather than collective behaviour.
When animals are packed together they feel stressed and act aggressively (Freedman).
So it may be overcrowding that creates antisocial behaviour as well as deindividuation.

Question 45

What was the aim of Reicher’s study?

Answer 45

Reicher aimed to investigate the behaviour of a crowd to see if their behaviour was ruly or unruly.

Question 46

What was the method of Reicher’s study?

Answer 46

Analysed newspaper, TV, radio and police reports of the St. Pauls riots in 1980.
Interviewed 20 people immediately after the riot to understand what happened, including six interviews in depth.

Question 47

What were the results of Reicher’s study?

Answer 47

Riot was triggered by policemen raiding a café for drugs, an action which was seen as unjustified.
A crowd of 300–3000 gathered and attacked the police and other properties, throwing stones and bricks and burning police cars. The attack intensified and spread.
When the police left rioters calmed down and never moved beyond the St. Pauls area.

Question 48

What was the conclusion of Reicher’s study?

Answer 48

This shows that the crowd’s behaviour was rule-driven and anger was only expressed towards predictable targets, based on the social attitudes of the area.

Question 49

What are the evaluation points for Reicher’s study?

Answer 49

One strength is that other research has come to similar conclusions about crowd behaviour.
Research on football hooligans also found that violence didn’t escalate beyond a certain point (Marsh).
This supports the view that crowd behaviour is rule-driven and not out of control.

The case study is based on subjective data.
Reicher based his account on eyewitness testimony of reporters and members of the crowd who may have had a biased perspective on the events they witnessed.
This means that the data may lack validity.

One strength of this research is that it provides ideas about how best to police such riots.
Reicher’s analyses suggest that increasing the police presence in riots does not always lead to a decrease in violence so it may be better to let local communities ‘police’ themselves.
This shows that this research can have a positive effect in the real world.

Question 50

What is deindividuation?

Answer 50

Group norms (social factors) determine the behaviour of the crowd – either prosocial or antisocial.

Question 51

What is social loafing?

Answer 51

When working in a group people individually put in less effort.
Being in a group reduces personal identity (deindividuation) and individual contribution is unknown.
Latané et al. found participants made less noise individually when shouting in a group of six than when on their own.

Question 52

How does culture affect social loafing

Answer 52

Individualist cultures (e.g. US and UK) focused on individual needs whereas collectivist cultures (e.g. China and Korea) focused on the needs of the group.
Social loafing is lower in collectivist cultures, e.g. Earley found that Chinese people put in the same amount of effort on a group task regardless of whether they could or could not be identified. This was not true of US participants.

Question 53

How does personality affect crowd and collective behaviour?

Answer 53

People with an internal locus of control are less likely to be influenced by others in a crowd.

Question 54

How does morality affect crowd and collective behaviour?

Answer 54

Morals are our sense of right and wrong. Those with greater moral strength are more likely to have their behaviour guided by these morals than be influenced by the opinions/behaviour of others.