Social Influence Flashcards
Give an introduction to this topic
Our behaviour and mental processes get influneced by other people all the time. They get influenced because we want to feel like and accepted by other people. We want to fit it and form part of the group. Sometimes we get influenced so much that we can hide how we think or behave to meet the approval of others and society.
Define social influence
The process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real or implied presence of other people,for example: family,friends,media or religion.
What does this topic focus on?
Social influence in terms of conformity (majority and minority influence )and obedience to authority. (the 2 types of social influence)
Define conformity and give an example
Conformity occurs when attitudes or behaviour change because of pressure exerted by other individuals, especially group pressure.. This an lea to a transformation in beliefs, thoughts or personality.
Ex: all your friends buy a smartphone, and you never felt the need for one, yet you feel compelled to buy it.
Or for example you and your friends go and see a movie, you didn’t enjoy it but everyone thought it was brilliant. You might be tempted to conform because you want to fit within the group
When you get influenced by other people, which one changes fist: attitudes or behaviour?
Behaviour
Name the 2 types of conformity
Majority and minority
Explain the experiment that Solomon Asch conducted to explain how a majority can influence a minority.
Solomon Asch, showed participants 3 lines and asked them to say which one was the same length as the other.
However all the participants except for one were collaborating with the researcher (confederates)
Although it was evident which line was the same length as the other, the confederates answered wrongly on purpose
The genuine participant had to gis his or her answer at the end, after all the confederates.
The participant found themselves in a conflict on whether to answer what they really thought or whether to agree with the majority of the group.
The results were that 37% conformed on all trials, and at least 75% yielded to group pressure at least once.
Mention 2 limitations of the Solomon Asch experiment
Asch’s work raises ethical issues ,because the genuine participant was not informed about consent,and they were misled about the key aspects of the experiment
2) Asch used an insiginificant task in which people’s real beleifes were not challenged.
What did Abrams argue about conformity?
Abrams et al, argued that conformity would increase if people pertaining to the same social group ex: psychology students.
In fact studies have shown that conformity did increase to 58% with the same social group
However when the participants were not from the same social group, conformity decreased to 8%. ex: history students
What did Bond and Smith argue about conformity?
He argued that conformity is higher in collectivistic cultures like Asia and Africa
BUT
lower in individualistic cultures like Europe and North America
Why does conformity occur?
Normative influence (behaviour changes)
Informational influence(attitude changes)
Explain normative influence and give an example
1) Individuals conform because they want to be liked and respected by others but this does not change their private opinion.
2)It is more common when individuals need to make public statements or need to be face-to-face with others.
3)Dominant when the individual’s opinion is strongly against the majorities.
Your friends tell you that your favourite pair of shoes are not fashionable, therefore you remove them but you still like them so the group thinks you are cool.
Explain informational influence and give an example
1) here conformity occurs because you think that other individual’s knowledge and judgement is far superior to yours, this might change your private opinion.
2) Stronger when participants make private responses and communicate them indirectly with others.
3)Dominant when the individual’s opinion is only slightly different than the majority’s
For example: your friends tells you that your favourite shoes are not fashionable anymore ,you had no idea so you thank them for letting you know.
Give 3 conclusions regarding solomon Asch’s experiment
1) Asch was frustrated at the results because he expected that the participants were morally obliged to say the truth
However other augments say that we should praise the participants and not criticise them why?
1) Because we should not exaggerate the conformity showed, because about 70 percent of the participants went against the majority of the group in at least one of the trials.
2) Participants were faced with strong conflict: i want to say the correct answer but i want to be liked by the rest of the group.
3) Most gae a mixture of correct ad incorrect answers to balance out their respect of group cohesion and avoid ridicule, and to show perceptual accuracy at the same time.
Who was the researcher who came up with minority influence?
Moscovici
Give characteristics that minority could possess when they influence a majority
Extrovert
Confidence
persuasive
Good at manipulation
Courage
Explain an intro regarding minority influence
According to moscovisici Asch had put to much emphasis on how majorities influence minorities.
minorities can also influence majorities.
Minority influence is a form of social influence which is brought about when a minority has a consistent position in a group .
It is only produced after a period of time and it produces private acceptance by the majority. Research has shown that minority opinion is not necessarily weaker but the question is why do some people conform to minority opinion and thus resist group pressure? (and kind of like why would a single individual put themselves out there and resist group pressure?)
What is Mosco vici’s theory called?
Dual process theory
What 2 aspects did Moscovisci come up with in his dual process theory?
Compliance and Conversion
What does compliance focus on?
Normative Influence
What does conversion focus on?
Informational influence
Explain compliance
in asch’s experiment
when the participants publicly conformed with the majority’s views but privately reject them.
This is a a rapid process which occurs without much thinking
Explain conversion
Explains how a majority can influence a minority.
It involves persuading the majority that the minority’s views are correct
Can be achieved through consistency flexibility and commitment.
Generally more time consuming/
Occurs after cognitive coflict and lots of thought.
Often achieves bith public and private agreement.
Usually in society do we go with the majority or the minority?
Majority
Because it is easier to go with the rest of the group and privately disagree.
Explain the 3 factors needed for conversion to occur
Consistency: the minority must be consistent in their viewpoint
Flexibility: the minority must not be rigid and dogmatic when presenting their viewpoint
Commitment: a committed minority will lead the majority to re-think their position
What experiment did moscvici conduct to study minority influence
Blue green experiment
Aim: to investigate the effects of a consistent minority on a majority
Explain the Blue green experiment
Moscovici conducted a re-run of asch’s experiment but in reverse. Instead of having a genuine participant and the rest were confedrates ,he got 4 genuine participants and 2 confederates.
So these participants they were shown 36 slides in which the slides were all diffrent shades of blue. They needed to answer out loud which colour it was on all 36 slides,which was obviously blue.
However in the first part of the experiment, the confederates answered green on all slides (consistent),whilst in the second part of te experiment they answeed blue 24 times and green 12 times. The results were that when the minority was acting consistentley confirmity increased to 8.42 percent,however when they behaved inconsistentley confirmity decreased to 1.25 percent (when the confedrrates said green)
What can be concluded about this experiment?
Minorities can influence majorities but only when they behave in certain was for example acting consistently
Give 2 critiques of this experiment
It is a lab experiment (therefore there is a lack of ecological validity so the results are not true to life)
And Mosco vici used females in his experiments so the results can not be generalized to the entire population because they only tell us about the behaviour of female students.
What did Nemeth et al conclude about minority influence?
They discussed that minorities dont lead majorities to change quickly their opinions, but they can lead majorities to change slowly through conflict (through deep thinking because basically majority influence occurs quicker),so therefore through the conflict (deep thinking ) this is what leads majorities to change.
What did David and Turner conclude about minority influence?
Moderate feminists vs extreme feminists ( much lower impact)
extreme feminists vs non feminists (higher impact because they were part of the in-group)
in group vs outgroup phenomenon
+ cohesion
Who do we obey in our lives and society?
Parents
Teachers
older sibilings
Boss
Police
Religious figures
How can we know that a person has authority?
Facial expressions
Confidence
Posture
Age
Give an introduction about the topic of obedience
In societies there are people who are generally more respected and hold more power than others. For example: when a policeman signals us to stop at the side of the road we do so without thinking too much. Normally this doesn’t cause any problems. However the question is ,what happens when someone in an authority position told us to do something that we do not agree with or that we not that is is not right. How far are we willing to go in obedience to authority?
Which is the experiment which was conducted to explain obedience to authority?
Stanley Milgram Experiment
Explain Stanley Milgram experiment
This experiment consisted of a teacher (who was the genuine participant of this experiment) and a learner (the confederate of the experiment). The teacher had to give eletric shocks every time that the learner got a question wrong. Howvever the intensity of the eletric shock was inrceased everyt time that the learner got a question wrong. 450V was a lethal surge of electrocity. Sometimes during the moment of the experiment u can hear the learner expressing his pain for example: 180 volts: i cant stand the pain
270: agonised scream
450:nothing.
65 percent actually gave the lethal shock.
How can we reduce obedience to authrotiy in 2 ways
Making more clear the learner’s difficulty
Reducing the authority of the experimenter
Explain making more clear the learner’s difficulty
Obedience was influenced by how exposed the genuine participant was exposed to the learner’s pain or suffering.
For example when the teacher was about 1 metre away from the learner obedicen was 40 percent,but twhen the teacher could hear the learner’s pain and suffering they obeyed 62 percent of the time.
Milgram he compared obedience in
remote feedback: the victim could not be seen or heard but his thumping on the wall could be heard 66 %
voice feedback : when the victim could be heard but not seen 62%
proximity: the citim was only 1 metre away from the participant 40%
touch proximity: the teaher had tor force the learner’s hand onto the shock plate.
Explain reducing the authority or influence of the experimenter
This experiment it was actually conducted in a run-down office and not at yale univeristy. This reduced the effects of obedience to authrity from 65% to 48%.
Or when the experimenter’s influence was shown when he was giving order’s by with the phone bedience fell to 20%
Very high levels of obedicne were shown in italy,spain,germany,austria and holland.
Why were so many people obedient in Stanley Milgram’s experiment. Give reasons for obedience.
1) The experimenter took full responsibility of the experiment, which means that the participants were in an agentic state meaning that the participants were not going to be responsible. However this was not always the case because sometimes the participanys held their fists and felt sweaty and tense this means that they were not in an agentic state.
2) Our experience has taught us that authorities are usually trustworthy.
3) Shocks increased slowly 15V each time making it difficult for participants to distinguish when they behaved unreasonably. (Burger)
4) The orders given were from reasonable to unreasonable and this made the participants hard for the participants to notice when they were behaving unreasonably
Explain Hofling et al
Field experiment ( an experiment whicbwas done in a real life situaton)
So basically they conducted an experiment with 22 nurses where they were phoned by someone called Dr smith. he told them wether a drug called astroten was available. when they checked they saw that the maximum dosage was 10mg. DR smith told them to administer 20mg. 21 out of 22 nurses did administer the drug.
However the nurses should not have beyed because they did not know dr smith and because of the maximum dosgae.
Uusaully nurses are taught in their training that they should listen to doctors orders because they hold a higher position of auhtority.
How are Milgram’s findings diffrent to what happened in Nazi Germany?
Most of Milgram’s participants were agitated and experienced great conflcit with respect to nazi germany who were unconcerned about moral issues.
2)Most participants’ in milgram’s studies had to be observed when it came to obedience and not like in nazi germany.
3) The values underlyiing milgram’s experiment were the positive ones of understanding human learning and memory and not the vile ideas of nazi germany which were prevalent.
Explain the Stanford Prison experiment by Zimbardo
According to zimbardo the 2 week simulation prison experiment had to be called off after 6 days because the guards became sadisitic and the prionsoers were suffering extreme stress.
The aim of this experiment was to investigate how enviornmental factors affect other’s behaviour.
People applied to participate in this experiment consisting of the psychological effects of prsion life (students applied )
Therefore a simulated prison was set up and then the behaviour was recorded. 70 students ended up participating in whcih all thes epope participated din diagnostic interviews and personallity etsts to ensure that there would be the most mentally stable partiicpants especially if there were people with a history fo drug abuse crime or medial disbailities.
Therefore a sample of 24 students from america and anada were chosen who havppened to be in the stanford prison area were chosen and they were paid 15 dollars for each day.
The study began with a group of healthy,intelligent middle class males. These people were divided into 2 groups prisoners and guards randomly with the flip of a coin.
The prisoners were literally tretaed as real life prosners,they were searched stripped off given an id number and their feet were clad in chains.
Regrding the guards they wore glasses to not show their emotions and khaki uniforms. They also had a whislte that they blew at 2 30 am each ngiht.
They also used psycholoigcal tacts like solitary confimnet and prison cells and not just physicla force and by the end of the experiment the guards had won total control.
Why did the study end?
The guards were escalting their abuse towards their prisioners in the middle of the night when they thought that the experimenters were not watching and the expeirment was off.
Christina Masalh strongly objected when the prisioners went for a toilet run and upon seeing them with bags over their heads and legs chained toegther she was horridied and hands on each other’s shoulders.
Define obedience
The act or behaviour in response to an order or authority. A person does not change their personality when following rules or orders
