Social Influence

Question 1

Jenness (1932)

Answer 1

Informational social influence, participants first wrote how many beans they thought were in the jar on a piece of paper. When given a chance to confer answers with other participants they all changed there answers to higher than their initial guess.

Question 2

Factors effecting conformity- Asch

Answer 2

Supports NSI, participants conformed to confederates and said the wrong answer in a simple line matching task 1/3 of the time

Question 3

Asch variations

Answer 3

Changing task difficulty, group size and unanimity of the majority and whether they answered allowed or in private

Question 4

Conforming to social roles- Zimbardo

Answer 4

Created a fake prison environment at Stanford university to see if students would conform to their roles, had to end experiment early as guards were mistreating prisoners so badly

Question 5

Obedience- Milgram

Answer 5

Supports legitimacy of authority and Agentic state- got all participants to shock up to 300V, at which point the confederate showed discomfort. 65% shocked confederate up to 450V, which they had previously been told could be lethal. This was just because of the presence of an authority figure in a lab coat

Question 6

Obedience- Milgram’s variations

Answer 6

Supports legitimacy of authority and Agentic state, depending on variation- Changed proximity of authority and victim, the uniform of experimenter (lab coat or not) and the location of the experiment (rundown office in Bridgeport vs Yale)

Question 7

Obedience- Hofling

Answer 7

Supports legitimacy of authority in ecologically valid environment- Real life hospital 21/22 nurses broke strict code because an unknown doctor told them over the phone

Question 8

Explanations for obedience- Adorno

Answer 8

(1947) he created the Authoritarian personality explanation of obedience, claiming some are just more likely to obey because of their strict upbringing. The F scale was a measure of the AP characteristics

Question 9

Explanations for obedience- Elms and Milgram

Answer 9

Supports authoritarian personality as explanation for obedience- Discovered obedient participants in the line study were likely to have a higher F score

Question 10

Avtgis (aviator)

Answer 10

Resistance to social influence- found people with high internal locus of control were much less likely to be persuaded, influenced of to conform compared to high external LoC

Question 11

Consistency minority influence- Moscovici

Answer 11

Found a consistent minority (8%) were significantly more influential than an inconsistent one (1%) in a colour perception test

Question 12

Nemeth and Brilmayer

Answer 12

Role of flexible majority- jurors were more likely to be influenced by a confederate juror who was willing to compromise over the level of compensation given to the victim