Social Influence

Question 1

Define Conformity

Answer 1

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined group pressure. It is a form of majority influence

Question 2

Define Compliance

Answer 2

When a person changes their public behaviour, the way they act, but not their private beliefs.

Question 3

Define Identification

Answer 3

When a person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group. This is usually a short term change and is usually as a result of normative social influence

Question 4

Define Internalisation

Answer 4

When a person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs. This is usually a long-term change and often the result of informational social influence

Question 5

What is the lowest level of conformity?

Answer 5

Compliance

Question 6

What is the middle level of conformity?

Answer 6

Identification

Question 7

What is the deepest level of conformity?

Answer 7

Internalisation

Question 8

What is Informational Social Influence?

Answer 8

Need to be right

Question 9

What is Normative Social Influence?

Answer 9

The person conforms because of a need to be accepted by the group

Question 10

What was Asch investigating?

Answer 10

The extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform

Question 11

What sample of people did Asch test?

Answer 11

123 male American undergraduates in groups of 6; consisting of 1 true participant and 5 confederates

Question 12

Briefly describe Asch’s procedure

Answer 12

Participants and confederates were presented with 4 lines; 3 comparison lines and 1 standard line

They asked to state which of three lines was the same length as a stimulus line

The real participant always answered last or second to last

Confederates would give the same incorrect answer for 12/18 trials

Asch observed how often the participant would give the same incorrect answer as the confederates versus the correct answer

Question 13

What are the findings of Asch’s study?

Answer 13

36.8% of ppts conformed
25% never conformed
75% conformed at least once

Question 14

Give the factors that affect levels of conformity

Answer 14

Group size
Unanimity
Task Difficulty

Question 15

How might group size affect level of conformity? Refer to Asch’s study

Answer 15

An individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group. There was low conformity with group size of confederates were less than 3 - any more than 3 and the conformity rose by 30%

Question 16

How might unanimity affect level of conformity? Refer to Asch’s study

Answer 16

An individual is more likely to conform when the group is unanimous i.e. all give the same answer. When joined by another participant who gave the correct answer in Asch’s study, conformity fell from 32% to 5.5%

Question 17

How might Task Difficulty affect level of conformity? Refer to Asch’s study

Answer 17

An individual is more likely to conform when the task is difficult. For example, Asch altered the lines making them more similar in length. Since it was harder to judge the correct answer conformity increased.
When the task is difficult, we are more uncertain of our answer so we look to others for conformation

Question 18

Give two strengths of Asch’s study

Answer 18

Lab experiment - Extraneous and cofounding variables are strictly controlled, meaning that replication of the experiment is easy

High internal validity - Strict control over EVs. The participants did the experiment before without confederates to see if they actually knew the correct answer

Question 19

Give two drawbacks of Asch’s study

Answer 19

Lacks ecological validity - it was based on peoples’ perception of lines and so the findings cannot be generalised to real life as it does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity

Ethical issues - there was deception as participants were tricked into thinking the study was about perception rather than compliance so they could not give informed consent

Question 20

What is a social role?

Answer 20

A position or status that a person holds e.g. student, daughter etc. Social roles may carry expectations about what is appropriate attributes and behaviour for the role e.g.intelligent, nurturing etc..

Question 21

What was the aim of Zimbardo’s research?

Answer 21

To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life

Question 22

Who were the participants of Zimbardo’s research?

Answer 22

24 American male undergraduate students

Question 23

Describe the procedure of Zimbardo’s research

Answer 23

Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison
Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard
Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested without warning and were stripped naked when arriving at the prison
Guards were permitted instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison. No physical violence was permitted

Question 24

Describe the findings of Zimbardo’s research

Answer 24

Identification occurred very fast, as both the prisoners and guards adopted their new roles and played their part in a short amount of time
Guards began to harass and torment prisoners in harsh and aggressive ways
Prisoners would only talk about prison issues

Question 25

Give two strengths of Zimbardo’s research

Answer 25

Real life applications - This research changed the way US prisons are run e.g. young prisoners are no longer kept with adult prisoners to prevent the bad behaviour perpetuating

Debriefing - participants were fully and completely debriefed about the aims and results of the study

Question 26

Give two weaknesses of Zimbardo’s research

Answer 26

Lacks ecological validity - The study suffered from demand characteristics. For example, the participants knew that they were participating in a study and therefore may have changed their behaviour, either to please the experimenter or in response to being observed

Ethical issues - Participants were not protected from stress, anxiety, emotional distress and embarrassment (psychological harm)

Question 27

Define Obedience

Answer 27

Type of social influence whereby one person follows the orders of another. The person giving the orders normally is an authority figure and has the power to punish

Question 28

What was Milgram’s (1963) aim?

Answer 28

To observe whether people would obey a figure of authority when told to harm another person

Question 29

Who were the participants in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 29

Randomly selected participants - 40 US males between 20-50 years old

Question 30

Give the procedure of Milgram’s experiment (1963)

Answer 30

A participant given the role of ‘teacher’ and a confederate given the role of ‘learner’
Participant had to ask the confederate a series of questions. Whenever the confederate got the answer wrong, the participant had to give him an electric shock. The electric shock incremented by 15 volts at a time.
There were no real shocks administered.
The experimenter’s role was to give a series of orders when the participant refused to administer a shock

Question 31

Give the findings of Milgram (1963)

Answer 31

All participants went up to 300V
65% went up to 450V
No participants stopped below 300V, whilst only 12.5% stopped at 300V, showing that the vast majority of participants were prepared to give lethal electric shocks to a confederate

Question 32

Give the three factors affecting obedience

Answer 32

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 33

How does Proximity affect obedience? (refer to Milgram)

Answer 33

Participants obeyed more when the experimenter was in the same room i.e. 62.5%.
This was reduced to 40% when the experimenter and participant were in separate rooms

Question 34

How does Location affect obedience? (refer to Milgram)

Answer 34

Participants obeyed more when the study was conducted at a prestigious university i.e. Stanford or Yale

Question 35

How does Uniform affect obedience? (refer to Milgram)

Answer 35

Participants obeyed more when the experimenter wore a lab coat. A person is more likely to obey someone wearing a uniform as it gives them a higher status and a greater sense of legitimacy.

Question 36

Give two strengths of Milgram (1963)

Answer 36

Debriefing - The participants were thoroughly and carefully debriefed on the real aims of the study, in an attempt to deal with the ethical breach of the guideline of protection from deception and the possibility to give conformed consent

Real life applications - This research opened our eyes to the problem of obedience and so may reduce future obedience in response to destructive authority figures

Question 37

Give two weaknesses of Milgram (1963)

Answer 37

Ethical issues: There was psychological harm inflicted upon the participants
There was deception and so informed consent could not be obtained.

It raises a socially sensitive issue - Milgram’s findings suggest that those who are responsible for killing innocent people can be excused because it is not their personality that made them do this.

Question 38

According to Milgram, how is a stable society maintained?

Answer 38

If sometimes we give up on our individuality and instead obey the social roles

Question 39

What two mental states did Milgram come up with?

Answer 39

Autonomous & Agentic

Question 40

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 40

When you “see yourself acting on your own”.
We are aware of the consequences of our actions, and we are in control of our behaviour

Question 41

What is the agentic state?

Answer 41

“When you see yourself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes”.
This is when you trust authority, give up your responsibility
You cease acting on your own conscience

Question 42

What is it called when we move from an autonomous state to an agentic state?

Answer 42

This is known as the ‘agentic shift’. There is normally a moral strain

Question 43

How might moral strain appear?

Answer 43

As physical distress, like shaking or weeping

Question 44

How was denial expressed in Milgram’s study?

Answer 44

Some of the participants minimised the pain they were causing to the Learner, convincing themselves that the shocks weren’t dangerous (even though “DANGER” was written on the shock generator)

Question 45

How was avoidance expressed in Milgram’s research?

Answer 45

Many participants tried not to look at the Experimenter or even look up from the shock generator

Question 46

How was degree of involvement expressed in Milgram’s study?

Answer 46

Some participants only flicked the switches on the shock generator lightly, as if this would somehow lessen the pain

Question 47

How was helping the learner expressed in Milgram’s research?

Answer 47

Other participants tried to help the Learner by stressing the correct answer on the memory test

Question 48

What are Binding Factors?

Answer 48

Binding Factors are aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce the moral strain they are feeling

Question 49

What factors could bind a person in an agentic state?
Refer to Milgram

Answer 49

Researcher’s responsibility - requirements for the experiment

Payment - contracted to keep going

Question 50

What is Legitimacy of authority?

Answer 50

Milgram suggested that we are more likely to obey a person who has a higher position or status in a social hierarchy

Question 51

Define Dispositional explanation

Answer 51

Highlights the importance of the individual’s personality (i.e. their disposition).
Contrasted with situational explanations

Question 52

Define Authoritarian personality

Answer 52

Susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those a higher status, dismissive of inferiors and are often hostile towards minority groups

Question 53

What was the aim of Adorno et al (1950)?

Answer 53

To investigate the causes of the obedient personality

Question 54

Give the procedure of Adorno et al (1950)

Answer 54

Studied over 2000 middle class, white American’s about their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

Used several scales, including the F scale, which were used to measure the authoritarian personality

Question 55

What is the F scale?

Answer 55

It measures the nine dimensions of the authoritarian personality
A six point scale, ranging from 1 = disagree strongly to 6 = agree strongly

For example, the business man is more important to society than the artist

Question 56

Give the findings of people with authoritarian leanings (high score on F- scale)

Answer 56

Identified with strong people and were insulting of the weak
Showed respect to those of higher status
Had fixed stereotypes about other groups

Question 57

Give three of the authoritarian personality characteristics

Answer 57

Tendency to be especially obedient to authority
Contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status
View society as ‘going to the dogs’ and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders

Question 58

Why do some have an Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 58

Formed in childhood as a result of strict parenting
These experiences create resentment in the child that cannot be expressed
These fears are displaced onto others who are perceived as weaker
This explains a dislike for people considered inferior