Social Influence Flashcards
What is informative social influence?
Conforming/ agreeing with the majority because we believe them to be correct. We want to be right.
What is normative social influence?
Conforming/ agreeing with the majority in order to be liked and gain social approval. We want to be liked.
What are the two explanations for conformity?
Informative social influence
Normative social influence
What is internalisation ?
We take on the majority view publicly and privately because we accept it as correct. Permanent type of conformity.
What is identification?
Temporary type of conformity whereby we publicly and privately accept the groups beliefs and behaviours.
What is compliance?
Superficial and temporary type of conformity. We oublically agree with the majority but privately disagree.
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Compliance, identification, internalisation .
What is the meaning of conformity?
A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagines pressure from a person or a group of people.
What was the procedure of Asch’s research?
50 male students were real participants and tested individually with a group of confederates.
Participants were tested in groups of 6-8 people.
Task: participants were shown a line and then 3 comparison lines. They were asked to identify which matched and to say their answer aloud.
At first the confederates gave the correct answers but started making errors,
What were Asch’s findings?
Conformed to the majority and gave the wrong answer approx 32% of the time.
74% of participants conformed at least once.
26% of participants never conformed.
What are factors/ variables affecting conformity?
GROUP SIZE
Would changing the size of the group affect the conformity rates?
UNANIMITY
Would the prescence of a non-conforming person affect the conformity rates?
TASK DIFFICULTY
Would making the task harder affect conformity rates?
What were Asch’s variation findings?
When there was only one confederate conformity decreased as only 3% conformed.
When there were 3 confederates as the majority conformity rates decreased to 13%.
When there was up to nine confederates conformity rates stayed the same.
When Asch’s introduced a non-conformist who gave the correct answers but conformity rates decreases to 5.5% as the participants no longer felt alone.
What is generalisability?
Can we generalise his finding to other populations?
What is reliability?
The extent to which the measurement of a particular behaviour is consistent and we are able to replicate the study to check for this.
What is the meaning of applications?
The extent to which the findings can or have been applied and contributes to society in a practical way.
What are the two types of validity?
Internal
External
What is internal validity?
Whether the study is measuring what it intends to, has the IV clearly impacted the DV.
What is external validity?
Whether the study reflects that behaviour/ example in real life outside of the study.
What are social roles?
The ‘parts’ we play as members of social groups.
For each social role there are experiences of what is appropriate behaviour.
E.g teacher, student
What was the aim of Zimbardo’s research?
To investigate how people conform to the social roles they are given ( how quickly would people adopt the roles of prisoners and guards.)
What was the procedure of Zimbardo’s research?
21 male university students from the US and Canada, volunteer sample.
They were all tested as “emotionally stable” and were offered $15 a day for their participation in a 2 week experiment.
They were randomly allocated as prisoners and guards.
Conducted in the basement of Stanford University.
The prisoners were ‘arrested’ at home, blindfolded and taken to the ‘prison’.
Prisoners were given smocks and a number.
Guards wore khaki uniforms, dark mirrored glasses and carried batons.
They were told they had complete power over prisoners.
What were the findings of Zimbardo’s research?
The first day was ‘boring’.
When it came to day 2 prisoners started rebelling by stacking their bed frames against their cells.
The guards later woke them up in the middle of the night and forced them to do tasks like clean the toilets with their bare hands.
A total of 4 prisoners left early.
The study ended on day 6, instead of the original 2 weeks planned
What was the aim of Asch’s experiment?
To see whether individuals will conform to the opinion of others, even where the answer is certain.
What is obedience?
A form of social influence whereby an individual follows an order from an authority figure.
What was the aim of Milgram’s study?
To investigate how far people would go in obeying the commands of an authority figure to cause harm to another person.
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
40 American males were recruited, they believed was on learning and memory.
Milgram’s recruited his participants through a newspaper advertisement and they were paid $4.50 for taking part.
Milgram’s lab was in Yale University.
They were introduced to another participant called Mr Wallace (confederate, the one getting shocked)
The researcher drew lots to see who would be in that role of teacher vs learner but the draw was fixed so the participant was always the teacher and Mr Wallace was always the learner. (Deception)
Mr Wallace was strapped into a chair with electrodes attached while the teacher was in another room with a shock generator.
The shock generator contained 30 switches ranging from 15-450 volts.
The learner had to remember word pairs and every time he answered incorrectly, the teacher had to deliver a shock, with each error the voltage would increase.
Mr Wallace would sometimes verbally complain and ask for it to stop, whether the experimenter in response would say “The experiment requires you to continue”.
The experiment stopped when the participant refused of had reached the maximum of 450 volts
What were the findings of Milgram’s study?
65% continued to the highest level 450V
100% of participants administered shocks to 300V
Participants showed signs of extreme stress and anxiety. Three got so stressed they had ‘‘full blown, uncontrollable seizures.” (Protection from harm)
They were sent a follow up questionnaire a year later and 84% said they were glad they participated.
Generalisability of Milgram’s research?
-lack of generalisability
-only used male American participants
Difficult to generalise Milgram’s findings to other populations, cultures, nationalities etc.
Reliability of Milgram’s research?
-ease of replication
-Milgram’s had full control over variables in an artificial environment
-standardise procedure
-easy for researchers to replicate his procedure in order to check for consistency of results
Milgrams 3 variations?
(situational variables)
Proximity
Location
Uniform
