social influence Flashcards
What is conformity?
- group pressure causes a change in behaviour
- majority influence
What are the three types of conformity?
- compliance
- identification
- internalisation
What groups can influence behaviour?
- membership group
- reference group
what is internalisation?
- conforming to the group because you accept its norms
- you agree publically as well as privately
What is identification?
- Conforming to a group because we value it
- prepared to change views to be accepted by it
- conforming to a social role
What is compliance?
- superficial agreeance with the group
- going along with it publically but holding a view in private
what is normative social influence?
- a need for acceptance and to be liked or to be part of a group
- you agree publicly but maintain your own beliefs in private
- leads to compliance
what is informational social influence?
- a need for certainty and to be correct in a situation - often ambiguous situations.
- you look to guide your opinion/behaviour and both publicly and privately agree
- often leads to internalisation
what did jenness demonstrate?
- when we are unsure of how to behave we look to others for information - especially in ambiguous situations
- jenness demonstrated support for informational social influence as an explanation for conformity.
what did asch demonstrate?
- people conform to others even though they are clearly wrong
- people fear standing out and being ridiculed.
what are situational factors?
influences external to the person which can be controlled
what are dispositional factors?
influences internal to the person which cannot be controlled.
what was the aim of aschs study?
to investigate how people respond to group pressure in an unambiguous situation to see if even then people are influenced by what others think
what was the method of aschs study?
- 123 male american psych students
- groups of 5-7 confederates
- semi circle formations around a table with naive pp near the end
- shown two large cards one with a standard line and one with three comparison lines
- 18 trials - first 6 confederates gave the correct answer
- 12 critical trials the confederates purposely chose the wrong answer
what was the results of aschs study?
32% conformed in the critical trials
0.04% conformed in the control trials
75% pp conformed at least once
what was the conclusions of aschs study?
- people are influenced by group pressure even in an unambigous task
- high levels of independence where shown
what was jenness research into isi?
- Participants had to make individual, private judgements of the number of jellybeans in a jar
- Participants then had time to discuss their estimates in a group, and discovered their estimates were very varied
- Participants then had to make another private estimate
- Jenness found that individuals second estimate tended to move towards the group estimate
what is a strength of aschs study?
- highly reliable
- lab setting - confounding variables had little effect on results so results produced where consistent
- standardised procedures - replication produced the same results
what is a weakness of aschs study?
- low ecological validity
- atificial task
- androcentric
- cant be genralised to the whole target population
how did group size effect conformtiy?
- highest conformity in group of three
- adding anymore made little difference
how did task difficulty effect conformtiy?
- making answer more ambiguous increased levels of conformity
- pp with high self efficacy less likely to conform
- isi
how did anonymity effect conformtiy?
- when pp wrote answer down less conformity
- no fear of judgement or ridicule
how did unanimity effect conformtiy?
- if another confederate disagreed with the group conformtiy dropped
- gives pp more confidence
- less fear of judgemnt or ridicule
how did culture affect conformity?
- confromoty greater in colectivist cultures like japan than induvidualost cultures like america
what is a social role?
the parts individuals play as part as a social group to meet expectations of the situation
what are examples of social roles?
- teacher
- police officer
- politicion
what was the aim of zimbardos prison study?
aimed to investigate how easily people can conform to social roles in a fake priosn environment
what was the method of zimbardos prison study?
- 21 male american students found through news paper ad
- arrested from homes - given unifrom and reffered to by number
- guards where told no violence and where given a unifrom sunglasses a club and handcuffs
- zimbardo played role of prison super intedant
- each pp tested for mental health issues or criminal record
what was the results of zimbardos prison study?
- guards harrassed prisoners constantly
- prosoners rebelled- barricading inside prison cells and hunger strike
- ended after 5 days
what was the conclusion of zimbardos prison study?
- conformity to social roles was an automatic process
what is a weakness of zimbardos prison study?
- not genralisbale - only american males of college age from same area
- not reflect whole target population
- pp collected from advert may have one personality type
what is a strength of zimbardos prison study?
- highly applicable
- led to prison reforms
- better training for guards
- more rules and regulations within psyhcology
- less police brutality
what was riecher and haslams findings?
- replication of zimbardos prison study
- pp didnt conform naturally
- guards didnt identify with the role and chose not to implicate authority
- prisoners odentified as a group and a prison break led to the regime collapsing on day 6
- a self governing commune later collapsed as some had more pwoer than others
- a conspiracy to install a new prisoner guard scheme occured but the experiment was stopped before it could occur
what is obedience?
when someone acrs in reposnse to a direct order form an authority figure however they may disagree with the order privatley
where cna obedience be seen in the real world?
- holocaust
-vietnam - bosnian war
what method did milgram use?
- controlled observation
what was the aim of milgrams study?
to investigate whether in certain circumstances a normal person would give somebody a potentially lethal electric shock if told to do so by an authority figure
what was the method of milgrams study?
- 40 volunteers through newspaper ad
- paid 4.50 where paired with a stooge learner mr wallace who they where told had a hert condition
- leaner strapped to chair and given increasing electric shocks if they failed the memory task howeveer the shcoks wherent real
- volts ranged from 15 -450
- at 300 the leaner banged on wall and didnt answer the next question
what was the results of milgrams study?
- no ppp stopped below 300 volts
- 65% went on to 450 voltsn
- observations indicated pp showed signs of extreme rension with some have sesiours
what was the cinclusions of milgrams study?
- obedience had little to do with dispotion and situational factors made it difficult to obey
- found 13 factors which influence obedience
what is a strength of milgrams study?
- similar resutls found in other studies like one conducted on a tv show where 80 % of pp went on to full dosage to unconsious pp
what is a weakness of milgrams study?
- pp experienced extreme stress
- debreifed but thoguh the deception would give psychologists a bad reputation
what factors influenced obedience
-techer + leaner in same room
- teacher forces hand of leaner onto shock plate
- teacher and experimenter in same room
- change in location
- unifrom
- a secind teacher brought in to shock leaner
- a second teacger refuses to shock leaner
what is agency theory?
- in cases of obedience to destructive authority pp beleve they are acting on behalf of sm else and are not responsible
- this is the agentic state
- most of the time we are in an autonomous state where we have fre will
- when people are in the prescence of a percieved authority figure they undergo the agentic shift
- binding fators allpow us to block moral strain
what is legitimacy of authority?
- those at the top of percieved socail heirachy we percieve there authoriy as legitimate
- we know thye have power to punish us so we are willing to give up independence and trudt them
