SOCIAL INFLUENCE Flashcards
Explain Asch’s line study (1951)
AIM - to find out to what extent people would conform to an obviously wrong answer
PROCEDURE:
- 123 male participants put into groups with 7-9 confederates
- each completed 18 trials where they were shown sets of lines ABC and asked which one was closest to the original line
- 12/18 trials the confederates gave the same wrong answer, participant gave their answer last
FINDINGS:
- participants conformed 32% of the time
- 75% of participants conformed to at least one incorrect answer
- 5% conformed to every incorrect answer
- individuals will conform to a majority even when the answer is obviously wrong
What were the 3 explanations of conformity found by Asch’s line study?
After his experiment, Asch’s interviewed participants and they gave these explanations for conforming:
Distortion of perception - (some participants actually came to perceive the majority’s answers as correct and were completely unaware of their mistake
Distortion of judgement - majority of conforming subjects were aware of their mistake but did not trust their own judgement so decided the majority was correct
Distortion of action - participants were aware that the majority was wrong but gave the wrong answer anyways so they wouldn’t stand out
Describe Asch’s variation study (variables affecting conformity)
Asch’s conducted a second experiment with different situational variables to test how they affected conformity:
Unanimity (if the majority all agree) - participants conformity decreased when one confederate went against the majority and gave the correct answer
Group size - increased conformity up to a point (up to 3 confederates increased conformity, but more than that it stayed the same)
Task difficulty - Asch’s adjusted the lines to make them more similar or more different, when lines were more similar, conformity increased
Describe Zimbardo’s prison experiment (1973)
AIM - to find how much people conform to social roles
PROCEDURES:
- study converted basement of Stanford university into a fake prison
- 21 male students randomly divided into 2 groups: 10 guards and 11 prisoners
- prisoners were arrested by real police in their homes
- guards were instructed to refer to prisoners by assigned numbers and guards wore mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact and carried handcuffs and batons
RESULTS:
- guards became agressive and made them go to the toilet in their cells and refused to allow them to empty the buckets, took away their mattresses and took away their clothes
- many prisoners stopped questioning the guards behaviour and sided with the guards rather than rebellious prisoners
- after 35 hours one prisoner began to act crazy and rage out of control and had to be released
- experiment had to be shut down after 6 days instead of 2 weeks
FINDINGS:
- suggests people conform to social roles to a significant extent
- participants were selected for their mental stability but acted in ways that is against social norms (therefore people may not have a sadistic nature but will conform to roles of a specific situation)
Describe Milgrams obedience study (1963)
AIM - to see if people will obey orders, even if they are ordered to harm others
PROCEDURE:
- 40 US males recruited through newspaper advert
- Experimenter (confederate) assigned participant the role of teacher threw a rigged draw whilst another confederate was given the role of learner
- Learn to answer word pairing questions, if they got it wrong the teacher gave an electric shock to the learner in another room
- Throughout the study the voltage increased from 15 V - 450 V each time the learner got got the answer wrong the voltage would increase
- at 300 V, the learner began banging on the wall and protesting
- At 315 V the learner gave no response
- 4 prods were given by the experimenter to the participant to encourage them to continue
FINDINGS:
- 65% went to 450 volts
- none stopped before 300 volts
- many showed signs of distress
CONCLUSION:
- People will obey orders from an authority figure (wearing lab coat) and harm a stranger whilst doing so
Evaluate Milgrams study (1963)
✅ had internal validity - participants produced a stress response showing that they believed the learner was really being shocked -> however, could’ve been demand characteristics
✅ controlled due to being a lab experiment
❌ lacked ecological validity because the tasks that the participants were asked to do don’t reflect real life
❌ participants were deceived so they couldn’t gain informed consent - no rights to withdraw. However, they were debriefed after and 84% said they were glad to have taken part
State the situational factors that affect obedience (milgram)
Proximity of authority - when instructions were given by phone rather than in person, obedience decreased to 23%
Proximity of victim - 65% went to the maximum shock when learner was in another room, when learner was in same room obedience decreased to 40% and then to 30% when participant had to place learners hand on plate
Location of experiment - participants were less likely to obey when experiment was moved to run down offices than when the study was associated with Yale university
Explain the dispositional explanation for obedience
Adorno et al. (1950) proposed the theory of the authoritarian personality:
- He proposed the idea that over strict parenting/upbringing results in a child obeying authority unquestioningly because they learn strict obedience to their parents
- Strict parenting means the child feels constrained, which creates aggression— the child is afraid they’ll be disciplined if they express this aggression towards their parents so instead they’re hostile to people they see as weak or inferior to them, usually minority groups
Key ideas:
Those with an authoritarian personality obey higher status groups but are hostile towards lower status groups
What is the F scale?
The F scale describes how authoritarian a person is
Evaluate Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality theory
✅ - Elms and Milgram (1966) found that participants who scored higher on the F scale (more authoritarian characteristics) administered bigger shocks in Milgram’s experiment suggesting a link
✅ Adorno’s F scale study had a large sample size and all participants had the same questions which means that study is replicable
❌ - questionnaire might not be completely valid because people may lie about themselves eg. Social desirability bias
Describe Adorno’s study (1950)
- made a questionnaire known as the F-scale to measure the authoritarian personality
Examples of statements on the F-scale include
- ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’
‘Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and settle down’ - fixed responses on the scale ranged from ‘Disagree strongly’ to ‘Agree strongly’
- More than 2,000 middle-class white Americans completed the scale
After analysing the results, Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality exhibit the following traits:
- They are more obedient than other people
- They respect social hierarchies and authority figures
- They are ‘black and white’ in their opinions and see the world in a rigid, inflexible way ‘men should not show emotion’
What is the agentic state? Milgram (1973)
When an individual perceives themselves as an agent of the authority figure and is willing to carry out their commands, even if it goes against their own moral code.
-> because when they are carrying out the instructions from an authority figure, they feel less responsible for their actions
What factors did Milgram suggest kept his participants in the agentic state?
- reluctance to disrupt the experiment, participants had already been paid so may have felt obliged to continue
- Pressure of the surroundings, the study took place in a prestigious university (Yale) So this may have made the experimenter seem like a legitimate authority
- Insistence of the authority figure, if participants hesitated they were told they had to continue the experiment
What is the legitimacy of authority theory?
- suggest that we are socialised to recognise the authority of people e.g. police officers, teachers, parents
-> these kinds of people are legitimate authorities – they’ve been given the right to tell us what to do - Legitimate authority comes from having a defined social role which people respect – usually it implies knowledge or comes with legal power
- For example, in Milgram’s study in a rundown office, obedience rates were lower than when the study was at Yale University
What is the legitimacy of authority theory?
- suggest that we are socialised to recognise the authority of people e.g. police officers, teachers, parents
-> these kinds of people are legitimate authorities – they’ve been given the right to tell us what to do - Legitimate authority comes from having a defined social role which people respect – usually it implies knowledge or comes with legal power
- For example, in Milgram’s study in a rundown office, obedience rates were lower than when the study was at Yale University
Explain Moscovici et al’s study (1969)
Minority influence:
AIM - to compare the effects of minority influence in inconsistent and consistent minorities
PROCEDURE:
- Lab experiment of 192 women
- groups of 6 at a time, 2 were confederates the rest were participants
- participants were asked the colour of 36 slides, all of the slides were blue, but the brightness of the blue varied
Condition 1 - confederates called all 36 slides ‘green’ (consistent)
Condition 2 - confederates called 24 of the slides ‘green’ and 12 of the slides ‘blue’ (inconsistent)
Condition 3 - control group that contained no confederates
RESULTS:
1 - 8.4% of the time participants adopted the minority position
2 - 1.25% of the time participants adopted the minority position
3 - 0.25% of the time the participants adopted the minority position
32% of the participants called the slides green at least once
CONCLUSION:
Even though the confederates were in the minority position, their views still appeared to influence the majority
Evaluate Moscovici’s minority influence study
✅ - used a control group so is scientific - more reliable?
✅ - in another study, participants were asked to write down their answer and minority influence was even higher which suggests a definite correlation
❌ - lacked ecological validity as it was a lab experiment and the task was artificial
Describe Holland’s (1967) locus of control findings
found that 37% of those with an internal locus of control refused to obey to the maximum shock level in a Milgram-type study, compared to 23% of those with an external locus of control
-> shows that individuals with an internal locus of control are more resistant to social influence
Describe Nemeth et al. (1986) study into Minority Influence (Flexibility)
In a mock jury deciding on compensation for a ski-lift accident, a consistent but inflexible minority had little influence. However, when the minority was flexible and willing to compromise, the majority were more likely to change their views.
Conclusion: Flexibility makes minority influence more effective than rigid consistency alone.
What characteristics do the minority need to influence the majority?
Moscovici 1985 claimed that in order to convince a majority, the minority must have:
Commitment - when minorities are greatly committed to a cause, even when they are being ridiculed, their point becomes more strong as they are willing to risk being criticised
Consistency - staying consistent in their word is a way of showing the majority that they are strong and firm in their word (links to the blue slide study by moscovici, consistent majority was more influential)
Flexibility - the minority should be open and accepting to other views and reasonable with their ideas
What is the snowball effect?
Proposed by Van Avermaet (1996)
If some people become influenced by the minority, more will until the minority becomes the majority
