SOCIAL INFLUENCE Flashcards
Conformity
Conformity
A change in someone’s behaviour or beliefs because of real or imagined pressure from others
Conformity types
Compliance
Go along with others in public but privately disagree.
Conformity types
Identification
Identifying with the group, wanting to be a part of it. Publicly change behaviour even if privately disagree
Conformity types
Internalisation
Genuinly accept group norms. Private and public change
Conformity explanations
Normative social influence (NSI)
Definition, research support, and example
Copying behaviour because we want to be liked and accepted by the group.
Research- Asch
E.g. Smoking because others in your peer group smoke
Conformity explanations
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Definition, research support and example
A need to be right when in an ambiguous situation.
Research- Jenness
E.g. looking at people around you at a posh restaurant to see what fork/knife they are using
Asch’s study
Aim
To see whether social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform
Asch’s study
Procedure
He used a line of judgement task, where he placed real naive participants in a room with 7 actors, who agreed their answers in advance. the real pardiciparts were deceived and led to believe that the others were real participants. His participants consisted of 50 male students from USA
Asch’s study
Results
Average conformity rate: 37%
% of pps that conformed on at least one critical trial: 74% % of pps that never conformed: 26 %.
Asch’s study
Name the variations
Group size, Unanimity and Task difficulty
Asch’s study
Group size
define, findings
The number of confederates varied between 1-15
Findings: with 1 confederate conforming to the wrong answer was only 3%, with 2 confederates it was 13%.
Adding nore confederates made little difference.
Asch’s study
Unanimity
define, findings
(agreement)
Asch introduced a truthful confederate or a confederate who was dissenting but inaccurate.
Findings: The presence of a dissenting confederate reduced conformity. where one of the confedeates gave the correct answer conformity dropped to 5%. where one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer, conformity dropped to 9/
Asch’s study
Task difficulty
define, findings
Asch made the line judging task harder by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length.
Findings: conformity increased when the task was more difficult. So
ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. The situatios is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to others for guidance + assume they’re right
Asch’s study: Evaluation
Whats one strength of Asch’s study?
P-support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
E- for example, Lucas et al (2006) asked their ppts to solve easy and hard maths problems.
E- Participarts were given answers fron 3 actor students. The ppts conformed more when problems were harder.
Asch’s study: Explanation
Whats one limitation of Asch’s study?
perrin and spencer
P-lacks temporal validity
E - The USA was affected by McCarthyism (fear of Communism) at the time, so people were scared to go against the majority.
E - Perrin & Spencer replicated Asch’s study and only had one conforming response in 386 trials
L - This suggests that conformity levels change over time and that Asch’s research could be regarded as a ‘child of its time’
Asch’s study
What is one criticism of Asch’s study?
neto
P-lacking population validity as only American men took part
E - This matters because Neto found that women conform more than men as they value social relationships more.
L- This suggests that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found, his findings are solely limited to American men.
Zimbardo’s study
Aim
Do individuals behave in negative ways because of their personality or is it the situation they are in
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Agentic state
When we act on behalf of another person.
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Autonomous state
We see ourselves as being responsible for our behaviour.
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Agentic shift
When we move from seeing ourselves as being responsible for our behaviour to seeing someone else as being responsible for it
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Binding factors
Reduce the ‘moral strain’ of obeying immoral orders. Keeps them in the agentic state
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Legitimacy of authority
We obey people at the top of the hierachy
Obedience: Social Psychological Factors
Destructive authority
Charismatic leaders can sometimes use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes
Obedience: Dispositional Factors
Dispositional explanation
Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of internal characteristics. The individual’s personality.
Obedience: Dispositional Factors
Authoritarian personality
A personality type that is more likely to obey people in authority.
Formed in childhood as a result of strict parenting and parents high standards
Adorno
Aim
To find support for the dispostitional explanation of obedience
Resistance to SI
Social support
The prescence of others who resist to show that resistance is possible
Resistance to SI
Locus of control
How far a person believes that they are in control of their own lives
Internal LOC- Less likely to conform
Extenral LOC- More likely to conform
Minority influence
What is it?
A form of social influence where one person/small group influences the behaviour and beliefs of a majority
Minority influence
Who studied this?
Moscovici (1969)
