Social Influence

Question 1

Define social influence

Answer 1

The process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours

Question 2

Define legitimacy of authority

Answer 2

An explanation for obedience which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us due to the position of power that they hold within the social hierarchy.

Question 3

Identify three features of an authoritarian personality

Answer 3

• Submissive to superiors
• Dismissive of inferiors
• Highly prejudiced

Question 4

Explain how an authoritarian personality develops

Answer 4

An authoritarian personality develops from having a harsh parenting style in childhood. This harsh parenting style consists of strict discipline, criticism of failings and impossibly high standards. As the child cannot express their feelings to their parents so they displace these to others they deem weaker which is known as scapegoating

Question 5

Which scale measures the authoritarian personality

Answer 5

The F-scale

Question 6

What are the limitations of the F-scale

Answer 6

• Has acquiescence bias: all questions are worded in the same direction
• is politically bias: is very right wing, it odes not accounts for left-wing authoritarianism

Question 7

What does Milgram’s original study tell us about obedience

Answer 7

Milgram’s study showed us that people obey those they consider to be authority figures. The results suggest that obeying authority figures. The results suggest that obeying authority is normal behaviour in a hierarchically organised society. We will obey orders that distress us and even go against our moral code.

Question 8

Outline two situational variables and the impact of these on obedience

Answer 8

Proximity - it decreases obedience rates, obedience dropped to 40% from 65%.
Uniform - experimenter switched to casual clothes obedience dropped to 20%

Question 9

Define the agentic state

Answer 9

This is when individuals obey an order even if they are aware that it is wrong, because they feel that they are acting for an authority figure so feel no responsibility for their actions

Question 10

What keeps a person in the agentic state

Answer 10

Binding factors which allow a person to minimise the damaging aspects of their actions reduce the moral strain they feel. These can include:

• guilt or anxiety about the thought of leaving
• not wanting to appear rude/arrogant
• unwillingness to break commitment to experimenter
• shifting responsibility to victim
• denying the impact of their actions

Question 11

Give two explanations why people are able to resist social influence

Answer 11

Social support - this is when the presence of people helps others resist the pressures of conforming or obeying

Locus of control - describes a person’s persons perception of their control over behaviours, successes, failures and events. A person with a high internal locus of control believes they are responsible for their lives so are more likely to resist.

Question 12

What’s the difference between internals and externals locus’s of control

Answer 12

Internals believe they are responsible for what happens to them and that they direct their own lives whereas externals believe outside forces direct their lives and they do not have control

Question 13

Define identification

Answer 13

This is when you go along with others because you have accepted their point of view

Question 14

Define Internalisation

Answer 14

A change in an individual’s behaviour and internal beliefs to that of a specific group but only in the presence of the group

Question 15

Define compliance

Answer 15

A superficial change in an individuals behaviour to comply with that of a group, which only exists in the presence of the group, the individuals belief remain unchanged

Question 16

When was Asch’s experiment

Answer 16

1951

Question 17

Who were the participants in Asch’s experiment

Answer 17

123 American male undergraduates

Question 18

How many confederates were in Asch’s experiment

Answer 18

Six to eight

Question 19

How many trials were there?

Answer 19

18 trials, 12 of which were critical trials where confederates have the wrong answer

Question 20

What were Asch’s findings?

Answer 20

75% of participants conformed at least once
25% never conformed
36.8% conformed every time

Question 21

What were Asch’s variations?

Answer 21

Group size - Asch found that with three confederates conformity rose to 31.8% but adding more confederates made little difference

Unanimity - Asch introduced a confederate that disagreed with the others, sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes they gave the wrong once. Conformity dropped to 5%

Task difficulty - Asch made the task more ambiguous conformity increased

Question 22

What is normative social influence

Answer 22

The need to be liked/accepted by the group (the fear of rejection)

NSI occurs when an individual is keen to adopt the social norms of a specific group

Someone is more likely to be affected by NSI if they feel that their behaviour and attitudes do not align with those of the group. This lack of cohesion with the group may cause anxiety which in turn may lead to an adjustment in behaviour.

NSI as an explanation of conformity is linked to compliance and identification
The essence of NSI is emotional as it is based on the need to be liked and accepted

Question 23

What is informational social influence

Answer 23

Informational social influence (ISI) tends to take place when the individual is unsure and/or lacks knowledge about what to do or how to behave in a specific situation

ISI occurs when the individual looks to the group for guidance

ISI as an explanation of conformity is linked to internalisation
The essence of ISI is cognitive as it is based on information processing

Question 24

What are the strengths for the explanations for conformity

Answer 24

There is good research support for ISI:
- Jenness (1932) asked participants to estimate the number of beans contained in a jar
- Participants then discussed their estimates in a group and then each participant made a second independent estimate
- The findings showed that the second estimate moved closer to the group estimate, indicating ISI, thus the theory has validity

NSI has good application to real behaviour in real settings (high ecological validity):
- Schultz et al. (2008) - used a sample of hotel rooms in one city to test NSI
Half of the hotel rooms displayed a sign stating that, ‘75% of guests choose to reuse their towels each day’
- The results showed a 25% reduction in the use of fresh towels in the rooms which displayed the sign, compared to the control condition (no sign)
- Thus, guests had conformed to the norms of the majority group

Question 25

What are the limitations of explanations for conformity

Answer 25

Neither explanation for conformity explains why some people resist both NSI and ISI, e.g. freedom fighters, rebels, iconoclasts
- The above observation means that both explanations for conformity cannot be generalised to everyone
to this extent they cannot account for individual differences

It is rare for both NSI and ISI to be tested in real conditions
- Most research in this field is lab-based
- Lab-based research is low in mundane realism which reduces the scope of its external validity

Question 26

What are the strengths for Asch’s study

Answer 26

• Asch used a standardised procedure (e.g. same group number per trial; same number of trials; same question asked)
• A standardised procedure means that the study can be replicated many times over
• Repeated replications should show consistent results which equals high reliability
• Replications of Asch’s study (Smith & Bond, 1996) have been used to identify cross-cultural differences in conformity which gives validity to the idea that conformity is linked to group cohesion
• The highest rates of conformity in the study were from collectivist cultures
• These cultures value the needs of the group above individual needs

Question 27

What are the limitations of Asch’s study

Answer 27

• Asch’s research took place in the 1940s/50s, when conformity was arguably higher, directly after World War II and pre-civil rights and the feminist movement
• This observation has led to the study being labelled ‘a child of its time’
• thus, the study lacks temporal validity
• It is possible that some of the participants may have guessed the aim of the study due to the easiness of the task
• If any participants had guessed the aim then they may simply have gone along with giving the wrong answer as this is what they thought was required of them (known as response bias)
• Response bias reduces the validity of the findings

Question 28

What was Zimbardo’s aim

Answer 28

Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the assigned social roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life
Zimbardo et.al. (1973) converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison

Question 29

What was Zimbardo’s procedure

Answer 29

The study proceeded as follows:
- 24 male students were recruited via volunteer/self-selected sampling
- The participants were tested for psychiatric vulnerabilities and were deemed ‘emotionally stable’
- The participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard
- The ‘prisoners’ were ‘arrested’ in the early hours of the morning at their homes and taken off to the ‘prison’ (they were unaware that this was going to happen)
- Prisoners and guards were encouraged to conform to their social roles which was reinforced by the uniforms which were as follows:
- the guards wore a standard khaki uniform with mirrored shades and each of them carried a nightstick, keys and handcuffs
- the prisoners wore a shapeless smock with a sock cap covering their heads and no shoes
- The guards were instructed to set prison rules, hand out punishments (although physical punishments were not allowed) and control the prisoners (e.g. deciding who could go to the toilet, when they could exercise etc.)
- The prisoners were referred to by their assigned number rather than their name
- The uniforms were designed to erode personal identity and to emphasise each participant’s social role (a process known as deindividuation)

Question 30

How long did it take for the prisoners to rebel in Zimbardo’s prison experiment

Answer 30

2 days

Question 31

What were some of the tactics used by guards in Zimbardo’s prison experiment

Answer 31

• they used fire extinguishers to bring the prisoners to order
• they used psychological warfare, harnessing the ‘divide-and-rule’ principle by playing prisoners off against each other
• they instigated headcounts, sometimes at night, by blowing a whistle loudly at the prisoners
• punishments were meted out for the slightest transgression

Question 32

What happened to the prisoners behaviour in Zimbardo’s prison experiment

Answer 32

• they became quiet, depressed, obedient and subdued
• some of them became informants, ‘snitching’ to the guards about other prisoners
• they referred to themselves by number rather than by name
• one prisoner had a mental breakdown to the extent that Zimbardo had to remind the participants that the prison was not a real prison

Question 33

When did Zimbardo end the experiement

Answer 33

After six days instead of the 14 originally planned

Question 34

What were Zimbardo’s conclusions

Answer 34

Social roles exert a strong influence on individual identity

Power corrupts those who wield it, particularly if environmental factors legitimise this corruption of power

Harsh institutions brutalise people and result in deindividuation (for both guards and prisoners)

A prison exerts psychological damage upon both those who work there and those who are incarcerated there

Question 35

What are the strengths of zimbardos research?

Answer 35

A good degree of control was exerted over the procedure:
The ‘vetting’ of participants to factor out prior psychiatric conditions
The random allocation to role
both of the above measures ensured that individual differences did not confound the results e.g. it was pure chance who ended up as prisoner or guard

The study may have genuine mundane realism (which is rare for an experiment)
90% of the prisoners’ private conversations revolved around prison life
The guards talked about ‘problem prisoners,’ or other prison topics on their breaks; they never discussed home life or other topics