Social Influence Flashcards
Outline and explain the 3 types of conformity
Conformity is when an individual yields to a group pressure (majority influence), it can reduce a person’s independence, but also helps society to function smoothly and predictably.
Compliance is a weak, temporary form of conformity, where one agrees with majority influence publicly to gain approval and fit in, but disagrees privately.
Identification is where one has both public and private acceptance of majority influence to gain group acceptance, but is also temporary and not maintained after leaving the group.
Internalisation occurs when individuals genuinely adjust their behaviour and opinions to majority influence, and maintains it without the group.
Outline and evaluate informational social influence
ISI occurs in unfamiliar or ambiguous situations when people look to others for guidance in order to be correct. It is a form of internalisation as people trust the group opinion.
Jenness conducted a study where he used an ambiguous situation with a jar containing 811 beans, asking 101 psychology students to estimate the number of beans, individually, before discussing in threes and then individually again. He found that nearly all participants changed their original answer on the second estimate, demonstrating the power of conformity through ISI when the answer isn’t clear.
Although the experiment was ethical, it lacks ecological validity, it is not reflective of real life as participants were psychology students who may have had an understanding of the research, and this narrow group of people also causes a lack of generalisation.
Outline and explain normative social influence (using Asch’s research)
Normative social influence is a form of compliance as an individual wants to be liked, respected, and accepted by a group, so publicly follows the majority to fit in.
Asch conducted a study in an unambiguous situation (he used a control group with a fail rate of 0.04 to check the task was easy), where 123 male US students were each placed in groups of 8 confederates. They were asked which of the three lines matches line X. The confederates answered with a unanimous wrong answer in 12 of the 18 rounds (critical trials). He found that 75% of participants conformed at least once, 32% conformed on all critical trials, and 25% didn’t conform at all. This shows that participants felt the need to alter their answers to fit in with the group, even when the majority’s opinions are obviously wrong.
The study presents issues of ecological validity, gender bias, cultural bias, and lack of generalisation due to the limited sample size. It also breaks ethical guidelines- the participants were not aware of the confederates and so were deceived, and showed signs of stress and anxiety, so were not protected from harm. However, the study is influential and easy to replicate.
Outline and evaluate the variables that affect conformity
1) Size of the group- research shows that conformity rates increase as majority influence size increases, up to a point. Asch conducted a variation where conformity was low with one real participant and one confederate, rising to 13% with two confederates and 32%? with three. Adding extra had no further effect. Bond and Smith supported this with a meta-analysis of 133 Asch-type studies showing that conformity peaks with about 4-5 confederates.
2)Unanimity- Asch found that if there was one confederate that went against the others then conformity dropped from 32% to 5.5%, showing that it declines when majority influence is not unanimous.
3) Task difficulty- Greater conformity rates are seen as the right answer becomes less obvious, increasing ISI. Asch increased task difficulty by making the comparison lines similar to each other, finding that more participants conformed.
Outline and evaluate conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo
Conformity to social roles involves identification, both public and private acceptance of social roles.
Zimbardo wanted to understand the brutal behaviour found in America, and investigate the extent to which people would conform to roles relating the situational or disposition hypothesis. He selected the 21 most mentally stable participants from 75 male university students- 11 guards and 10 prisoners who were arrested from their homes. They were placed in the basement of Stanford uni, and established a regular routine, with Zimbardo playing the role of the prison warden.
He found that dehumanisation was apparent with guards taunting prisoners with meaningless tasks, while they became submissive. Deindividuation was seen as prisoners referred to each other as their numbers. In later interviews, both guards and prisoners were surprised at the uncharacteristic behaviours they had shown. He concluded that the situational hypothesis favoured over the dispositional hypothesis, with guards and prisoners demonstrating social roles gained from media.
The observation had a high variable control as participants were screened for emotional stability and mental health issues.
However, it lacks ecological validity as some may have been acting- one guard admitted to styling his role on a film character. It was also extremely unethical as participants couldn’t provide informed consent and showed clear distress.
