Social Influence Flashcards
1
Q
Definition of conformity
A
Change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined social pressure
2
Q
3 types of conformity
A
- Compliance (Shallow)
- Identification (Intermediate)
- Internalisation (Deep)
3
Q
Compliance
A
- Publicly conforming to the group behaviours/ideas, but privately keeping own personal opinions
- Causes temporary change in behaviour.
4
Q
Identification
A
- Individual Identifies with the group so they conform publicly and privately in order to feel part of the group
- But will revert to personal ideas/behaviours if separated from the group.
- Temporary, but longer lasting than compliance.
5
Q
Internalisation
A
- The individual’s personal opinions genuinely change to match those of the group.
- Permanent change in beliefs
6
Q
2 explanation for conformity
A
- Informational social influence (ISI)
- Normative social influence (NSI)
7
Q
Informational social influence
A
- Happens when you think others have more knowledge so you follow their behaviour because you want to be correct
- ISI often results in internalisation
8
Q
Normative social influence
A
- Happens when you want to fit into the majority to not get rejected
- NSI often results in compliance
9
Q
Asch study aim
A
The extent to which social pressure from a majority could cause a person to conform.
10
Q
Asch study procedure
A
- 50 male students in America
- They thought they were taking part in a vision test
- Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed one real participant in a room with seven confederates
- The real participant always sat second to last.
- Each person had to say out loud which line was similar to the target line in length
- The correct answer was always obvious.
11
Q
Asch study findings
A
- Real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the 12 critical trials.
- 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial
- 26% of the participants never conformed.
12
Q
Asch study conclusions
A
- Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed.
- Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in
- This confirms that participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in.
13
Q
Asch study evaluations
A
Strengths:
- As a standard procedure was used this study has high internal reliability as it can be easily replicated to obtain the same results.
- It was carried out in a lab setting and was carefully controlled. This means that there was good control over extraneous variables,
Weakness:
- Asch used a biased sample 50 male students in America. therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations, for example female students so it lacks population validity
- Asch’s experiment has low levels of ecological validity. Asch’s test of conformity, a line judgement task, is an artificial task, which does not reflect conformity in everyday life.
14
Q
Variations of Asch Study
A
Variation 1: Group size
- 3% conformity with one confederate
- 13% with two confederates, and 33% with three confederates
- Not increasing past 33% as the group became larger.
Variation 2: Unanimity
- Conformity dropped to 5.5% when a confederate gave the correct answer before the real participant
- This may be because another person going against the majority gives the participant emotional support.
Variation 3: Task difficulty
- Asch made the difference between the line lengths smaller
- Conformity increased when the task was more difficult.
- This is the informational social influence effect.
15
Q
Zimbardo study aim
A
Investigate whether the reason for high levels of aggression in American prisons was due to the prisoners/guard dispositions or due to the prison environment itself
16
Q
Zimbardo study procedure
A
- Fake prison in the basement of Standford university
- 21 male student rated most physical and mentally stable was selected from 75 volunteers
- They were randomly allocated that 10 of them were guards and 11 were prisoners
- Prisoners were arrested at their homes by local police
- They were given identification number to dehumanise them
- Prisoners had basic prison outfit, guards had uniforms
- Guards were given sunglasses to prevent eye contact with prisoners
17
Q
Zimbardo study findings
A
- Prisoners and guards began conforming to social roles quickly
- The two week experiment was cancelled early due to fear for prisoners mental health
18
Q
Zimbardo study conclusions
A
Participants conformed to social roles showing situational power of the prison environment to change behaviour
19
Q
Zimbardo study evaluations:
A
Strength:
- Well controlled, participants were selected carefully and the roles of prisoners and guards were randomly allocated
Weakness
- Study was unethical as participants were exposed to psychological harm. Experiment should have been stopped as soon as it was clear that prisoners were distressed (on day two)
- Lack internal validity due to some guards instead of being aggressive, helped the prisoners by relaxing rules. It is thought that prisoner and guards may have been acting according to stereotypes rather than conforming to social roles
- Zimbardo’s study can be seen as a failure as despite his findings, as American prisons remain to be excessive violence on both prisoner and guards, so situational factors continue to affect prisoner behaviour.
20
Q
Definition of obedience
A
Complying with the demands of an authority figure
21
Q
Milgram study aim
A
Find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure, inflecting pain to another person because they were instructed to
22
Q
Milgram study procedures
A
- 40 male participants aged 20-50
- Participants were all volunteers who responded to an advert in a local paper
- They were offered 4.50 to take part in an experiment
- Experiment took part in a laboratory at Yale university
- Experimenter explained one person will be randomly assigned as teacher and the other will be assigned as learner
- Real participants were always assigned as teachers and confederates the learners
- Teachers were instructed to administrate an electric shock every time the learner make a mistake and the voltage increases after each mistake
- Teachers were given a sample shock to convince them the procedure was real
- At 180 volts, confederates complained of a weak heart
- At 300 volts, confederates banged on the wall and demanded to leave
- At 315 volts, confederates became silent to give the illusion that he was unconscious or dead
- Experiment continued until the real participant refused to continue or 450 volts were reached
- If the real participant refused to continue the experimenter would respond “the experiment requires that you continue”
23
Q
Milgram study findings
A
- All real participants went to at least 300 volts
- 65% continued to 450 volts
- 12.5 stopped at 300 volts
24
Q
Milgram study conclusions
A
Germans weren’t a different kind of people and under the right circumstances ordinary people were just as likely to obey unjust orders
25
Milgram study evaluation
Strength
- Study produce reliable results as the procedure is standardised
- Can explain why people involved in atrocities such as the Holocaust obeyed despite being asked to do immoral things
Weakness
- Lack population validity, bias sample of 40 male participants meaning unable to generalise result to other populations
- Lack ecological validity, obedience was tested in lab which is very different setting to real life situations. The task itself has low mundane realism.
26
Milgram variation studies
Variation 1: Proximity
- Proximity affects the participant’s awareness of how the shocks are affecting the learner
- When the authority figure and the teacher were in the same room obedience was 65%.
- When the authority figure gave instructions via telephone obedience dropped to 21%
- Increase distance meant participants were less likely to remain in an "agentic state" and return to an "autonomous state"
Variation 2: Location
- Legitimate authority influences how likely someone is to obey
- When the site of the research was moved from Yale University to an office block in a run-down area obedience dropped to 47.6%.
Variation 3: Uniform
- The use of appropriate clothing also demonstrates the legitimacy of the authority.
- The experimenter is called away due to an ‘urgent phone call’ and the role of experimenter is given to another confederate in normal clothing obedience dropped to 20%.
27
Agentic state
Idea that the individual believes that they don’t have responsibility for their behaviour as they are acting as on behalf (as an agent) of an authority figure.
28
Autonomous state
Individual’s actions are free from control, and so they feel that they have responsibility for their actions and behave according to their moral values.
29
Agentic shift
Moving from the autonomous state to the agentic state
30
Legitimacy of the authority
- The idea that individuals accept that other individuals who are higher up the social hierarchy should be obeyed, that there is a sense of duty in obeying them.
- learnt in childhood through socialisation processes such as the relationship between parent and child, teacher and student ..etc.
31
Adorno
- Adorno wanted to understand anti-semitism in WW2. Unlike Milgram who argued that we are all capable of extreme obedience.
- Adorno suggested that people with authoritarian personality had their obedient personalitities shaped early in life by strick authoritarian parenting
32
Authoritarian personality
- High respect for people with higher social status
- Hostile to people they see have lower status
- Fixed steteotype about groups of people
33
How did Adorno study authoritarian personality
- He created a questionnaire called the F-scale
- People who scored high had fixed stereotypes, identified with the strong and disliked the weak
34
What did the question on the F-scale measure
- Authoritarian submission
- Power and Toughness
35
2 explanations of resistance to social influence
1. Social Support
2. Locus of control
36
Social support
- Seeing other individuals resisting orders and pressure to conform
- Helps increase an individual's confidence in resisting social influence
- This breaks the unanimity of the dominant group
37
Locus of control
- Individual's sense of personal control over their lives, measured on a scale
- High internal locus of control has a sense of responsibility for their actions and feel that their actions control their lives meaning they are less concerned about social approval
- High external locus of control feels that their life is controlled by external forces such as fate and they feel little responsibility for thier action meaning they're very concerned about social approval
- High external locus of control is more prone to confirm/obey
38
Minority influence
- Requires individual to reject majority behaviour and be converted to views of the minority
- Minority will attempt to change views through informational social influence
39
3 behaviours that minority have to adopt to increase chance of success
1. Consistency
2. Commitment
3. Fexibility
40
Consistency
- Minority needs to demonstrate that they are confident in their view by repeating the same message over time making the arguement more powerful
41
Moscovici aim
Test effect of consistency
42
Moscovici procedure
- Groups of 4 participants and 2 confederates were shown 36 shades of blue in two conditions
1. Confederates states that every slide was green (consistent minority)
2. Confederates stated that 24 of the 36 were green (inconsistent minority)
- When minority was consistent 32% of participants gave the same answer as the minority on at least on trial
- Wrong answers were given by participants on 8.4% of the trials
- When minority was inconsistent, participants gave the wrong answer in 1.25% of trial
43
Commitment
- If minority are willing to suffer for their views and still hold them, it is likely that the members of the majority wil take them serously
- This is known as the augmentation principle
44
Fexibility
- If minority is seen as inflexible in their views (dogmatic) majority will not be pursuaded.
- They need to be able to compromise and consider valid arguments
45
Social change
Change that happens throughout society and not on an individual level
46
Snowball Effect
- When members of the majority are slowly converted by the minority.
- As minority grows in size the legitimacy seems stronger
- Eventually becomes the majority
47
Social Cryptoamnesia
- Individuals who previously held the old view refuse to admit they had help the now unpopular view
- Eventually forgetting about the old view and about the minorities who changed society
