Social Influence Flashcards
What is conformity
- giving in to group pressure
- changing how you think and behave to fit in with a group
Why do we conform
- it stops us feeling isolated or different from others
- people may feel pressure to conform, fearing criticism or victimisation if they don’t do the same as others
Types of conformity
- compliance
- identification
- internalisation
COMPLIANCE
- involves us publicly changing our behaviour to that of the majority but privately maintaining our views
- usually short/term temporary change and is often the result of normative social influence
- change in public behaviour but not private beliefs
IDENTIFICATION
- a person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs but only while in the presence of the group
- takes place when we are surrounded by a particular group
- short term/ temporary change
INTERNALISATION
- involves going along with what the surrounding group are doing but being happy to do so as the actions are agreed with
- private attitudes match public behaviour
- a permanent change
Explanations of conformity: normative social influence
- desire to be …
- public and private beliefs?
- desire to be liked
- when people want to fit in and are concerned about being rejected by the group
- they may go along with the group norms in terms of their behaviour but their private beliefs aren’t changed
✅ asch found that many of his particpants went along with a clearly wrong answer jut because others did. Some particpants said they felt self conscious of giving the wrong answers and were afraid of disapproval
❌ it doesn’t affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way. People that were less concerned about being liked are less affected. McGhee and teevan found that students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform
Explanations of conformity: informational social influence
- desire to be …
- public and private beliefs?
- desire to be right
- when people follow others as they want to be correct
- we conform when we are unsure of the situation so we look to others who may have more information
✅ Lucas et al asked students to give answers to maths problems of varying difficulty. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult. Shows that people conform when they feel they don’t know
❌ it doesn’t affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way asch found that students were less conformist (28%) than other particpants (37%)
Asch’s conformity study
Aim- to assess how much people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is unambiguous
Method - 123 male students from the USA made up the sample of naive participants. Each participant sat at a table with 6-8 other male students who were confederates of Asch. The group was shown a series of cards with lines shown on them they had to see which of the lines in the card was the same length as the target line. There were 18 trials per group The confederates gave the right answer on the first few trials but, there were 12 critical trials within the total of 18 trials. On each critical trial, the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer to the question of line length.
Results - on average particpants conformed and gave the wrong answer on 32% of the critical trials. 74% conformed at least once. 26% never conformed. He also found that having three confederates was enough to make the participant conform and that if only one confederate gave the correct answer that was enough to encourage the participant to do the same.
Conclusion - when the participants were interviewed after the experiment most them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed and a few of them said that they really did believe the group were correct.
Asch’s variables: group size
RESULTS
- conformity was 3.6% with one confederate giving the wrong answer
- this grew to 13.6% when there were 2 confederates
- grew again to 32% when there were three confederates.
- It then peaked at 37.1% when there were seven confederates.
CONCLUSION:
- It is easier to disagree with one or two people than with a whole group.
- The size of the majority is important - but only up to an optimal point.
Asch’s variables: task difficulty
- In the original study, the task was unambiguous (clear right or wrong answer). Asch wanted to see what would happen if he made the task ambiguous instead. He made the task harder by making the line lengths closer together and by altering the angle of them.
RESULTS
- Conformity to the majority increased.
- Majority influence is dependent upon situational factors (task difficulty) and individual differences.
CONCLUSION:
- This suggests that informational social influence (the desire to be right) plays a greater role when the task becomes harder, so we look to others who we think may be more knowledgeable than us
Asch’s variables: unanimity
Unanimity - when everyone agrees
- in the original study, Asch asked all the confederates to give the obviously wrong answer. In doing so, they were unanimous in their answers.
- Asch varied this procedure by breaking the unanimity and giving the participant an ally.
- This ally was also a confederate but instructed to give a different answer to the other confederates.
RESULTS
- When the ally gave the correct answer, conformity went from 32% to an average of 5.5%.
- Conformity still decreased when ally gave the incorrect answer (but a different one to the confederates.)
CONCLUSION:
- This suggests that it doesn’t matter whether the wrong/right answer is given, as long as the unanimity is broken somehow, then it is easier to resist conformity
Evaluation of Asch’s study
✅ supporting research: Lucas et al asked particpants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Particpants were given answers from 3 other students (not actually real). The particpants conformed more often when the problems were hard
✅ happened in a controlled lab study so high internal validity, standardised procedure
❌ COUNTERPOINT: however he found conformity is more complex. Particpants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
❌ artificial situation: participants knew they were in a study so may have shown demand characteristics. Therefore findings are not generalisable
❌ limited application: Asch’s particpants were all american men. research says women may be more conformist, maybe because they are more concerned about social relationships. Furthermore, the US is an individualst culture so people are more concerned about themselves rather than a social group.
Zimbardos’s prison experiment
Aim: 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
Method:
- Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison
- 24 male students were recruited via volunteer/self-selected sampling and were tested for psychiatric vulnerabilities and were deemed ‘emotionally stable’
- The participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard by the flip of a coin
- 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
- 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)
Results:
- Both guards and prisoners settled into their new roles very quickly
- Within hours of beginning the experiment, some guards began to harass prisoners and treat them harshly
- Two days into the experiment the prisoners rebelled by ripping their uniforms and shouting and swearing at guards
The guards employed an array of tactics to bring the prisoners into line: they used fire extinguishers to bring the prisoners to order, they instigated headcounts, sometimes at night, by blowing a whistle loudly at the prisoners
- The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behaviour, e.g.: 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
- even the family of the prisoners conformed: when they visited during the study they waited 30 minutes for a for a 10 minute visit
Conclusion:
- A colleague of Zimbardo’s visited the study and was horrified at the abuse and exploitation she saw so Zimbardo ended the experiment after six days instead of the 14 originally planned
- 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)
Evaluation of zimardo’s prison experiment
✅ increased internal validity - this study was very well controlled, zimbardo selected ‘emotionally stable’ particpants which means he was able to control for individual differences regarding personality posing as an extraneous variable. They were also randomly assigned to roles meaning there was no way zimardo could have used bias to put particpants with a more confident personality as a guard etc.
✅ good application - can be used to explain cases of ordinary people committing atrocious acts for example American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in 2003 by threatening them and degrading the. Zimbardo explains this in terms of the situation the soldiers had been placed in, he believed they were conforming to the role they had been given
❌ findings unreliable - richer and Haslam carried out a similar prison simulation study in 2006. They found that particpants did not conform to their social roles, guards were uncomfortable with their power so did not demonstrate the authority expected and prisoners rebelled at an early stage. They thought that people only conform to the social role if they identify with the group
❌ ethics - even though particpants did consent they did not know certain events would happen for example having the real police come and arrest them at the start of the study (deception). Zimbardo did not protect particpants from psychological harm as he assumed the role of prison superintendent
I
What is obedience
Following a direct order from someone in a position of authority, who has the power to punish defiance
Milgrams 1963 electric shock study
Aim - to investigate whether any other nationality would blindly obey orders in the way gathered German soldiers did during WW2
Method -
- 40 male Americans volunteered to take part which they believed to be about memory
- when they got to the laboratory at Yale University they were met by a confederate who claimed he had a heart condition
- they were randomly assigned ‘teacher’ or ‘learner’ by the experimenter however this was rigged as the confederate was always the ‘learner’
- confederate sat in a separate room and was hooked up to electrodes that would shock him every time he answered incorrectly
- the participant was told they had to shock him starting at 15 volts increasing by 15 volts each time
- the machine that registered the ‘shocks’ read things like ‘moderate shock’, ‘extreme shock’ and even ‘XXX’
- recordings of the confederate pretending to be shocked were played and the participant was not allowed to leave until all 5 verbal prods were said, including things like ‘you have no choice you must go on’ and ‘the shocks cause no permanent tissue damage’
- the recording of the confederate included intense screaming, pleading to get out and ominous silence after 350 volts
Findings -
- all particpants got up to 300 volts labelled ‘intense shock’ after the confederate pleads to get out
- 65% of particpants went all the way up to 450 volts.
Particpants showed great distress (sweating, twitching) some even passed out due to the pressure
Conclusion - Germans are no different to the rest of the population as we will all blindly obey orders despite harm that could be caused
Evaluation of milgram
✅ research support - replicated in a french documentary. The particpants in the ‘game’ believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show. They were paid to give fake electric shocks to other particpants who were actors in. 80% delivered the max shock of 460V to an ‘unconscious’ man.
❌ low internal validity - his method may not have been testing what he intended. Milgram said that 75% of his particpants believed the shocks were genuine however orne and Holland argued that particpants didn’t believe the set up and were ‘play acting’ displaying demand characteristics
✅ COUNTERPOINT - however Sheridan and king conducted a similar study where particpants were ordered to give real shocks to puppies. 54% of men and 100% of women gave the fatal shock. This suggests that the findings in milgrams study were real
❌ alternative interpretation of findings - haslam et al showed that milgrams particpants obeyed when the experimenter delivered the first three verbal prods but every particpants who was given the 4th prod disobeyed, maybe because they identified the aims
What are the three situational variables
- proximity: the physical closeness or distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving am order to
- uniform: people in positions of authority often have a specific outfit that is symbolic of their authority which indicates that they expect our obedience
- location: the place where an order is issued. The relavent factor that influences obedience is the status or prestige associated with the location
Results of milgrams variations
- teacher and learner in the same room: 40%
- teacher had to force learners hand onto the shock plate: 30%
- venue moved to seedy offices: 47.5%
- teacher given support from two other ‘teachers’ (confederates) who also refused to obey: 10%
- experimenter left the room and instructed the teacher by telephone: 20.5%
- teacher paired with an assistant (confederate) who was in charge of actually administering the shocks: 92%
- experimenter didn’t wear a lab coat: 20%
Explanations of obedience in milgrams variations
- the closer the proximity to the learner the lower the obedience levels because the participant is no longer protected from seeing the consequences of their actions
- the further the proximity from the authority figure the lower the levels of obedience because It allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions
- the levels of obedience were higher in the baseline study compared to when the location was moved to a run-down office block because the prestigious environment gave it legitimacy and authority therefore particpants perceived that the study shared the same legitimacy
- levels of obedience dropped when a uniform was not worn because uniforms encourage obedience as they are widely recognised symbols of authority and we accept that someone in a uniform is entitled to expect obedience because their authority is legitimate
Evaluation of milgrams variations
✅ research support - bickman conducted a field experiment where he had 3 confederates dress in different outfits (jacket and tie, milkman, security) the confederates stood in the street and asked people to perform tasks. People were twice as likely to obey the security guard that the one wearing a jacket and tie
✅ standardised procedure - in all variations he conducted so results are easy to comapare and check for reliability.
❌ some of the variations would have been very difficult to fake - for example when the teacher had to place the learners hand onto the plate would mean that the learner had to produce some very convincing acting and if not could increase chance of demand characteristics
