Social Influence Flashcards
What is Conformity?
A form of social influence whereby a person follows the majority
What is Compliance?
Publicly, but not privately going along with the majority to gain approval
(e.g. a person might laugh at the joke that others are laughing at while privately not finding it very funny)
What is Identification?
Publicly and privately accepting the majority in order to gain group acceptance
(e.g. a person might support a new football team every time they move to a new town)
What is Internalization?
Public and private acceptance of majority influence, through adoption of the majority belief system because it’s a view consistent with their own
(e.g. a person may become a Christian after sharing a flat with a group of Christian’s, as they feel share similar values)
What are the 2 explanations of Conformity?
Normative Social Influence and Informational Social Influence
What is Normative Social Influence?
When we conform to the majority to gain social approval or to avoid social disapproval, in other words we do something in order to be liked. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we agree with everyone else
What is a Strength of Conformity?
There is research to support the role played by normative social influence in affecting people’s behaviour.
1. Linkenback and Perkins found that teenagers who were told that the majority of their peer group didn’t smoke were subsequently less likely to take up smoking themselves.
This suggests there is a real life application for the research as teaching people to be aware of this bias can often influence decision-making
2. Wittenbrink and Henley found that p’s exposed to negative information about African Americans (which they were led to believe that was the majority) later reported more negative attitudes towards them.
This suggests that the theory of ISI is accurate and therefore a valid explanation for why people conform
What is a Weakness of Conformity?
It is difficult to distinguish between compliance and identification.
This is because we cannot be sure if the person actually believes others are right or whether that may change when they are in private.
This is a problem because they could have forgotten information given by the group or because they have received new information that has changed their minds. Therefore, it is difficult to determine what is and what is not compliance.
What is the Aim of Asch’s study?
To investigate the degree to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform
What is the Method of Asch’s study?
123 American (M) student volunteers took part in a “visual perception task” and therefore was deceived about the true aim of the study.
It is carried out in a lab using independent group designs where each group was made up of 7-9 confederates and 1 participant.
Each person in the group was asked to decided which comparison lines matched the standards line. the lines were made obviously different from one another to be sure that the participant was conforming and not just unsure of the answer.
12/18 trials the confederates gave the wrong answer (standardised). The participant was always last or 2nd last to give their answer, so they were able to hear the confederate’s views first and therefore measure the influence of majority.
There was also a control group whereby they were asked to complete the task alone.
What are the Results of Asch’s study?
P’s gave the wrong answer 33% of the time, with 75% conforming to at least one wrong answer. One quarter of the participants never conformed on any of the trials.
In comparison a control group had an error rate of 0.04% (used to check the ambiguity of the task)
Post-event interviews with the p’s highlighted 3 reasons for conformity:
1. Distortion of action, where the majority of p’s who conformed did so publicly but not privately
2. Distortion of perception, where some p’s believe their perception might be wrong
3. Distortion of judgement, where some p’s had doubts concerning their accuracy of judgement
What is the Conclusion of Asch’s study?
People conform for 2 main reasons:
1. Because they want to fit in with the group (Normative Social Influence)
2. Because they believe the group is better informed than they are (Informative Social Influence)
