Social Influence Flashcards
What is the Jeness study (1932)?
- One of the earliest studies into conformity.
1) participants were asked to estimate the number of beans in a jar.
2) then they had to make a group estimate.
3) they were given the opportunity to give a second estimate. - finding: almost all participants changed their original estimates to be closer to the group estimate.
- it supports informational social influence
What are the three types of conformity?
1) compliance
2) internalisation
3) identification
What is compliance?
This is when people conform to the behaviour of the group when they are present, but revert back when they are not.
What is internalisation?
This is the most permanent form of conformity where you actually change your private beliefs.
What is identification?
You change your behaviour to fit into a particular group rather than one specific behaviour, even if you don’t privately agree.
What are the two explanations for conformity?
- normative social influence
- informational social influence
What is normative social influence?
- suggests that people conforms because they want to appear normal
- they do this because they are scared of rejection and disapproval
- done to keep group harmony, more likely when there is a large majority
What is informational social influence?
- suggests that people conforms because they want to get things right
- they do this because they dont want to be incorrect or cause any damage
- involves others as a source of information and reference point from which to make decisions
- more likely to happen in times of uncertainty or distress
What is the study of Asch (1951)?
Invited participants to sit in a line with 6 others
They were asked to judge which 2 lines were the same length. It was designed to be very easy
Each participant was asked to speak their answer out loud. All the other 6 were actually confederates (actors) told to give the same wrong answer as each other
33% of the time the participant gave the same wrong answer as the others, even though it was obviously wrong.
75% gave at least one wrong answer to agree with the confederates
What is Asch variation?
- Asch repeated his previous experiment, but this time made the lines closer together
- he found that conformity increased significantly beyond the 33% found in his original study now that the task difficulty was higher
What is the Schultz study (2008)?
- they placed signs telling guests at a hotel that said ‘75% of guests choose to reuse their towels each day’
- they then compared the towel re - usage with a control group who also had a second sign explaining the benefits of reusing towels
What’s the study of linkenbach and Perkins (2003)?
- there was a campaign carried out inn7/56 counties of Montana, aimed at 12 - 17 years old. It said that most children in their age group didn’t smoke.
- linkenbach and Perkins (2003) looked into it and found that only 10% of young people in these 7 countries took up smoking, compared to 17% in these other countries
- this is a 41% difference
What’s the fein (2007) study?
- fein et al (2007) showed video clips of US of presidential debates to participants
- simultaneously participants were shown a video of what they were told were public reactions to the debate
- fein found that participants judgments of the performance of each candidate in the debate could be influenced by showing them different public reactions
What are strengths of explanations for conformity?
+ real world application - by knowing why people conforms, we se this for good
What are limitations of explanations for conformity?
- we cannot truly know a person motivation. The individual might not even know the true reason for their conformity
What does confederate mean?
Actors
Limitations of Asch’s study?
Demand characteristics
Ethical issues/ external validity
Application
Low Mundane realism - how it applies in everyday life/ about the task its self. Not something you would do in real life.
Sample -
Strengths of Asch’s study?
Replicability
Task difficulty
The more difficult the task, the higher the conformity rates.
What does situational mean
Refers to your environment around you
What does dispositional mean
More about personality and inner nature.
Philip Zimbardo (1933)
- tested his hypothesis that we act the way we do because of the situation we are in
What is obedience?
When you follow a direct order given by an authority figure
How is obedience different to conformity?
Obedience is following an order, conformity is changing beliefs and behaviour
What is conformity?
Following a group, changing behaviour or beliefs
Milgram (1963)
Aim: to see if ordinary American people would obey and commit acts against their morals because of the presence of an authority figure
Research method: lab study
Sample: volunteer sample of 40 US men, aged 20-50
Research design: repeated measures
Procedure: • Participants are assigned as the ‘teacher’ and the confederate (Mr. Wallace) is assigned as the ‘student’
• The student sits in an adjoining room and is hooked up to a fake electric shock generator. At this point he mentions that he has a heart condition.
• The teacher sits on the other side of the wall and tests the student on some word pairs
• Every time the learner makes a mistake, the teacher must shock him (starting at
15V). He must then increase the voltage for the next question in 15V steps, up to 450V (a potentially lethal amount)
• Meanwhile a second confederate (Mr. Williams) wearing a lab coat must remind the teacher of their task, and must try to keep them in the experiment using verbal
‘prods’ (see top right)
• The learner confederate does not make a sound about the shocks until the 300V
mark, at which point he complains and makes no response
• At 315V, he again makes no response and from then on says nothing and doesn’t
answer any questions
Findings: before the study Milgram asked people what percentage would go all the way to 450V
Most people believes that almost nobody would do it - some predicting as little as 1 in 1000.
• 100% of participants went to 300V (not
surprising since Mr. Wallace hadn’t complained)
• 12.5% of pp’s left at 300V when he
complained
• 65% of pp’s went all the way to 450V –
even when it seemed that Mr. Wallace could
be dead!
Conclusion: Milgram concluded that most people, even hard working Americans citizens, could be made to obey a command beyond their morals
GAD hypothesis
• After the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust, some people in the UK and the USA viewed German people negatively
• They believed that there was something different about Germans; in particular, that they were too obedient as a nation
• This is what allowed them to follow the orders of Nazi generals and commit terrible acts
• The GAD hypothesis is a dispositional hypothesis – it says that they are just different as people
Variables of the Milgram study
- the original study doesn’t contain and IV
- milgram conducted some variations which will give us some IV’s later
- we can say that the voltage is the IV and the maximum voltage is the DV
What are issues with Milgram study?
- Ethical issues - right to withdraw (it is essential you carry on).
- lab study so lacks ecological validity. Only 56% believed he was really being shocked.
- lacks population validity as only carried out on men.
- lacks temporal validity as carried out in the 1960’s.
What are strengths of Milgram study?
- can justify ethical issues
Further discussion of Milgram study?
• Milgram noted how participants often looked to the experimenter, Mr. Williams, and would only proceed once they knew that Mr. Wallace’s safety was not their own concern
• The authority figure was only wearing a lab coat. He was not a policeman or anyone with genuine authority over the participant
• Participants reported a wide range of psychological and even physical effects
of the study - Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.
Unanimity of majority Asch
1 ally agreed - 5 %
Different wrong answer - 9%
Group size Asche
More confederates = more conformity
Until a certain point - 15 participants = less conformity
As participants became more expectant of the study
Milgram variations
- proximity of the victim
- touch proximity
- remote authority - experimenter absent
- location of study moved to a rundown office
- authority without uniform
Proximity of victim
- Milgram repeated the experiment with the learner sat in the same room
a) Obedience to 450V was reduced to 40%
Extreme proximity: Touch Proximity condition – the learner refused to continue after 150V so the participant had to force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate
a) Obedience reduced to 30%
Proximity of authority
Experimenter left the room and gave orders of the phone
Obedience went down 20%
Location
Original experiment was located at Yale university a very prestigious location
On variation they carried out the experiment in a run down office in Bridgeport a far less prestigious setting
Obedience dropped to 48%
Uniform
In Milgram original experiment mr Williams wore a lab coat
A man in ordinary clothes came up with the idea of increasing the voltage every time the learner made a mistake
Obedience dropped to 20%
Presence of allies
When the participant was joined by two
other confederates acting as teachers, their obedience was affected
When the other ‘teachers’ obeyed, participant obedience increased to 92.5%
When the other ‘teachers’ disobeyed,
participant obedience decreased to 10%
Hofling (1966)
carried out a study using nurses. A confederate known as Dr. Smith would phone
the nurse’s at hospital (22 nurses in all) and ask them to administer 20mg of a drug called
‘astroten’ (which was a fake drug made for the study – just a sugar pill) to a patient known as Mr.
Jones. On the bottle it said the dose should be 10mg. This contravenes three rules:
• Cannot take orders over the phone
• Dose was double the stated maximum on the box
• The drug was not an approved drug on the stock list.
Hofling found that 21/22 (95%) nurses administered the drug to Mr. Jones.
