Social Influence Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a persons behaving or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
What is majority influence?
When a large group of people behaving in a similar way which influences a person’s behaviour.
What is minor influence?
Smaller group/individual behaving in a similar way which influences a person’s behaviour
Who suggested the three types of conformity?
Kerman (1958)
What are the three types of conformity?
- Compliance
- Internalisation
- Identification
What is compliance?
When there is a change in behaviour or attitudes publicly, not privately.
-> Therefore it’s a temporary type of conformity, only superficial
What is internalisation?
When there is a public and private change in behaviour.
- > This is one is a permanent type of conformity on a deeper level.
Permanent shift of attitude and behaviour - It is the deepest form of conformity
What is identification?
When there is a public and private change on behaviour and attitude to imitate a role model or a social role.
-> lasts as long as the person identifies with the variable
What are the two explanations for social influence?
1) Normative Social Influence (NSI)
2) Informative Social Influence (ISI)
Who proposed the two-process model for why we conform?
Deutsch and Gerard (1955)
-> basic human need to be liked and to be right
What is Normative Social Influence (NSI)?
Social influence that occurs due to the need to be liked and the fear of rejection.
-> always the cause of compliance
What is Informative Social Influence (ISI)?
Social influence that occurs due to the need to be correct
What circumstances does Normative Social Influence occur?
When social pressure is high and uncertainty it low
What circumstances does Informational Social Influence occur?
When social pressure is low and uncertainty is high
Who investigated conformity by Normative Social Influence (NSI)?
Solomon Asch (1951) - Line experiment
What was the aim of Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951?
To investigate whether people could be made to conform to a majority who were saying something obviously wrong.
What happened in Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951?
123 male participants were used and grouped into 5-7 including one participants whilst the rest were confederates. Confederates were told to say the wrong answer for 12 out of 18 trials.
The actual participant was always second last to answer.
What was the control group in Solomon Asch’s study in 1951?
In order to check the task difficulty, a control group was used with no confederates. The error rate was 0.4% which tell us that the task difficulty was relatively low
What were the findings of Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951?
- 75% of all the participants conformed at least once
- 36.8% conformity rate
What can we conclude from the findings of Asch’s experiment in 1951?
- Participants showed compliance due to NSI, we know this as the task was unambiguous
What were the weaknesses/criticisms of Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951?
1) The study lacked ecological validity
2) There is low population validity
3) There is beta bias
4) Participants may have shown demand characteristics
Why might Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951 lack ecological validity?
The tasks don’t reflect real life scenarios, so they are generalisable able to everyday scenarios. To add on participants have no consequences for conforming which may have lead to higher conformation rates.
Why might Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951 have low population validity?
All the partipants where male American students
Why might Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951 have beta bias?
He only used male participants, which leads to gender bias which leads to beta bias
What are the strengths/responses to criticisms of Solomon Asch’s experiment in 1951?
1) It was lab experiment so it established cause + effect
2) It was a lab experiment so the extraneous variables were controlled
3) Interviews with participants later conferred that they conformed rather than showing demand characteristics
4) It was lab experiment so results were replicable
What were the three situational variables affecting conformity in Asch’s experiment?
1) Group Size
2) Unanimity
3) Task Difficulty
How did Asch investigate group size as a situational variable?
Asch redid his experiment but changed the number of confederates from 1-15.
What could Asch conclude about group size as a situational variable for conformity?
1) When there was only one confederate conformity dropped to 3%.
2) It increased to 13% with two confederates
3) Then increased to 33% with three confederates.
4) However conformity rates plateau after 3 confederates.
How did Asch investigate unanimity as a situational variable?
Asch redid his experiment but introduced one dissenting confederate (breaking unanimity)
What could Asch conclude about unanimity as a situational variable for conformity?
1) Conformity rates dropped to 5.5%
-> Suggests that with an ally partipants feel less social pressure to comply
How did Asch investigate task difficulty as a situational variable?
Asch re-conducted his experiment but increased the difficulty of the task by making the lengths of the lines more similar to each other.
What could Asch conclude about task difficulty as a situational variable for conformity?
As task difficulty increased so did conformity. ISI poses as an explanation to this variable.
