Social influence Flashcards
What are the types of conformity?
Herbert Kelman (1958) suggested 3 ways in which people conform to opinions of a majority Internalisation, Identification and Compliance.
What is meant by internalisation?
Occurs when a person genuinely accepts the group norms.
Which results in a private as well as public change in opinions/behaviour.
This change is likely to be permanent because the attitudes have been internalised.
What is meant by identification?
When a person conforms to the groups opinions/behaviour because there is something about the group they value.
This may mean they publicly change their opinions/behaviours to achieve this goal, even if we don’t privately agree with everything the group stands for.
What is meant by compliance?
Type of conformity which involves simply ‘going along with others’ in public but privately not changing personal opinions/behaviours.
Meaning the particular behaviour stops when the pressures from that group stops.
What are the 2 explanations for conformity?
Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard developed a two process model meaning there are two main ways in which people conform/
Informational social influence (ISI)
Normative social influence (NSI)
What is meant by informational social influence?
When you do not know the answer to a question but if the rest of the group is certain on an answer you would naturally comply with what the group are saying. Therefore you do not have the better information and therefore seek to others to gain it.
ISI is most likely to happen in a new situation and is also most likely to be a cognitive process because its to do with what we think.
What is meant by normative social influence?
When the norms of a group are conformed to because a person may be afraid to be rejected or to gain social approval from friends. Therefore it is an emotional process and could be more pronounced in stressful situations when someone has a greater need for social support.
What supports can be used for the explanations of conformity
Lucas et al (2006)
What did Lucas et al (2006) find?
Students who rated their mathematical ability as poor were more likely to conform. Also mathematical problems which were harder had more people conform, the study shows people conform when they don’t know an answer.
What is a criticism for the explanations of conformity?
That ISI and NSI work together. For example in the Asch experimenter a dissenter may reduce the power of NSI because they provide social support or could reduce the power of ISI because there’s an alternative source of information.
If a person is less concerned about what people think of them then NSI will have a lesser effect.
What was Aschs (1951, 1955) procedure?
Tested conformity by showing participants 2 white cards 1 of which had a line on the other had 3 comparison lines on. 1 of the 3 lines were the same length as the standard and participants were asked which of the 3 lines were the same as the standard one.
What were Aschs (1951, 1955) participants?
123 American male undergraduates, each of which were tested individually in a group between 6 and 8 confederates.
What were the confederates in Aschs (1951, 1955) research asked to do?
Give the right answers at first but to then begin to make errors. All confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answers. Participants took part in 18 trials 12 of which were ‘critical trials’ where confederates gave the wrong answers.
What were Aschs (1951, 1955) findings?
Naïve participants gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time.
25% of participants did not conform on any trials meaning 75% conformed at least once.
What did most participants say was the reason that they conformed?
To avoid rejection NSI
What variations did Asch do on his original study?
Changed the group size.
Tested unanimity by adding another confederate who either agreed/disagreed with the group.
Increased the task difficulty.
What was found in Asch’s variation of group size?
With 3 confederates conforming to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% but the addition of further confederates made a little difference.
What was found in Asch’s variation of task difficulty?
Found that conformity increased under these conditions where the line was more similar in length. Suggesting ISI is more important when the task becomes harder.
What was found in Asch’s variation of unanimity?
The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level when the majority was unanimous. Presence of a dissenter enable the participant to behave with more independence.
What did Perrin and Spencer (1980) do?
Repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students from the UK and found 1 student to conform in a total of 396 trials. This could mean that the engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines or that Asch’s study in the 1950s America was a particularly conformist time.
What is a criticism of Ash’s research?
Perrin and Spencer (1980)
Limited application as only men were tested and other research suggests women may be more conformist (possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships)
Naïve participants were deceived because they thought others in the procedure were participants, therefore breaching the code of ethics.
Why did Zimbardo conduct his Stamford Prison Experiment?
Following reports of brutality by guards on prisoners in America during the late 1960s.
What did Zimbardo set out to do?
Answer the question of if prison guards behave brutally due to sadistic personalities or due to the situation they are in.
How did Zimbardo select his participants?
Advertised for students who were willing to volunteer and selected those deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after psychological testing.
