Social Influence Flashcards
Outline and Evaluate (research into) types of conformity (8 marks)
A01
Types: Kelman
- Internalisation - change beliefs public and private
- Identification - change behaviour in public and private but only when in the presence of the group = NSI
- Compliance - change public beliefs but disagrees in private = stops when group pressure stops
A03
- hard to measure between compliance and internalisation
NEED ANOTHER POINT
Outline and Evaluate (research into) explanations of conformity (8 marks)
A01
Explanations:
- NSI - normative social influence
- ISI - informational social influence
Deutsch and Gerrard
NSI = conform due to wanting to fit in with the rest of the group
ISI = conform due to thinking the group knows better than you
NSI = emotional - leads to compliance
ISI = cognitive - leads to internalisation
A03
- Hard to distinguish between NSI and ISI = is the distinction useful
+ Shultz (2008) found that when hotel guests were exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day reduced their own towel usage by 25%
+ Asch’s line study = conformity dropped to 12.5% when answers were written down = NSI pressure stopped
+ Lucas maths study = conformity increased as maths questions got harder as participants did not want to be wrong
+ Individual differences = McGhee and Teevan found that people are concerned with being liked = naffiliators were more likely to conform
Discuss Asch’s research into conformity (16 marks)
A01:
Baseline procedure:
123 American male participants
Tested in groups of 6-8
Each participant saw two large white cards on each trial - line X which is the standard line on one card, and the lines A,B,C on the other card - three comparison lines.
One of the lines is clearly the same length as X, the other two are different
On each trial the participants say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line X
Findings:
Genuine participants agreed with confederate incorrect answer 36.8% of the time
There were individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer (never conformed)
- Group Size = Asch wanted to know whether the size of group would vbve more important than the agreement of the group. To test this he varied the number of confederacies from 1 to 15. He found that conformity increased to 31.8% with three confederates, but group size only increased up to a point (7). This suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion.
- Unanimity = Asch wondered if the presence of a non - conforming person would affect the naive participants conformity. He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates. One variation of the study is that this person gave the correct answer and in another he have the wrong answer. This led to the genuine participant to conform less frequently in the presence of a dissenter as it seemed to free the naive participants to behave more independently. This was true even when they disagreed. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous, and that non - conforming is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority’s unanimous view
- Task difficulty = Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity. He increased the difficulty of the line judging by making the lines more similar to each other in length. This meant that it became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines. He found that conformity increased, which may be due to the situation becoming more ambiguous when the task becomes harder - not clear to the participants which the correct answer is. In these circumstances it is natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong (ISI)
Evaluation:
- artificial situation and task
Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
This means that Asch’s findings do not generalise to real - world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important
- limited application
All participants were American men - individualist culture
In collectivist cultures they found that conformity rates are higher
This means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
+ research support
Support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
This shows that Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity
- ethical issues
Naive participants were deceived because they thought that the other people involved with the procedure were also participants, not confederates
However, is it worth bearing in mind that this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from the study
Discuss conformity to social roles (16 marks)
A01:
He studied the idea that people will conform to social roles if they are assigned a distinct social identity
- wanted 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
- converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison
The study proceeded as follows:
- 24 male students were recruited via volunteer/self-selected sampling
- tested for psychiatric vulnerabilities and were deemed ‘emotionally stable’
- randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard
- 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 which were as follows:
- the guards wore a standard khaki uniform with mirror 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 uniforms were designed to erode personal identity and to emphasise each participant’s social role (a process known as deindividuation)
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
Findings:
- Both guards and prisoners settled into their new roles very quickly
- The guards adopted their social role quickly, easily and with enthusiasm
- 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 used psychological warfare, harnessing the ‘divide-and-rule’ principle by playing prisoners off against each other
they instigated headcounts, sometimes at night, by blowing a whistle loudly at the prisoners
punishments were meted out for the slightest transgression
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
one prisoner had a mental breakdown to the extent that Zimbardo had to remind the participants that the prison was not a real prison
As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and abusive
A colleague of Zimbardo’s visited the study and was horrified at the abuse and exploitation she saw
Zimbardo ended the experiment after six days instead of the 14 originally planned
Zimbardo came to various conclusions as a result of running the study:
- 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)
- A prison exerts psychological damage upon both those who work there and those who are incarcerated there
Evaluation:
Strengths
+ A good degree of control was exerted over the procedure:
The ‘vetting’ of participants to factor out prior psychiatric conditions
The random allocation to role
both of the above measures ensured that individual differences did not confound the results e.g. it was pure chance who ended up as prisoner or guard
+ The study may have genuine mundane realism (which is rare for an experiment)
90% of the prisoners’ private conversations revolved around prison life
The guards talked about ‘problem prisoners,’ or other prison topics on their breaks; they never discussed home life or other topics
Limitations
Zimbardo acted as Prison superintendent and also lead researcher = researcher bias
- The study is (rightly) known for its atrocious ethics
Informed consent did not cover all aspects of what the participants could expect about the procedure (e.g. the arrests at night)
The right to withdraw was given but the routines and mechanisms of the prison world set up by Zimbardo made this difficult for all involved
Protection from harm was almost absent:
Zimbardo actively encouraged the guards to be cruel and oppressive prior to the start of the study
the prisoners suffered in their role, both physically and psychologically
the guards had to live with the knowledge of their potential for brutality after the study was over and the prisoners may have suffered PTSD as a result of their experience - Some, or possibly all, of the participants, may have been acting according to demand characteristics
The participants may have been able to guess the aim and behaved accordingly e.g. ‘I am a guard therefore I must behave brutally’
If the participants were playing out expected roles then this lowers the validity of the findings (e.g. the prisoner who appeared to be having a mental breakdown immediately snapped out of it when Zimbardo reminded him that the prison wasn’t real)
Discuss Milgram’s research into obedience (16 marks)
A01
Stanley Milgram (1963) conducted study to test extreme obedience = in response to the holocaust
Setup:
40 Males, 20-25 years old
Volunteer through newspaper advert for a study on ‘memory’
Participants given role of teacher or learner (biased so they always got teacher)
introduced to confederates, a “professor” in a lab coat and a “learner”
Procedure:
Learner strapped to chair with electrodes attached
participant told to deliver electric shocks (becoming more intense = 15-450 volts) when learner answered incorrectly
At 300v learner made noise and refused to go on
After 315v learner made no more noise, indicating unconsciousness or death
when participant/teacher refused/resisted, the professor would encourage them to continue using a set of four scripted prompts
If learner refused four timers, the study ended
Collected quantitative and qualitative data:
Quantitative:
100% to 300 volts
12.5% stopped at 300 volts
65% continued to 450 volts
Qualitative:
participants showed signs of:
- extreme tension
- sweating
- trembling
- stuttering
- biting fingernails and lips
- dig fingernails into hands
- 3 even had ‘full blown uncontrollable seizures’
+ standardised procedure = highly controlled and allowed replications
- Ethical harm to participants = caused distress and deception
- lacks mundane realism and creates demand characteristics = due to participants guessing the shocks were not real and playing along (Gina Perry listened back to tapes)
+ Research support = Hofling, 21/22 nurses obeyed phone call to double the maximum dose of unfamiliar drug - field study in a real hospital (high ecological validity) with familiar task (high mundane realism)
Discuss the agentic state as a situational explanation for obedience (8 marks)
A01
Agentic state = refers to a mindset where an individual perceives themselves as acting as an agent of another person (an authority figure), relinquishing personal responsibility for their actions and instead attributing it to the authority figure’s orders.
Autonomous state = refers to a situation where an individual acts on their own volition, taking responsibility for their actions and the consequences, rather than acting as an agent for someone else.
Shift between these two states = agentic shift
Binding factors keep people in these states
A03:
+ research support - German police battalion 101
shot civilians in a small town in Poland despite being told they could be assigned to roles/duties if preferred
Therefore, they behaved autonomously
+ Milgram study = experimenter when asked said he was responsible for the consequences
This shows they acted as the experimenters agent
- Rank and Jacobsons nurses - 16/18 disobeyed doctors orders to administer an overdose
Can only explain/account for some situations of obedience
Discuss the legitimacy of authority as an explanation of obedience (8 marks)
An authority figure is anyone who has a legitimate status to issue orders
‘Legitimate’ could be considered in official terms, e.g. police officer, or unofficially, e.g. school bully
If an individual perceives someone to be an authority figure then they are much more likely to obey orders from them than from someone who appears to lack status or authority
As outlined above, it is necessary to some extent for social hierarchies to exist as someone has to be in control and decide how things are run in an office, school, business, country etc.
If no one obeyed and everyone rebelled then (possibly) chaos would follow
Research by Bickman (1974) showed that:
People were more likely to obey a confederate dressed as a security guard than when the confederate was dressed as a milkman or in plain clothes
The plain clothes condition resulted in the lowest levels of obedience
Hence, a uniform confers authority, even when it is not a police uniform
Lack of obedience may result in punishment or the withdrawal of social approval which is another binding factor
If someone in authority tells you to do something then you had better do it or risk the consequences
It’s often easier to simply obey rather than to question the motivation behind the order
Strengths
+ Supports cultural differences = 16% of Australians went to 450v in Milgram’s study compared to 85% of Germans due to their different perceptions of how to respond to authority figures
+ Strong external validity
Examples of agentic state and destructive obedience to an authority figure can be seen in acts of atrocity throughout history, e.g.
the holocaust in Nazi Germany was only made possible by thousands of ordinary people obeying horrific orders and directives from above
the Rwandan genocide turned neighbour against neighbour with destructive, propagandist orders transmitted by a popular radio show
+ Kelman and Hamilton argue that real world crimes can be understood with this theory = My Lai massacre
- This theory cannot explain why some people do not obey shown in Rank and Jacobsons nurses (16/18 did not obey authority figure), even when they would be justified in blaming someone else for their actions
Thus, the theory only offers a situational explanation of obedience rather than a dispositional explanation of obedience - Both of these explanations for obedience are deterministic = they imply that those who commit acts of destructive obedience have no control over their actions
The above observation negates the idea of people as autonomous and able to exercise free will
Discuss the authoritarian personalty as an explanation for obedience (16 marks)
A dispositional explanation of obedience is one which is based on the characteristics of an individual, e.g.
some people are more likely to be obedient than others due to their personality traits which develops as a result of childhood experiences
The theory takes the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate = nurture includes any external influence on personality/behaviour, e.g. upbringing, learning, environment
He suggested that the authoritarian personality forms during childhood as a result of having overbearing, dictatorial parents who do not allow or encourage free will, expression or freedom of choice in their children
Study:
Adorno (1950) devised a questionnaire known as the F-scale to measure the authoritarian personality = ‘F’ on the scale denotes a rating of fascism
Examples:
Statements on the F-scale include:
‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’
‘Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and settle down’ fixed responses on the scale ranged from ‘Disagree strongly’ to ‘Agree strongly’
- 2,000 middle-class white American participants
- designed to reveal attitudes towards other racial groups
Conclusions:
Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality exhibit the following traits:
They are more obedient than other people
They respect social hierarchies and authority figures
They are ‘black and white’ in their opinions and see the world in a rigid, inflexible way, e.g.
‘men should be real men and not show emotion’
They are disdainful of anyone who shows ‘weakness’, e.g.
‘conscientious objectors should be despised’
They look down on those whom they consider to be ‘beneath’ them in the social hierarchy,e.g.
people who are mentally ill, homeless, of a different race/ethnicity/culture
They may feel resentment or anger towards authority figures (including their parents) but they direct these negative feelings to other, lower-status people.
The parents of an authoritarian personality are likely to:
exert strong discipline at home
have high expectations of their children
exercise conditional love
Adorno thought that the child of such parents learns these behaviours and attitudes, eventually identifying with them and thus the authoritarian personality is formed
A03
+ Research support = Elms & Milgram (1966) replicated Milgram’s (1963) original obedience study
20 participants who had previously gone up to 450 volts in a prior replication of the study (i.e. these participants showed high obedience)
20 participants who had refused to go 450 volts in a prior replication of the study (i.e. these participants showed low obedience)
The participants completed questionnaires, one of which was Adorno’s F-scale
Findings:
showed that the high-obedience participants scored higher on the F-scale than the low-obedience participants
The high-obedience participants also reported that they did not feel close to their father when they were growing up and also reported feelings of admiration for the experimenter when they took part in Milgram’s study
Thus, there appears to be a relationship between childhood experience, authoritarian personality and high obedience
+ Replicable = Adorno uses standardised questions which can be used repeatedly with other samples thus generating robust quantitative data
+ Adorno has a large sample size and quantitative data means that the scale can be tested for reliability e.g. using the test-retest method
- Political bias = measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right wing ideology
- Flawed evidence/’comedy of methodological errors’ Fred Greenstein (1969)= it is easy to get a high score by choosing agree on all the answers - anyone with a response bias would be seen to have an authoritarian personality
Discuss the role of social support in resisting social influence (8 marks)
A01:
Resisting conformity
- pressure to conform can be resisted if there are other people present who are not conforming
- shown in Asch study
- someone else not following the majority = social support and allows the naive participant to be free to follow their own conscience
- they act as a ‘model’
- gives rise to more dissent as the majority is no longer unanimous
Resisting obedience
- can be resisted if there is another person who is seen to disobey
- Migram obedience dropped from 65-10% when the participant was joined by a disobedient confederate
- the disobedient ‘model’ challenges the legitimacy of authority (LOA) making it easier for others to disobey
A03:
+ Research support Susan Albrecht = evaluated Teen Fresh Start USA
8 week programme to help pregnant mothers not smoke
14-19 age
paired with buddy and not paired with buddy
found mothers with buddy less likely to smoke than those without
+ Research support Gamson (1982) = participants told to produce evidence to be used to help in an oil company smear campaign = 29/33 groups (88%) rebelled, as they were in groups (social support), undermine LOA
- Social support does not always help = Allen and Levine did an Asch type study and when a dissenter had obvious poor eyesight (thick-lens glasses) resistance was only 36% compared to 64% with a dissenter with good eyesight
+ Milgram study results = 65-10% with social support
Discuss the role of locus of control in resisting social influence (8 marks)
A01:
Rotter (1966) proposed LOC
Internal = things that happen are controlled by themselves
External = things that happen are out of their control (bad luck)
LOC Continuum:
not just internal or external
LOC is a scale
High internal LOC one end and High external LOC at the other end - Low internal and Low external lie in-between
Resistance to conformity:
High Internal LOC = able to resist conformity - base decisions on own beliefs, also tend to be more self confident and higher IQ - less need for social approval
A03:
+ Research Support Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s study and found 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level, whereas only 23% of externals did not continue
Internals showed greater resistance to authority
Limited role of LOC:
Rotter points out LOC may not be the most important factor is determining whether someone resists social influence - it depends on the situation, only affects behaviour in new situations
If you have obeyed/conformed in a specific situation in the past, the chances are you will do so again regardless of whether you have a high internal or external LOC
Discuss minority influence in social influence (16 marks)
A01:
Minority influence (MI) = one person or small group influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people
not conformity as tis is where the majority is doing the influencing
MI = likely to lead to internalisation
Moscovici proposed 3 behavioural sytyles:
Consistency
Flexibility
Commitment
Consistency = synchronic and diachronic
Synchronic = all saying the same thing
Diachronic = they’ve been saying the same thing for some time now
Commitment = sometimes minorities engage in extreme activities to draw attention and thus shows greater commitment due to the risk involved = majority groups pay even more attention = augmentation principle
Flexibility = Nemeth (1986) argued consistency can be off putting and dogmatic = key is to strike a balance between consistency and flexibility
Study; Nemeth (1986)
He tested this by having participants in a group of 4 (3 participants 1 confederate) to agree on the amount of compensation they would give a victim in a ski-lift accident
Two conditions:
1. Minority argued for low rate and didnt change position (inflexible)
2. Minority argued for low ratre but compromised by offering a slightly higher rate (flexible)
Findings:
- majority much more likley to compromise when minority is flexible
Explaining the process of change:
Hearing something new may make you think twice/more deeply especially if the source of this other view is consistent, committed and flexible
Deeper processing is important in the conversion process - the switch from majority to minority = conversion
The more conversion happens the quicker the rate = snowball effect - gradually the minority view has come the majority view and change has occurred
Moscovici Blue green slide study:
36 slides
4 participants with 2 confederates
Condition 1 = consistent minority, confederates said “green” 100% of the time
Condition 2 = inconsistent minority, confederates said “green” 2/3rds of the time
Control group = no one said green
Found:
Consistent minority = 8%
Inconsistent minority = 1.25%
Control group = 0.25%
Conclusion
Minority must be consistent in order to change majority views
A03:
+ Research support Moscovici = Blue Green slide study
+ Wendy Wood (1994) = carried out meta analysis of 100 similar studies and found minorities who were seen as consistent were most influential
- Artificial tasks = Many minority influence research ignores the importance of real life behaviour - Moscovici identifying the colour of a slide (Blue or Green) real life outcomes are much more important
- Lack external validity as we cannot relate to real-world situations
+ Research support for deeper processing = Robin Martin (2003) found when a group heard a message agreed to by a minority and another group the majority, when a conflicting view was proposed the group who had listened to the minority group were less likely to change their views
+ suggests it had been more deeply processed/more enduring effect
- People are more likely to agree with the minority when they write down answers in private compared to if they have to say it out loud = suggests that the view expressed by people in public was just the ‘tip of the iceberg’
+ Nemeth found if people were flexible they were more likely to revive more compensation from a skiing accident
Discuss the role of social change processes in social influence (16 marks)
A01:
Social change processes include:
1. Drawing attention
2. Consistency
3. Deeper processing
4. The Augmentation principle
5. The Snowball effect
6. Social Cryptomnesia
Lessons from conformity
Lessons from obedience
A03:
Nemeth
Milgrams situational variables affecting obedience (16 marks)
A01:
Proximity = how close/far away someone or something is
When the Teacher and the Learner were in the same room obedience (measured as the number of participants who went to 450 volts) dropped from 65% to 40%
In another proximity variation, the Teacher had to force the Learner’s hand onto an electromagnetic shock plate
This variation resulted in obedience dropping to 30%
The experimenter left the room after setting up the experiment
The experimenter then proceeded to issue instructions by phone
Obedience dropped even further in this condition with 20.5% of the participants going to 450 volts
Uniform
Bickman study
Milgram’s original study, the experimenter wore a grey lab coat
The grey lab coat served as his uniform = looked like he was officially in charge
Milgram conducted a variation to his original procedure to investigate the effect of uniform, as follows:
The experimenter (wearing the grey lab coat) pretended to have to leave the room
This original experimenter was replaced by a man in plain clothes
In this variation only 20 % of participants went up to 450 volts
Milgram concluded that a uniform - even when it is as sparse as a lab coat - confers authority on the wearer and thus results in higher levels of obedience
Location
Yale University is a highly prestigious college with a reputation for excellence
Milgram conducted a variation to his original procedure to investigate the effect of location, as follows:
Milgram ran the study in a run-down building in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Participants were told the experiment was being run by the Research Association of Bridgeport
there was no mention at all of Yale University
In this variation, the percentage of participants who went to 450 volts dropped to 47.5%
Milgram concluded that location affects obedience
The less credible, low-status location resulted in a lower level of obedience
A03:
Strengths
Bickman’s study was a field experiment with naive participants
it has high ecological validity due to the participants’ lack of awareness of their participation in the study
the study also used a degree of control with its three distinct conditions of the independent variable which means that it has some reliability
Milgram stuck to the same standardised procedure in all of the variations he conducted which means that the results are easy to compare to check for reliability
Limitations
Some of the variations may have been more difficult to fake:
The proximity condition in which the Teacher had to place the Learner’s hand on the shock plate would mean that the Learner had to produce some very convincing acting - which is not an easy task to achieve
Any suspicion from the participants that they were being set up would impact the validity of the findings
Milgram’s conclusion that situational variables explain destructive obedience could be abused for nefarious reasons
Acts of cruelty, tyranny or brutality could be excused as ‘the situation made me do it’ which is a worrying idea
