Social Influence Flashcards
Conformity
A change i a person’s behaviour or opinions as the result of group pressure.
Sherif
Aim: To discover the effect on judgement of listening to other people.
Method: He asked participants to estimate how far a spot of light moved when they were sitting in an otherwise completely dark room.
Results: Individually the participants gave a variety of estimates, which differed quite widely from each other’s. However, after being allowed to undertake the same task in groups of 3, their estimates became more similar until finally they were very close.
Conclusion: The participants used other people’s opinions to help them form a judgement in an ambiguous situation.
Asch
Aim: to find out if an individual would conform to the group even if they knew the group was wrong.
Method: Asch devised a number of laboratory experiments with groups of six to nine participants (all male college students). There was one naive participant and the rest were confederates who had been told to give wrong answers on certain trials. The task was for participants to judge the length of lines. Asch showed the groups lines of different lengths and asked them to match the test line to one of the comparison lines. As you can see the answer is clearly obvious. The participant was one of the last to give his judgement.
Results: in control groups trials, when participants were tested alone,, there were very few wrong answers. But Asch found that when they became part of a group, 25 % of the participants conformed to the rest of the group on most of the occasions when the group was wrong. Overall, 75% of participants conformed to the wrong answer at least once. The average rate of conformity was 32%.
Conclusion: Asch concluded that the participants’ behaviour is representative of conformity.
Evaluation of conformity
There are some problems with these pieces of research. Both of them were conducted in laboratories. This means that neither was a natural situation for the participants and so they may not have behaved in a natural way.
Also Asch used university students who may not behave in the same way as other people, this could lead to inaccurate conclusions.
A bad thing about confederates is if the participants are misled by people who are part of the research team, it is thought to be unethical.
Obedience
Following the orders of someone we believe to have authority.
Milgram
Aim: Milgram wants to see how far people would obey an unreasonable offer.
Method: 40 male participants volunteered to take part in what they thought was an experiment about memory and learning. The participants didn’t know the true meaning of this study. The shocks weren’t actually real. However, the participants didn’t know this. Then they were sat in front of a shock generator that had 30 switches from 15 volts up to 450 volts. They were told to give electric shocks to a ‘learner’ every time they got an answer wrong and if they wanted to stop giving electric shocks, the experimenter would say ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
Results:About 65% of Milgram’s participants gave the maximum shock, even though the participants were suffering a lot of distress.
Conclusion: People are prepared to obey quite extraordinary orders if they think the person giving them is in a position of authority.
Evaluation of obedience
It has been suggested that the participants realised that the shocks weren’t real, which is why they went so far.
The experiment has also been criticised for lacking ecological validity. However, it has been repeated in different situations with many variations and similar results have been found.
Further studies into obedience - Hofling
Aim: Hofling et al wanted to see whether nurses were obedient to a potentially life-threatening order given to them by a doctor.
Method: An incident was made up that would cause conflict in the minds of the nurses who were unknowing participants. The nurse would be asked to give an excessive dosage of a drug; The order would be via telephone (this is not allowed); The drug would not be on the ward stock-list; The order would be given by someone the nurse did not know. 22 nurses took part. Each of the nurses were telephoned by a doctor and told to give a patient 20mg of the drug Astrogen. The nurses were not aware that the tablets were actually glucose tablets. On the box it was stated that the max daily dose was 10mg. Within 48 hours of the study, each of the nurses were interviewed and reassured that no harm had been done.
Results: Of the 22 nurses in the study, 21 completed the telephone call and gave the patient 20mg of Astrogen. The average length of the call was around 2 minutes. This indicates that the nurses offered no resistance and simply followed the orders of an authority figure.
Conclusion: Hofling had shown that people are obedient in real life situations (and life threatening situations).
Further studies into obedience - Bickman
Aim: He wanted to know if people would be more likely to obey an order if it came from someone in a uniform.
Method: He had actors dress in either a security guard or just in a casual jacket. They each asked people sitting in a park to pick up some litter.
Results: What he found was that 80% of people obeyed the ‘guard’ compared with 40% when the actor wasn’t wearing a uniform.
Conclusion: Wearing a uniform will increase the sense that a person is a legitimate authority figure.
Evaluation of further studies into obedience
Although Bickman’s study has a lot more ecological validity, the same can’t be said about Hofling’s study. The drug used was ot a real drug, and the nurses weren’t allowed to discuss the request with anyone. This made the study less realistic.
Deindividuation
The state of losing our sense of individuality and becoming less aware of our own responsibility for our actions.
Zimbardo 1
Aim: to see if people in a big city behave in a more antisocial way than people in a small town.
Method: he parked a car in each place with its bonnet up, as if it had broken down, and observed what people did as they passed by.
Results: immediately people began stealing parts off the car in New York, and within two weeks there was very little of it left. In Palo Alto, the only time the car was touched was when someone lowered the bonnet to stop the engine getting wet when it was raining.
Conclusion: the deindividuation caused by living in a big city leads to an increase in antisocial behaviour.
Zimbardo 2
Aim: to test the idea of deindividuation.
Method: using female participants in groups of four, participants had to give electric shocks to others (who were confederates). The participants believed that they were taking part in a learning exercise. There were two conditions: in one the women wore hoods and identical coats (so that they were anonymous); in the other they wore their own clothes with name tags on and spoke to each other using their own names.
Results: Zimbardo found that the anonymous women were twice as likely to give shocks compared with the women wearing their own clothes.
Conclusion: Zimbardo concluded that if people know that they cannot be identified (have anonymity) they are more likely to behave aggressively.
Evaluation of deindividuation
The study lacked mundane realism (an everyday situation that is life like and not artificial). This means the participants might not behave how they normally would.
Also this study raised several ethical issues, such as deception and psychological harm.
Practical applications of deindividuation
One is to prevent situations in which people can remain anonymous. CCTV camera are being used increasingly to monitor people’s behaviour is shopping centres and car parks. Psychologists would agree that being able to identify individuals in a crowd would help reduce antisocial behaviour. If people know they can be identified, they are less likely to engage in aggressive behavior, theft or vandalism.
