Social Influence

Question 0

Two assumptions of social influence

Answer 0

• Behaviour is influenced by the situation by other individuals and by group
• Behaviour is influenced by culture and by society

Question 1

What is social facilitation?

Answer 1

Social facilitation is the tendency for people to perform better on task in the presence of other than when alone

Question 2

What is conformity?

Answer 2

Yielding to group pressure

Question 3

What happened in the sherif study?

Answer 3

Aim was to investigate whether people would be influenced by others in the situation where the answer is not clear

Question 4

What happened in the Asch study?

Answer 4

Aim: To find out if people will conform to the group when there is a distinct right and wrong answer, with the rest of the group giving the wrong answer.

Method:

• Using groups of between 6 and 9 people
• Only one true (naïve) participant
• Rest were confederates, told by Asch to give the same incorrect answer
• Told them they were doing a visual perception test, gave them a test line and 3 match lines, one of which matched to the test line
• Participants asked which one matched
• Confederates all gave the same wrong answer, naïve participant asked last

Results:

• 75% conformed at least once
• Mean conformity rate was 32%
• In a control group with no confederates, almost no one gave a wrong answer

Conclusion:

• People will conform, even when this means going against the evidence of their own eyes, in order to not appear different. COMPLIANCE OCCURRED.

Question 5

Asch study evaluation

Answer 5

Methodological weaknesses:

• Low ecological validity
• Sampling – he only tested white young American males, cannot generalise
• Dated research – tested in 1950s, when people in America were afraid of speaking out.

Ethical weaknesses:

• Deception
• No informed consent
• Protection from (mental) harm

Question 6

Why do people conform? Two types of social influence:

Answer 6

Informational social influence - when we conform because we don’t know the answer or how to react

Normative social influence - occurs when people conform because of the very powerful need for social approval and acceptance

Question 7

Two types of conformity:

Answer 7

Compliance - publicly going along with the group opinion but privately disagreeing and maintaining our own belief

Internalisation - going along with the group opinion both privately and publicly

Question 8

Factors affecting conformity

Answer 8

• Size of the group
• Task difficulty
• Providing support for the subject
• Introducing privacy

Question 9

Other factors affecting conformity:

Answer 9

Crutchfield suggested that: personality characteristics associated with high levels of conformity including:

• low self-esteem
• low intelligence
• high levels of anxiety
• need for a social approval

Question 10

What is obedience?

Answer 10

A type of social influence where someone acts in response to be direct direct order from an authority

Question 11

Situational factors affecting obedience to authority

Answer 11

• Location
• Approximately to the victim
• Approximately of authority figure
• Social support
• A peer administers the shock

Question 12

What is agentic state?

Answer 12

Lacking a sense of personal responsibility and feeling under the control of an authority figure

Question 13

What is autonomous state?

Answer 13

Taking control of the behaviour; feeling responsible for and aware of the consequences of the behaviour

Question 14

Characteristics of authoritarian personality

Answer 14

• Hostility to people perceived to be a lower status
• respect of people perceived to be of higher status
• a preoccupation with power
• blind respect for authority

Question 15

Personality explanation of obedience

Answer 15

People with this type of personality are likely to show prejudice to a range of others and obey authority to punish or harm these people more easily than others with non-authoritarian personalities

Parents of the authoritarian group tended to be overstrict and highly punitive they also have unrealistically high expectation of the children

Fear of parents - excessively respectful of authority figures
Hatred of parents - hate and anger displaced onto others

Question 16

Factors affecting defines of authority

Answer 16

• Social support
• role models
• personal experiences including education
• questioning motives
• loss of freedom

Question 17

What is social inhibition?

Answer 17

The tendency for people to perform less well in the presence of others than when alone

Question 18

What is dominant response?

Answer 18

The response which is most likely to be given in a situation, that is the most usual appropriate or best practice

Question 19

Arousal theory

Answer 19

• According to the zajonc, the presence of others and lead to an increase in office physiological arousal
• this is an evolved response
• this increase in arousal is a drive that brings out our domiant response

If you are good at a task and then performance improves and we see social facilitation

If you are poor at the task and then performance worsen and we see social inhibition

Question 20

Evaluation of arousal theory

Answer 20

• The theory does not explain why competitive people sometimes perform poorly with an audience
• yerkes-dodson law explains that a certain amount of arousal or stress increases performance up to point then can decreases rapidly
• Zajonc’s theory does not acknowledge cognitive processes, for example what the audience means to the person
• Also to some people the thought of being evaluated is an important factor

Question 21

Evaluation apprehension theory

Answer 21

• It is not the mere presence of others that causes arousal but the fear of being judged or evaluated by them
• People associated the presence of others with evaluation of their performance on a task
• The fear of evaluation increases our arousal and brings out the dominant response

Question 22

Evaluation of evaluation apprehension theory

Answer 22

• It does not explain why animals socially facilitate - who presumably do not experience evaluation apprehension
• evaluation apprehension maybe one cause of arousal but it may not be the only factor
• for the support from cottrell who blindfolded the audience and found no social facilitation on well learned to tasks

Question 23

Distraction conflict theory

Answer 23

Suggests that others have an arousing effect because they are the source of distraction whether they are evaluating us or not

The presence of others put people into the state of attentional conflict over whether to attend to a task or two others

• Distraction leads to a negative effect on task performance regardless of whether the task is simple or complex because one is less able to come to concentrate on the task
• The attentional conflict increase arousal which leads to the dominant response

Question 24

Evaluation of distraction conflict theory

Answer 24

• Good application - it can be applied to a wide range of different distractions
• this theory can explain social facilitation seen in animal studies

Question 25

Evaluation of all research on social facilitation

Answer 25

• Audiences in experiments tend to be passive and simply observe someone performing a task. Real audience are often noisy and judge behaviour
• research has largely ignored personality differences between individuals
• task given to people are often artificial and hence the lack ecological validity

Question 26

Milgram study

Answer 26

Aim: To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure

Method:

• Experiment required out on 20-50 year old white men who responded to an advert Milgram put in the newspaper.
• Told to come to Yale University where they met a tall male experimenter in a white lab coat.
• Told that they were doing an experiment looking at the effects of punishment on behaviour.
• Had to perform some task to decide who would be the learner and who would be the teacher
• This was rigged, “teacher” was the naïve participant and “learner” was a confederate of Milgram.
• Task was to give an electric shock to the “learner” when they made a mistake in identifying word pairs. Shocks were given using a piece of equipment with 30 switches, from 15V – 450V (marked XXX on the machine)
• Shocks were faked.

Results:

• The “learner” purposely made many mistakes
• When the participants became distressed at having to administer shocks, they were told by Milgram to continue.
• 65% gave shocks to 450V. (Deadly)

Conclusion:

• People will obey an authority figure; even if they believe what they are doing is wrong.