Social Influence Flashcards
What is informational social influence?
Informational social influence is when the beliefs/behaviour of the majority is accepted by an individual. These individuals follow the majority because they assume that the beliefs of the majority is the right thing to do. This type of influence tends to involve internalisation.
What is conformity?
Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change of belief and/or behaviour in order to fit in with a majority influence.
What is normative social influence?
Normative social influence is when an individual accepts the behaviour of the majority in order to be accepted into the group. These individuals may publicly change their behaviour/views but privately disagree. This type of influence tends to involve compliance.
What is internalisation?
Internalisation is when a belief and/or behaviour of a majority is accepted by an individual leading to a change in their belief. Unlike compliance, internalisation is a permanent form of conformity and persists even when the individual is not in the presence of the majority.
What is compliance?
Compliance is a change in behaviour in the presence of a majority. However unlike internalisation, compliance is a temporary form of conformity as though the individual may not agree with the beliefs they change their behaviour publicly. Resorting to their normal behaviour when the majority is not present.
Outline Asch’s study
Procedure
Asch recruited 123 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA to participate in a ‘vision test.’ They were divided into groups of 5 to 7 people in which, unknown to the participants, all but one of them were confederates of Asch and followed his instructions. In other words each group consisted of 4 to 6 confederates and 1 naive participant.
Each group was shown a set of 3 lines and a separate reference line, and group members had the task of simply stating which line was the same length as the reference line. Each set of lines consisted of one line that was obviously the same length as the reference line, and two that were obviously different. Group members gave their answer one after the other, and the real participant gave his answer in next to last place. Each group performed the task 18 times (18 trials). On the first 2 trials the confederates answered correctly, but for 12 of the remaining 16 trials they answered incorrectly. These 12 trials were the ‘critical trials’ in the experiment.
Results
The results of Asch’s experiment were astonishing considering that the stimuli used consisted of unambiguous lines in which participants must have know the correct answer.
Participants conformed to the obviously incorrect answer given by the group majority on 32% of critical trials.
74% of participants conformed to the incorrect group majority at least once.
Only 25% of participants did not conform at all.
What are the factors affecting conformity?
Size of the majority: When the group size was reduced to just two (one confederate) there was almost zero conformity. A majority of two confederates yielded a small degree of conformity, and groups with three or more confederates produced the highest rates of conformity. This shows that groups with a majority of three or more people are sufficient to cause conformity even when the correct answer is obvious.
Unanimity of the majority: Asch repeated the initial experiment but this time he instructed one of the confederates (usually the 3rd or 4th to answer) to go against the majority and give the correct answer. In this situation conformity rates dropped and the real participant was less likely to conform to the obviously incorrect answer. The presence of another group member going against the majority opinion (a dissenter) lends social support, and other group members are less likely to feel alone and are more likely to stick to their own opinion. However, when the dissenting confederate wore glasses the reduction in conformity was less noticeable, perhaps because the opinion of a group member with eyesight difficulties was less valid in a task that required a visual judgement to be made.
Nature of the task: When the task was made more difficult (by making all three lines more similar to the reference line) then conformity rates increased. This shows that when a task is more difficult, individuals are more likely to refer to the majority opinion and so conformity is more likely.
Evaluate Asch’s study
Population validity:
The participants were all young male students from the same American university. This meant the results were not generalisable outside of the population sampled and did not apply to anyone other than male American college students.
Perrin & Spencer: To further investigate the criticism that conformity in the Asch line experiment was due to the socio-political context of 1950s America, and therefore a ‘child to its time’, Perrin repeated the experiment with British university students on science and mathematics courses, and found far lower rates of conformity than those reported by Asch.
Ecological validity:
Judging the length of lines is not really an everyday task that people regularly participate in.
Ethical considerations:
Participants were deceived into believing they were taking part in a ‘vision test’ and were not informed that it was a study of conformity. Not gaining informed consent is a breach of ethical guidelines, however very different results would have been produced had participants known the true nature of the study and so it could be argued that deception was necessary.
What is obedience?
Obedience is a more direct form of social influence where the individual has more pressure to change their behaviour than in conformity.
Outline and Evaluate Milgrams Study
Researcher:Milgram
Aim: To investigate how obedient participants would be in a situation where following orders would mean breaking participants moral code and harming another person.
Procedure
1)Milgram advertised for 40 male volunteers to take part in a memory experiment for a fee at Yale university.
2) The participants were told they would either play the role of the teacher or the learner though in actuality it was fixed by Milgram to guarantee that the volunteer was the teacher.
3) The participants were then introduced to a confederate who went by the name of Mr Wallace who always eventually played the role of the learner in the experiment.
4) As Mr Wallace was being strapped to a chair he would tell the participant that he had heart problems before being asked to complete a memory task.
5)For every mistake Mr Wallace had made, Milgram ordered the participants to give him an electric shock going up by 15 volts every time he made an error.
6) The shock levels were labelled from 0 to 450 with written indication on the level of intensity that the voltage was to inflict if real, ending at 450 with the letters XXX to represent death even though the human limit is 225.
7)Every time Mr Wallace was “shocked” he would scream and shout at the increasing shocks before eventually going silent.
8)When participants would protest they were met with Milgram repeating the line “the experiment requires that you continue”
Findings
- All participants gave Mr Wallace at least 300 volts
- 62.5% went to 450 volts evidently killing Mr Wallace had the shocks not been an act
- Most of the participants protested and some wept and begged in distress, however they felt they couldn’t stop when ordered to continue
- The minority of participants who defied Milgram showed signs of stress as they agonised over their decision; however, this disappeared once they made their decision to obey.
Conclusion
- The power of authority on our behaviour is much higher than what we would imagine.
- The participants although very stressed by the situation, felt they had no choice but to obey.
Variations
1)Proximity of Victim
Result=40%
Outline: In the original study, the teacher and learner were seated in separate rooms. But in this variation they were seated in the same room. The obedience level dropped to 40%. This was because the teacher could experience the pain being inflicted on the learner directly.
2)Presence of Allies
Result=10%
Outline: In this variation there were three participants (1 real and two confederates) who were asked to share the task. When the two confederate participants refused to carry on, almost all real participants also withdrew. Only 10% gave the maximum shock level. They used the judgement of their peers as a reason for not causing any further harm to the victim.
3)Increasing the discretion
Result=2.5%
Outline:In this variation the teacher was given the choice of shock level they could administrate to mr Wallace. Only 1 of the 40 participants, gave the maximum shock of 450. Most refused to give a shock which caused the learner to give a shock which caused the learner or ‘Mr Wallace’ to protest again averaging 82.5 volts.
Evaluation
Experimental Validity
-The extent to which the participants believed in the reality of the situation
-By allowing the participants to meet the leaner and to experience a 45V shock, Milgram tried to ensure that his procedure was believable. Since the participants displayed signs of distress and reported that they thought the final shocks would have been extremely painful, Milgram argued that they had believed in the experimental situation.
Results= High experimental validity
Ecological Validity
-Whether the findings in the study can be applied to real life situations
-Milgram conducted his laboratory experiment at Yale University; although this allowed for control of variables, it was not necessarily informative about how obedience occurs in real life. Other researchers e.g. Hoffling et al have found obedience occurs in the workplace when he looked at how far nurses would obey.
Results= Low Ecological Validity
Ethics:Protection from harm
-Participants should not be made to experience anything that wouldn’t normally be encountered in their everyday lives
-Milgram defended his study by saying that he couldn’t have foreseen the severity of stress experienced, and was relieved that results from the follow up study indicated that participants had not suffered any long term harm.
Result= 84% reported that they were in fact glad that they partook in the experiment, with only 1.3% saying they were very sorry for participating.
Brownie points research
Researcher: Hoffling et al
Outline: Hoffling investigated obedience in a hospital. Nurses were telephoned by a ‘Dr Smith’ and asked to give 20mg of a fictional drug to patients. This order contravened hospital regulations as nurses were not allowed to take orders over the phone, nor from an unknown doctor. Also, the dosage was twice that of what was advised on the bottle. 21 out of 22 of nurses carried out the order.
When asked afterwards why they had obeyed, they said in their defence that it is a nurses job to obey a doctor.
Evaluation
However rank and Jacobson replicated this experiment this time using a real drug, and the nurses were allowed to consult with their peers. This time 16 out of 18 refused.
Explanations of obedience
Explanations if obedience
Gradual commitment
Definition:
People are less likely to change their minds because they have already committed themselves
Evidence
Milgrams experiments showed that as participants have already given lower-level shocks, it becomes hard to resist the experimenters requirements to increase the shocks as the experiment continued. Though participants were given shtick levels that never increases more than 15V from the previous level, they showed signs of commitment to the particular course of action.
Elaborate:
Milgrams test supported the idea that gradual commitment to an event lead to further obedience as participants complied to smaller tasks increasing their commitment to comply to a larger task.
Justify obedience
Definition:
People are more likely to obey orders if they feel that they are doing it for a good cause or the reason is important
Evidence
In Milgrams study, the participants were initially told they were delivering electric shocks because they wanted to investigate if people could learn through reward and punishment. It was in the name of science. The participants who were less likely to obey were told to take orders because the experiment requires it
Elaborate
Milgrams evidence supports the idea that individuals will only obey if they believe the reason for doing it is for the/a purpose, such as for science
Evaluation
Goldhagen:
Outline: Anti-semitism was the main motivation in the Holocaust, not obedience. This was countless and unnecessary cruelty. There is so major difference between Milgrams participants and the Holocaust guards. The perpetrators of the holocaust carried out duties over months and years and knew they were going to cause physical harm/death. The participants in Milgrams study were obeying for half an hour and were told that no permanent damage would be caused. Therefore, Milgrams explanations cannot be applied to all real life situations of obedience.
Resisting pressures to conform
Resisting pressures to conform
- Giving Answers in private could increase independent behaviour because the person may feel that no-one is present to disagree with the statement.
- Non-conforming role model/inconsistent majority can lead to an increase in independence because the person is provided with an upbringing surrounded by others with different views.
- Size of group can lead to an increase in independent behaviour because of a lack in people to disagree, if the size is small compared to one that is large.(Asch) 3 or above will lead to conformity beginning to show
- Percieved efficacy in capability to do the task can lead to an increase in independent behaviour because the person is more confident in their field of work.
Evaluation
1) More independent behaviour for moral judgement rather than physical ones e.g. If a person integrity is compromised through having to conform then he will see less conformity(Hornsey 2003)
2) Despite this, most research into conformity involves physical judgements e.g line length. This would imply that this research lacks ecological validity as it doesn’t reflect actual ‘conforming behaviour’
Resisting pressures to obey
Resisting pressures to obey
- Disobedient allies can lead to an increase in independent behaviour by providing an ally that disagrees with the command, the person is more likely to do the same due to conformity levels dropping. (Rank+Jacobson)
- Proximity of the victim could lead to an increase in independent behaviour as the person is more inclined to disobey if they see the person.
- Questioning the status of the person giving the order could lead to an increase in independent behaviour as self efficacy takes effect and the person is more confident in the actions they are committing. (Rank+Jacobson)
- Proximity of the authority figure meant that the further the authoritative figure was from the person the likely increase in independent behaviour.
Evaluation
1) Kohlberg suggested that some people maybe more willing to disobey depending on their stage of moral development.
2) If the reason behind their actions was based on general moral principles e.g harming someone is wrong, then they are less likely to obey.
3) If they have not reached this stage of development/restricted development, then they will obey.
What is locus of control?
Locus of control refers to a persons perception of personal control over their own behaviour. Measured on a scale of high internal to high external.
What is Internal LOC?
An individual who believes their life is determined by their own decisions and efforts
