Social influence Flashcards
Describe compliance.
A form of conformity. When people go along with the majority in order to gain acceptance or approval. It is public acceptance and private disagreement.
Describe internalisation.
A form of conformity. Individuals go along with the group because it fits with their own individual belief system(you interniase it) .This is both public and private acceptance. I.E becoming vegetarian because your friends are and because you believe it.
Describe identification.
A form of conformity. People all wearing/ doing the same thing. They may all be completely different but have one thing in common. It is to be associated with a group. I.E Wearing a football shirt to be identified with your team.
Explain informational social influence (ISI)
This stems from a human need to be right. You seek information about what is the right thing to do from people you deem to be “experts”. It is most likely to happen if the situation is new or if the answer is ambiguous.
Explain normative social influence (NSI)
Going along with the groups position - regardless of beliefs (however it is mostly compliance). Stems from a human need for companionship - laying the basis for NSI as to gain acceptance and not rejection. Only occurs when people believe the group is watching them.
Give research for normative influence
Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) found that if teenagers where told most of their peers did not smoke, then they were less likely to smoke.
Give research for informational influence
Winttenbrink and Henley (1996) found that if participants were given information about black people (that they believed was the opinion of the majority) they were more likely to report a negative opinion of a black individual.
Describe Asch’s Study
Procedure: participants had to identify lines of the same length along with 6-8 confederates. this was in 12 out of 16 critical trials.
Findings: 37% mistakenly conformed to the majority and 25% never conformed.
Factors affecting conformity:
Group size: Conformity increased to 32% if there were more than three confederates
Dissenter: Conformity decreased if there was a dissenter
Task difficulty: As the task got harder, so did confomity
Evaluate Asch’s study
Child of its time: Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s study and only got 1 conforming result out of 396 trials. This could be because in the 60’s america was gripped by McCarthyism (strong hatred of communism) where not conforming could be dangerous.
Artificial situation: Some participants may have shown demand characteristics. The groups weren’t social groups but groups that Asch had decided himself, furthermore the task was artificial and so there was no need not to conform.
Only applies to certain groups:
Asch only tested men however Neto (1955) suggested that women may be more conformist; because they are more concerned about social relationships (and acceptance). Furthermore the USA is a more individualist culture (people are more concerned about themselves). Smith and Bond (1998) suggested that conformity rates are higher in collectivist cultures which are more concerned with the group. This suggests that conformity levels are sometimes higher than Asch found; his findings are also only limited to american men (generalisation issues).
Describe the Stanford prison experiment (procedure)
Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford university. volunteer student’s from the university were interviewed and those deemed emotionally stable were randomly assigned the role of either prisoner or guard. Those who were assigned prisoner were then “arrested”, taken to the prison, blindfolded and assigned a number and uniform.
The prisoners had 16 rules they had to follow which where enforced by the guards who worked in shifts of 3. The prisoners numbers where always used - never their names. guards wore uniforms and had complete control over the prisoners, including when they were allowed to use the toilets. The guards had no rules as to what they could and couldn’t do.
Evaluate the SPE
Guard behaviour: Zimbardo believed that the guards blindly conformed to their social roles however this is not true. Some where truly sadistic whereas some were seen as “good guards” and even did favours for prisoners. This shows that guards chose how to behave not blindly conformed.
Demand characteristics: Some researchers have argued that the results were not due to “the compelling prison environment” but because of powerful demand characteristics. They argue that participants predicated what Zimbardo wanted to see and so responded appropriate. I.E Prisoners were passive and guards aggressive.
Ethical issues: It was considered ethical because there was no deception and the Stanford ethics committee approved it. Zimbardo does however admit that the study had ethical issues because participants truly believed they were their roles. He carried out debriefing sessions for years afterwards and concluded that there were no lasting impacts.
Describe the 6 processes of minority influence in SI
1) Drawing attention - in 1950’s america there was segregation of white and black people. The civil rights marches drew attention to this.
2) Consistency - there where many marches with lots of people taking part - they were consistent with their message.
3) Deeper processing - people who had formerly accepted the status quo began to now think about what was happening.
4) The augmentation principle. If a minority seems willing to suffer for their views then a majority will take them more seriously. In the 1950s - black freedom riders rode the buses in the south to highlight that black people still had to sit separately - this was very dangerous.
5) The snowball effect. As people slowly join the movement it grows an eventually the minority becomes the majority.
Evaluate ISI
Research Support:
Lucas et al (2006) asked students to answer maths problems. When the maths problems were difficult there was more conformity to the answers - this was also the case when people rated their maths ability as poor. This shows that when we feel we do not know the answers then we are more willing to assume they are right.
Individual differences:
Asch (1955) found that 28% of the students conformed; whereas there was a 37% conformity rate for other participants. Perrin and Spencer (1980) also found less conformity in engineering students - so confident about precision). This shows individual differences as people who are knowledgeable/more confident are less influenced by the majority.
Evaluate NSI
Research Support:
Asch (1951) asked participants to explain whether they agreed with the wrong answer. Some said that they felt self-conscious giving the right answer and were afraid of disapproval. furthermore when participants were asked to write down their answers conformity fell to 12.5%. this supports the view that participants conformed because of NSI and not ISI.
Individual differences:
People who care more about being liked are called nAffiliators and are more likely to be affected by NSI. McGhee and Teevan found that students who were nAffiliators were more likely to conform. This desire to be liked underlies conformity and is more prominent in some people. One general theory therefore does not cover all the differences.
Explain the procedure for the Authoritarian personality.
Adorno et al (1950) came up with several scale which measured american attitudes to other racial groups. The most famous of these is the F-Scale which measured different components of the Authoritarian personality. These scales were used on 2000 middle class Americans.
