Social Influence

Question 1

What are the 3 types of conformity?

Answer 1

• compliance
• internalisation
• identification

Question 2

What is compliance?

Answer 2

• individuals may go along with the group with in order to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval
• when exposed to the views/actions of the majority, individuals may engage in a process of social comparison, concentrating on what others say or do so they can adjust their own actions to fit in with them
• fitting in is seen as desirable so this is what motivates conformity
  •compliance does not result in any change in the persons underlying attitude only in the views and behaviours they express in public

Question 3

What are the characteristics of internalisation?

Answer 3

• individuals may go along with the group because of an acceptance of their views
• when exposed to the views of other members of a group individuals are encouraged to engage in a validation process, examining their own beliefs to see if they or the others are right
• close examination of the groups position may convince the individual that they are wrong and the group is right
• this is particularly likely if generally trustworthy in their views and the individual has tended to go along with them on previous occasions
  • this can lead to acceptance of the groups point of view both publicly and privately

Question 4

What is identification?

Answer 4

• in some instances an individual might accept influence because they want to be associated with another person or group.
• By adopting the groups attitudes and behaviours, they feel apart of it
• identification has elements of both compliance and internalisation, as the individual accepts the attitudes and behaviours they are adopting as right and true (internalisation) but the purpose of adopting them is to be accepted as a member of the group (compliance)
  • for example a child may be start smoking because ‘that’s what the cool kids do’ and they want to be seen as a ‘cool kid’

Question 5

What are the differences between the types of conformity?

Answer 5

• Each of these types of conformity has a particular set of motivating conditions that leads to a conforming response
• for example if an individuals prime motivation is to fit in with the rest of the group they may not comply rather than internalise the groups position on a particular issue
• alternatively, if the primary motivation is to find the most appropriate way of responding in a particular situation, then internalising the group position may be seen as the most credible way of achieving this

Question 6

Explanations for conformity: Normative social influence

Answer 6

• it is possible go along with the majority without really accepting their point of view
• as humans are a social species they have a fundamental need for social companionship and a fear of censure and rejection
• an important condition is that the individual must believe that they are under surveillance by the group
• people tend to conform to the majority position in public but necessarily internalise this view as it not carry on in private settings
  • to gain approval and acceptance, to avoid censure and disapproval

Question 7

Evaluation: types of conformity (Difficulties in distinguishing between compliance and internalisation)

Answer 7

• The relationship between compliance and internalisation is complicated by our measurement of private acceptance and public compliance
• For example, it is assumed that a person who publicly agrees with a majority yet disagrees with them privately is displaying compliance
• It is possible that the acceptance of the groups views dissipates when in private either because they have forgotten information given by the group or they have received information
• It is assumed that a person who agrees with the group both in public and private must have internalised the views of the group
• It is difficult to distinguish between mere public compliance
  ~ As a result of self-perception they come to subsequently accept that position as their own

Question 8

Evaluation: Explanations of conformity ( Research support for normative influence)

Answer 8

• US research has shown the relationship between peoples normative beliefs and the likelihood of them taking up smoking
• Linkenbach and Perkins found that adolescents exposed to the simple message that the majority of their peers did not smoke were subsequently less likely to take up smoking
  -Normative social influence has also been used to successfully manipulate people to behave more responsibly when it comes to energy conservation
• For example , Shultz found that hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of the guests reused their towels each day (rather than requiring fresh towels)
  -They reduced their own towel use to 25%
  ~ These studies support the idea of NSI (peoples behaviour is shaped out of a desire to fit in with a particular group)

Question 9

Evaluation: Explanations of conformity (Support for informational social influence

Answer 9

• Some studies have demonstrated how exposure to other peoples beliefs influence on social stereotypes
  -Witterbrink and Henley found that participants exposed to negative information about African Americans (they were led to believe that was the view of the majority)
• later reported more negative beliefs about black individual
• Research has also shown how ISI can shape political opinion
• Fein demonstrated how judgements of candidate performance in the US presidential debates could be influenced by the reaction of others
• Participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of other participants on screen during the debate
  ~ This produced large shifts in participants judgements of the candidates performance

Question 10

Evaluation: Explanations of conformity (normative influence may not be detected)

Answer 10

• Researchers have started to speculate whether individuals do actually recognise the behaviour of others as a casual factor in their own behaviour
• There is some support for this claim-> Nolan investigated whether people detected the influence of social norms on their energy conservation behaviour
• when asked about what factors had influenced their own energy conservation, people believed that the behaviour of neighbours had the least impact on their own energy conservation yet results showed that it had the strongest impact
• this suggests that people rely on beliefs about what should motivate their behaviour and so find it difficult to detect the impact of NSI

Question 11

Evaluation: explanations of conformity (Informational social influence is moderated by type of task)

Answer 11

• A problem for the informational explanation of conformity is that features of the task moderate the impact of the majority influence
• For some judgements there are clear non-social criteria for validation, which places this sort of judgement within the realm of physical reality
• For example deciding whether Bristol is the most highly populated city in South West of England can be determined through objective means such as consulting statistics, census records etc.
• However other judgements e.g whether Bristol is the most interesting city in the South West of England cannot be determined using objective criteria because such does not exist
• instead these kinds of judgements must be made on the basic of social consensus (ie what other people/experts believe to be the case)
  ~ As a result, majorities should exert greater influence on issues of social rather than physical reality and this is precisely what research tends to show

Question 12

Much of our understanding of conformity can be traced back to the pioneering work of…

Answer 12

Solomon Asch in the 1950’s

Question 13

What did Asch show?

Answer 13

-People appeared willing to go against the compelling evidence of their senses in order to conform to a group consensus

Question 14

Describe the key study: Asch 1956

Answer 14

• Asch asked volunteers to take part in a visual discrimination task
• although, unbeknown all but one of the participants were really confederates of the investigator
• the real purpose of the study was to see how the lone ‘real’ participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates

Question 15

Procedure: Asch experiment

Answer 15

• In total 123 male US undergraduates were tested
• participants were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths
• they took turns to call out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as a ‘standard’ line
• the real participant always answering second to last
• although there was always a fairly obvious solution to this task 12 of the 18 trials (i.e. the critical trials) the confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer
• Asch investigated the influence of the group especially and whether the participants would side with the majority or if they would be willing to stand alone

Question 16

Findings: Asch experiment

Answer 16

• On the 12 critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33% (participants agreed with the incorrect answer given on one third of the trials)
• Asch also discovered individual differences in conformity rates
• one quarter of the participants never conformed on any of the critical trials
• half conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials
• 1 in 20 conformed on all 12 trials

Question 17

Findings: Asch experiment

What did Asch do to confirm that the stimulus lines were indeed unambiguous?

Answer 17

• Asch conducted a control condition without the distraction of the confederates giving wrong answers
• in this condition he found that participants made mistakes about 1% of the time, although this could not explain the relatively high levels of conformity in the main study
• when Asch interviewed his participants afterwards, he discovered that the majority of participants who conformed had continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements but changed their public behaviour, giving incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from other group members (i.e. they showed compliance)

Question 18

Variables affecting Conformity

Answer 18

Asch carried out a number of variations of his original study to find out which variable had the most significant effects on the level of conformity shown by participants

Question 19

What effect does group size have on conformity?

Answer 19

• Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates
• however under the pressure of a majority of 3 confederates, the proportion of conforming responses jumped up to about 30%
• Further increases in the size of the majority did not increase this level of conformity substantially, indicating that the size of the majority is important but only up to a point
• Campbell and Fairey suggested that group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgement being made and the motivation of the individual
• where there is no objectively correct answer and the individual is concerned about ‘fitting in’ then the larger the majority the more likely they are to be swayed
• however, when there is a correct response and the individual is concerned about being correct then the views of just one or two others will be will usually be sufficient

Question 20

What effect does the unanimity of the majority have on conformity?

Answer 20

• In Asch’s original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer
• what would happen if this unanimity was disturbed?
• when the real participant was given the support of either another real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing the percentage of wrong answers from 33% to just 5.5 %
• What would happen if the lone ‘dissenter’ gave an answer that was both different from the majority and different from the true answer?
• in this condition conformity rates dropped to about 9% (similar to when the dissenter gave the same right answer)
  • This lead Asch to conclude that it was breaking the groups unanimous position that was the major factor in conformity reduction

Question 21

What effect did the difficulty of the task have on conformity?

Answer 21

• in one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller (correct answer less obvious)
• under these circumstances the level of conformity increased
• Lucas (2006) investigated this relationship further
• they found that the influence of task difficult is moderated by self the efficacy of the individual
• when exposed to math problems, participants who were more confident in their abilities remained more independent
• this showed that both task difficulty as well as individual differences are both important in determining conformity

Question 22

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (Asch’ research is a child of its time)

Answer 22

• The research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was high
• In 1956, the US was in a strong anti-communist period where people were scared to go against the majority and so more likely to conform
• Perrin and Spencer attempted to repeat Achs’s study in the UK in the 1980’s using students who were studying science and engineering. In their initial study they obtained only one conforming response out of a total of 396 trials where a majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
• In a subsequent study, they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as they confederates.
• This time they found similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch in the 1950’s
• This confirmed that conformity is more likely of the perceived costs of not conforming are high (Perrin and Spencer, 1980) which would have been the case during the McCarthy era in the US

Question 23

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (problems determining the effect of group size)

Answer 23

• bond (2005) suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have used only a limited range of major sizes
• investigators were quick to accept Asch’s conclusions that a majority size of 3 was a sufficient number for maximal influence therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used 3 as the majority size
• bond points out that no studies other Asch have used majority size greater than 9 and in other studies of conformity the range of majority sizes used is much narrower, typically between 2 and 4
• this suggests Bond means we know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels

Question 24

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (independent behaviour rather than conformity)

Answer 24

• we should remember that only about one third of the trials where the majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer produced a conforming response
• in other words, in two thirds of these trials the participants resolutely stuck to their original judgement despite being faced with an overwhelming majority expressing totally different view
• Asch believed that rather than showing human beings to be overly conformist, his study demonstrated a commendable tendency for participants to stick to what they believed to be the correct judgement i.e to show independent behaviour

Question 25

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (unconvincing confederates)

Answer 25

• A problem for the confederates in Asch’s study is that it would have been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer l, something that would pose serious problems for the validity of the conclusions
• however, Mori and Arai overcame the confederate problem by using a technique where participants wore glasses with special polar Idk filters
• three partixipants in each group wore identical glasses and a fourth wore a different set with a different t filter
• this means that participant views the same stimuli but one participants saw them differently
• this had the effect of causing them to judge that a different comparison line matched the standard lime
• for female participantsz the results closely matched those of the original Asch study, although not the male participants
• this suggests the original study had acted convincingly

Question 26

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (cultural differences in conformity )

Answer 26

• Research suggests that there are important cultural differences in conformity and we might therefore expect different results dependent on the culture in which the study takes place
• Smith analysed the results of Asch type studies across a number of different cultures
• The average conformity rate across the different cultures was 31.2%
• What was interesting was that the average conformity rate for individualist cultures (e.g Europe and the US)
• Whereas for collectivist cultures in Africa, Asia and South America it was much higher at 37%
• Markus and Kitayama suggest that a higher level of conformity arises in collectivist cultures because it is viiwed more favourably
• A ‘social glue’ that binds communities together

Question 27

Stanford prison experiment: Procedure

Answer 27

• A mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford university in Cali
• Male student volunteers were psychologically and physically screened and the 24 most stable were randomly assigned to either the role of ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’
• The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’ they were put through delousing procedures given a uniform and ID number
• The guards referred to the prisoners only by these numbers throughout the study
• Prisoners were allowed certain rights, including 3 meals and 3 unsupervised toilet trips a day and two visits per week
• Participants who were allocated the role of the guard were given uniforms, clubs, whistles and wore reflective sunglasses (to prevent eye contact)
• Zimbado was not only the researcher but he decided to take on the role of superintendent
• The study was planed to last 2 weeks

Question 28

Stanford prison experiment: Findings

Answer 28

• Over the first few days the guards grew increasingly tyrannical and abusive towards the prisoners
• They woke prisoners in the night and forced them to clean the toilets with their bare hands and made them carry out other degrading activities
• Some guards were so enthusiastic about their role that they volunteered to do extra hours without pay
• The participants appeared to at times to forget that this was merely a study and that they were just acting (temporary identify shifts/ loss)
• Even when unaware of being watched, they still conformed to their role of guard or prisoner
• When one prisoner had had enough they asked for ‘parole’ rather than asking to leave the study
• 5 prisoners had to be released early because of their extreme reactions (crying, rage and acute anxiety) symptoms that started to appear after 2 days
• The study was terminated after 6 days, following the intervention of postgraduate student Christina Maslach who reminded the researchers that this was a psychological study and, as such, did not justify the abuse being meted out to the particpants
  ~ The guards demonstrated that both guards become increasingly cruel and sadistic and the prisoners become increasingly passive and accepting of their plight

Question 29

BBC prison study: Procedure

Answer 29

• Assigned men to the role of guard or prisoner and examined their behaviour within a specially created prison
• 15 male participants were divided into 5 groups of 3 people who were as closely matched as possible on key variables, and the other two variables, and from each group of 3, one person was randomly chosen to be a guard and the other two prisoners
• The study was run for 8 days

Question 30

BBC prison study: Findings

Answer 30

• The key finding in this study was that participants did not conform automatically to their assigned role as had happened in SPE
• Over the course of the study, the prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the authority of the guards and establish a more egalitarian set of social relations within the prison
• The guards also failed to identify with their role which made them reluctant to impose their authority on the prisoners
• This lead to a shift of power and the collapse of the prisoner-guard system

Question 31

Evaluation: conformity to social roles (The problem of demand characteristics).

Answer 31

• Zimbado believed that the guards’ drift into sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role, which is in turn suppressed by their ability to engage with the fact that what they were doing was wrong
• However in SPE, guard behaviour varied from being fully sadistic to, for a few, being ‘good guards’
• These guards did not degrade or harass the prisoner sand even did small favours for them
• Halsam and Reicher argue that this shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their soical role

Question 32

Evaluation: conformity to social roles (The problem of demand characteristics)

Answer 32

• Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners was not due to their response to a ‘compelling prison environment’ but rather a very powerful response to powerful demand characteristics in the experimental situation itself
• These refer to the characteristics of study that let research participants guess what experimenters expect or want them to behave like
• Banuazizi and Movahedi presented some of the details of the SPE experimental procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study
• The vast majority of these students correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned the role of guard or prisoner would act like real prisoners and guards, and they predicted that the guards would act in a hostile, domineering way and the prisoners in a very passive way.

Question 33

Evaluation: conformity to social roles (Were these studies ethical?)

Answer 33

• Zimbardo’s study was considered ethical because it followed the guidelines of the Stanford University ethics committee had approved it
• There was, for example, no deception with all participants told in advance that many of their usual rights would be suspended
• However, Zimbardo acknowledges that perhaps the study should have stopped earlier as so many of the participants were experiencing emotional distress
• He attempted to make amends for this by carrying out debriefing several years afterwards and concluded that there were no long lasting negative effects
• Reicher and Halsam’s study used the same basic set-up at Zimbado, but took greater steps to minimise the potential harm to the participants
• Their intention was to create an environment that was harsh and testing, but not harmful

Question 34

Evaluation: conformity to social roles (the SPE and its relevance to Abu Ghraibe)

Answer 34

• Zimbado argues that the same conformity to social roles effect that was evident in the SPE was also present in Abu Ghraibe, a military prison in Iraq notorious for the torture and abuse of iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in 2003 and 2004
• Zimbado believed that the guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors such as lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority were present in SPE and Abu Ghraibe
• these, combines with an opportunity to misuse power associated with the assigned role of ‘guard’ led to prisoner abuses in both situations

Question 35

Evaluation: conformity to social roles (what did we learn from these studies)

Answer 35

• Zimbado’s conclusion from the SPE was that people depend into tyrany because they conform unthinkingly to the roles that authorities prescribe without the need for specific orders
• the brutality of the guards, he claims was a natural consequence of being allocated the role of ‘guard’ and asserting the power associated with that role
• Reicher and Halsam react the premise that group behaviour is necessarily mindless and tyrannical
• by contrast, the results of the BBC prisons study suggests that the way in which members of strong groups behave depends upon the norms and values associated with their specific social identity

Question 36

What are social roles?

Answer 36

The behaviours expected of an individual who occupies a given social position or status

Question 37

Procedure: Milgrim’s study

Answer 37

• involved 40 participants at a time over a series of conditions, each varying some aspect of the situation to calculate its effects of obedience
• participants were told it was a study about how punishment affects learning
• there were 2 experimental confederates: the experimenter and a 47-year old man who was introduced as another volunteer participant
• the two participants drew cards out of a hat to see who would get the role of ‘teacher’ and who the ‘learner’
• this was rigged so that the real participant would always get :teacher’ and the fake participant would get the ‘learner’
• the teacher was required to test the learner on his ability to remember word pairs
• every time he got one wrong the teacher had to administer increasingly strong electric shocks
• Starting at 15V up to a maximum of 45V in 15V increments
• At 300V he pounded against the wall then gave no answer to the next question
• If the teacher indicated that he did not want to go on, the experimenter had a series of ‘prods’ to repeat e.g. it is absolutely essential that you continue or ‘you have no other choice, you must go on.’

Question 38

Findings: Milgrims study

Answer 38

• before the study, Milgrim asked psychiatrists and colleagues to predict how long participants would go before refusing to continue
• Consistently these groups predicted that very few would go beyond 150V and 1 in 1000 would administer the full 450 volts
• however, contrary to these expectations, 26 of the 40 participants (40%) continued to the maximum shock level, 450V
• This was despite the shock generator being labelled ‘Danger severe shock’ at 420V and ‘XXX’ at 450
• In fact, all particpants went t0 300V with only five (12.5%) stopping there, the point at which the the learner first objected.

Question 39

Situational factors in obedience: Proximity

Answer 39

• In the proximity study, both teacher and learner were seated in the same room
• Obedience levels fell to 40% as the teacher was required to force the learners hand onto a shock plate
• In more extreme variation the teacher was required to force the learners hand onto a shock plate
• In this touch proximity condition condition, the obedience rate dropped even further to 30%
• Milgrim found the proximity of the authority figure also had an effect on obedience rates
• In the experimenter absent study, after giving his instructions the experimenter left the room and gave subsequent orders over the telephone
• The vast majority of participants now defied the experimenter, with only 21% continuing to the maximum shock level
• Some even went as far as repeatedly giving the weakest shock level despite telling the experimenter they were following the correct procedure

Question 40

Situational factors: Location

Answer 40

• The studies were conducted in the psychology laboratory at Yale University
• Several participants remarked that the location of the study gave them confidence in the integrity of the people involved, and many indicated that they would not have shocked the learner if this study had been carried out elsewhere
• What, then,would happen if the research were moved to a less prestigious location?
• To examine this possibility Milgrim moved his study to a run-down office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with witn no affiliations with Yale
• Obedience rates did drop slightly but not significantly, with 48% of participants delivering the 450V maximum shock

Question 41

Situational factors: The power of uniform

Answer 41

• Research has shown that uniform can have a powerful impact on obedience
• They are easily recognisable and convey power and authority, which can become symbolised in the uniform itself
• Bushman carried out a study where a female researcher, dressed either in a ‘police style’ uniform, as a business executive or as a beggar, stopped people in the street and told them to give change to a male researcher for an expired parking meter
• When she was in uniform, 72% of the people obeyed, whereas obedience rates were much lower when she was dressed as a business executive (48%) or as a beggar (52%)
• When interviewed afterwards, people, claimed they had obeyed the woman in uniform because she appeared to have authority

Question 42

Evaluation: Variables affecting obedience (Ethical issues)

Answer 42

• Milgrims study was criticised by other psychologists such as Diana Baumrid (1964) for his apparent lack of concern for the well-being of his research participants
• For example, Milgrim deceived his participants by telling them they were involved in a study on the effects of punishment on learning, rather than telling them the true purpose of the study
• This made it impossible for the participants to make an informed decision before giving their consent to in the study
• Part of giving informed consent is allowing participants the right to withdraw if at any point they change their mind about participating
• Although Milgrim claimed that participants were free to leave at any time, the ‘prods’ made it difficult for some participants who though they had no choice about continuing

Question 43

Evaluation: Variables affecting obedience (internal validity: a lack of realism)

Answer 43

• Orne and Holland claimed that participants in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know the true purpose of the study may be disguised
• In Milgrim’s study despite the fact that the learner cried out in pain, the experimenter remained cool and distant
• This led the participant to suppose that the victim could not be suffering any real harm
• Perry (2012) discovered that many of Milgrims participants had been sceptical at the time about whether or not the shocks were real
• One of Milgrims research assistants, Takeo Murata, had divided the participants into the ‘doubters’ and ‘believers’
• He found that it was the later group who were more likely to disobey the experimenter and give low intensity shocks

Question 44

Evaluation: Variables affecting obedience: (Individual differences, the influence of gender)

Answer 44

• One criticism of Milgrim’s study is that he underestimated the importance of individual differences in obedience
• A commonly held assumption is that women would be more susceptible to social influence than men (Eagly); therefore we might expect to find gender differences in obedience
• Milgrim did have one condition in which the participants were female
• Although he found that the self-reported tension in females who went to the maximum shock level was significantly higher than it was for males, their rate of obedience was exactly the same as for males in a comparable condition
• Blass studied nine other replications of Milgrims study, which also had male and female participants
• Consistent with Milgrims study, 8 out of 9 found no evidence of any gender differences in obedience

Question 45

Evaluation: Variables affecting obedience (external validity, the obedience alibi)

Answer 45

• Mandel challenges the relevance of obedience research as an explanation of real-life atrocities
• Mandel claims that Milgrims conclusions about the situational determinants of obedience are not borne out by real-life events
• On 13 July 1942, in Jozefow, Poland the men of reserve Police Battalion 101 recieved orders to carry out a mass killing of Jews
• Their commanding officer, Major Wilhelm Trapp, made an offer to his men that anyone who ‘didnt fell up to’ this duty could be assigned other duties
• Despite the presence of factors shown by Milgrim to increase defiance, only a small minority took up Trap’s offer
• The vast majority carried out their orders without protest

Question 46

Evaluation: Variables affecting obedience ( Historical validity, would the same things happen today?)

Answer 46

• We might be tempted to dismiss the relevance of Milgrims study simply because it was carried out over 50 years ago
• What would happen if the same studies were carried out today?
• Blass carried out a statistical analysis of all Milgrims obedience experiments and studies conducted by other researchers between 1961 and 1985
• By carrying out a correlation analysis relating each study’s year of publication and the amount of obedience it found, he discovered no relationship whatsoever, the later studies found no more or less obedience than the ones conducted earlier
• A more recent study found levels of obedience almost identical to those found by Milgrim some 46 years earlier
• Milgrims findings still appear to apply as much today as they did back in the earlier 1960’s

Question 47

Explain the agentic state

Answer 47

• A common way of thinking for the obedient individual is to see themselves as not being responsible for their own actions
• Instead, they attribute responsibility to someone else, particularly a figure of authority
• Milgrim referred to this process of shifting responsibility for ones actions onto someone else as ‘agenetic shift’
• Agentic shift involves moving from an autonomous state, where a person sees himself or herself as an agent for carrying out another persons wishes
• In interviews carried out at the end of Milgrims study, when obedient participants were asked were asked to administer electric shocks, a typical answer was: ‘I wouldn’t have done it by myself’
• ‘I was doing what I was told’
• The most far-reaching consequence of this appears to be that an individual responsible to the authority directing him or her but feels no responsibility for the actions that the authority dictates

Question 48

Self-image and the agentic state

Answer 48

• One explanation for why people adopt an agentic state is the need to maintain a positive self-image
• Tempted to do as requested and shock the learner, the participant may asses the consequences of this action for his or her self-image and refrain
• However, once the participant has moved into the agentic state, this evaluative concern is no longer relevant
• Because the action is no longer their responsibility, it no longer reflects their self-image
• Actions performed under the agentic are, from the participants perspective, virtually guilt-free, however inhumane they might be

Question 49

The agentic state: Binding Factors

Answer 49

• Once a person has entered the agentic state, what keeps them in it?
• In all social situations, including experiments, there is a social etiquette that plays a part in regulating our behaviour
• In order to break off the experiment, the participant must breach the commitment that he made to the experimenter
• Thus, the subject fears that if he breaks off, he will appear arrogant and rude and so such behaviour is not taken lightly
• These emotions, although they appear small in scope alongside the violence being done to the learner, nonetheless help bind the subject into obedience

Question 50

Legitimacy of authority

Answer 50

• The first condition needed for a person to shift to the agentic state is the perception of a legitimate authority i.e. someone who is perceived to be in position of social control within a situation
• Milgrim believed that there is a shared expectation among people that many situations do ordinarily have a socially controlling figure
• The power of a legitimate authority stems, therefore, not from any personal characteristics but his or her perceived position in a social position
• In Milgrams study, the participant enters the laboratory with an expectation that someone will be in charge
• The experimenter, upon first presenting himself, fills this role for them
• He does this through a few introductory remarks, and as this and the experimenter’s air of authority fits the participants expctation of encountering someone in charge, it is not challeneged

Question 51

The definition of the situation

Answer 51

• There is a tendency for people to accept definitions of a situation that are provided by a legitimate authority
• Although it is the participant himself who performs the action (i.e shocks the learner) he allows the authority figure to define its meaning
• On the one hand, the apparent suffering of the learner convinces him that he should quit, but on the other, the experimenter, a legitimate authority to whom the subject feels some commitment, orders him to continue, reassuring the participant that the learner is, in fact, fine and not in any danger

Question 52

Legitimate authority requires institution

Answer 52

• If an authority figure’s commands are of a potentially harmful or destructive form, then for them to be perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure (e.g. a university, the military
• It is clear from Milgrims study that this does not have to a particularly reputable or distinguished institution
• One variation of the study moved it from Yale University to a run-down building where the study was to be conducted by ‘Research Associates of Bridgeport.’ This was apparently a relatively unimpressive firm lacking in credentials, yet it still obtained relatively high levels of obedience
• It is possible that it is the category of institution (i.e. a scientific laboratory), rather than its relative status within that category, that causes participants to obey
• Participants may well consider

Question 53

Evaluation: Agentic state and legitimacy of authority (The agentic state explanation and real-life obedience)

Answer 53

• Milgram claimed that people shift back and forth between the autonomous state and the agentic state
• However, this idea of rapidly shifting states fails to explain the very gradual and irreversible transition that Lifton found in his study of German doctors working at Auschwitz
• Lifton found that these doctors had changed from ordinary medical professionals,concerned only with the welfare of their patients, into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on the helpless prisoners
• Staub suggests that rather than the agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many holocaust perpetrators, it is the experience of carrying out acts of evil over a long time that changes the way in which individuals think and behave

Question 54

Evaluation: Agentic state and legitimacy of authority (Agentic state or just plain cruel?)

Answer 54

• Although Milgram believed that the idea of agentic state best explained his findings, he did concede other possibilities
• One common belief among social scientists is that he had detected signs of cruelty among his participants, who had used the situation to express their sadistic impulses
• This belief was subsequently given substance by the Stanford prison experiment, carried out by Zimbardo and colleagues
• Within just a few days, the guards inflicted rapidly escalating cruelty on increasingly submissive prisoners despite the fact there was no obvious authority figure instructing them to do so
• Whatever the reason for participants behaviour, both studies clearly expose unflattering aspects of human nature

Question 55

Evaluation: Agentic state and legitimacy of authority (The legitimate authority explanation and real-life obedience )

Answer 55

• Although there are positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority (e.g. responding to a police officer during an emergency), it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as the basis for justifying the harming of others
• If people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct
• As a consequence, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, people are alarmingly willing to do so
• History is littered with examples of unquestioning obedience to authority no matter how destructive the actions that these orders called for
• This sort of extreme obedience is fostered in the course of military training and is reinforced by structure of military authority

Question 56

Evaluation: Agentic state and legitimacy of authority (The agentic state as loss of person control)

Answer 56

• Fennis and Aarts suggest that the process of agentic shift is not confined to obedience to authority, but many also extend to other forms of social influence
• They suggest that the reason for ‘agentic shift’ is a reduction in an individuals experience of personal control, i.e. where they feel ‘less in control of’ their actions
• Under such circumstances people may show an increased acceptance of external sources of control to compensate for this
• In a series of studies (both laboratory and field), Fennis and Aarts demonstrated that a reduction in personal control resulted not only in greater obedience to authority, but also in bystander apathy (i.e. the tendency to remain passive in the presence of unresponsive others when faced with an emergency), and greater compliance with behavioural requests

Question 57

Evaluation: Agentic state and legitimacy of authority (Obedience in the cockpit- a test of legitimate authority)

Answer 57

• Tarnow provided support for the power of legitimate authority through a study of aviation accidents
• He studied data from a US National Transportation safety board review of all serious aircraft accidents in the US between 1978 and 1990 where a flight voice recorder (the ‘black box’) was available, and where flight crew actions were contributing factor in the crash
• As with Milgrams study, where the participant accepts the experimenters definition of the situation, Tarnow found excessive dependence on the captains authority and expertise - one second officer claimed that, although he noticed the captain taking a particularly risky approach, he said nothing as he assumed the captain ‘must know what he’s doing’
• The NTSB report found such ‘lack of monitoring’ errors in 19 of the 37 accidents investigated

Question 58

The authoritarian personality: The F scale

Answer 58

• The identification of a specific personality type- the authoritarian personality- provided a possible explanation for why some individuals require very little pressure in order to obey
• The California F scale was used by Adorno to measure the different components that made up the authoritarian personality
• Agreeing with such items was indicative of an authoritarian personality
• Individuals with this type of personality were ridged thinkers who obeyed authority, saw the world as black & white and enforced strict adherence to social rules and hierarchies
• Adorno also found that people who scored high on the F scale tended to have been raised by parents who used an authoritarian parenting style
• Growing up within a particular social system means that people assume that this system is the expected norm
• Therefore, if children happen to grow up in a particularly authoritarian family, with a strong emphasis on obedience, then they acquire these same authoritarian attitudes through a process of learning and imitation

Question 59

Right-wing authoritarianism

Answer 59

• Robert Altemeyer (1981) refined the concept of the Authoritarian personality by identifying a cluster of three of the original personality variables that he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)

Question 60

According to Altemeyer, high-RWA people possess three important personality characteristics that predispose them to obedience:

Answer 60

~Conventionalism- an adherence to conventional norms and values
~Authoritarian aggression- aggressive feelings toward people who violate these norms
~ Authoritarian submission- uncritical submission to legitimate authorities

Question 61

How do Altemeyer test the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism and obedience?

Answer 61

• In an experiment where participants were ordered to give themselves increasing levels of shock when they made mistakes on learning task
• There was a significant correlation between RNA scores and the level of shocks that participants were willing to give themselves
• Interestingly, there was also a large red button, above which was the warning-‘Do not push this button unless you are instructed to do so’
• When the experiment was over, the experimenter ordered participants to push the button ‘to administer an extra strong shock as a punishment for not trying’
• Participants’ level of RWA appeared to be irrelevant for this instruction as the vast majority did as they were told without question

Question 62

What was one of the major debates surrounding Milgrams study of obedience?

Answer 62

• Whether participants’ behaviour emerged only under specific situational conditions or whether it was dispositional i.e. the result of a particular personality pattern
• Research on obedience measures actual submission to authority, not just what a person says he or she is likely to do, and therefore allows researchers to study whether participants high in authoritarianism are noted more likely to obey an authority figure

Question 63

Key Study: Elms and Milgram (Procedure)

Answer 63

• Elms and Milgram carried out a follow-up study using participants who had previously taken part in one of Milgrams experiments two months before
• They selected 20 ‘obedient’ participants (those who had continued to the final shock level) and 20 ‘defiant’ participants (those who had refused to continue at some point in the experiment)
• Each participant completed the MMPI scale (measuring a range of personality variables) and the California F scale to specifically measure their levels of authoritarianism
• Participants were also asked a series of open-ended questions, including questions about their relationship with their parents during childhood and their attitude to the ‘experimenter’ and the ‘learner’ during their participation in Milgram’s original study

Question 64

Key study: Elms and Milgram (Findings)

Answer 64

• The researchers found little difference between obedient and defiant participants on MMPI variables
• However, they did higher levels of authoritarian among those classified as obedient, compared with those classified as defiant
• They also found significant differences between obedient and defiant participants that were consistent with the idea of the authoritarian personality
• For example, obedient participants reported being less close to their fathers during childhood, and were more likely to describe them in distinctly more negative terms
• Obedient participants saw the authority figure in Milgrams study as clearly more admirable, and the learner as much less so
• This was not the case among the defiant participants
• These findings suggested to Elms and Milgram that the obedient group was higher on the trait of ‘authoritarianism’

Question 65

Evaluation: The authoritarian personality (Research evidence for the authoritarianism/obedience link)

Answer 65

• Several studies reported that more authoritarian participants are more obedient (e.g. Elms and Milgram, 1966; Altemeyer, 1981) in Milgram-type obedience situations
• Yet these studies tend to suffer from a good deal of suspicion concerning whether the shocks they were giving were real or fake
• Dambrun and Vatine overcame this problem by using an ‘immersive virtual environment,’ where an actor taking the role of the learner was filmed, recorded and displayed on a computer screen
  – Participants were informed that the experiment was a simulation and that the shocks and the victims reactions were not real, but simulated
• Despite this, participants still tended to respond as if the situation was real, and there was a clear and significant correlation between participants RWA scores and the maximum voltage shock administered to the victim
• In other words, participants who displayed higher levels of RWA were the ones who obeyed the most

Question 66

Evaluation: The authoritarian personality (The social context is more important)

Answer 66

• Although Milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and disobedience, he did not believe the evidence for this particularly strong
• Milgram showed that variations in the social context of the study (e.g proximity of the victim, location, presence of disobedient peers) were the primary cause of differences in participants’ levels of obedience, not variations in personality
• He believed that the specific social situation participants found themselves it caused them to obey or resist regardless of heir personalities
• Relying on authoritarianism lacks the flexibility to account for these variations

Question 67

Evaluation: The authoritarian personality (Differences between authoritarian and obedient participants)

Answer 67

• Elms and Milgrams research also presented some important differences in the characteristics of obedient participants
• For example, when Elms and Milgram asked participants about their upbringing, many of the fully obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with their parents, rather than having grown up in their overly strict family environment associated with the authoritarian personality
• It also seems implausible that, given the large number of participants who were fully obedient in Milgrims study, the vast majority would have grown up in such a harsh environment with a punitive father

Question 68

Evaluation: The authoritarian personality (Education may determine authoritarian and obedience)

Answer 68

• Research (e.g Middendrop and Meloen, 1990) has generally found that less-educated people are consistently more authoritarian than the well educated
• Milgram also found that participants with lower levels of education tended to be more obedient than those with higher levels of education
• This suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible for authoritarianism and obedience
• This is clearly a possibility, although even after educational level was statistically controlled for in the Elms and Milgram study, the more obedient subject were still more authoritarian on the F scale

Question 69

Evaluation: The authoritarian personality (Left-wing views are associated with lower levels of obedience)

Answer 69

• Altemeyers reformulation of the authoritarian personality in terms of ‘right-wing authoritarianism’ suggests that people who define themselves as in the right of the right of the political spectrum would be more likely to obey authority
• We might expect, therefore that people who define themselves as more ‘left wing’ would be characterised by lower levels of obedience
• There is some support for this distinction
• Begue carried out a replication of Milgrams study as part of a fake game show, where contestants had to deliver (fake) electric shocks to other contestants
• Subsequent interviews using the ‘world value survey questionnaire’ revealed that the more participants defined themselves as on the left of the political spectrum, the lower the intensity of shocks they agreed to give to to the other contestant
• This suggests that situational context does not exclude the possibility of individual differences as a determining influence in obedience

Question 70

Define authoritarian personality

Answer 70

• A distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience or submission o authority

Question 71

Define dispositional

Answer 71

Explanations of behaviours such as obedience emphasise them being caused by an individuals own personal characteristics rather than situational influences within the environment

Question 72

What is the F scale?

Answer 72

Also known as the ‘California F scale’ or ‘Fascism scale,’ the F scale was developed in California in 1947 as a measure of authoritarian traits or tendencies

Question 73

Define right-wing authoritarian

Answer 73

A cluster of personality variables (conventionalism, authority submission and authoritarian aggression) that are associated with a ‘right-wing’ attitude to life

Question 74

Resistance to social influence: social support and resisting conformity

Answer 74

• Asch (1956) found that the presence of social support enables an individual to resist conformity pressure from the majority
• In one of the variations in his study, the introduction of an ally who also gave the right answer (and so appeared to resist the majority) caused conformity levels to drop sharply
• The social support offered by ally led to a reduction in conformity from 33% (with a unanimous majority) to just 5.5%
• The most important aspect of social support appears to be that it breaks the unanimous position of the majority
• Supporters and dissenters are likely to be effective in reducing conformity because, by breaking the unanimity of the majority, they raise the possibility that there are other, equally legitimate, ways of thinking or responding
• The presence of an ally provides the individual with an independent assessment of reality that makes them feel more confident in their decision and better able to stand up to the majority

Question 75

Resistance to social influence: Social support and resisting obedience

Answer 75

• It is often difficult to take a stand against authority because the obedient behaviour of others makes even a harmful action appear acceptable
• However, their disobedience can change that perception
• Research has shown that individuals are generally more confident in their ability to resist the temptation to obey if they can find an ally who is willing to join them in opposing the authority figure
• Disobedient peers therefore act as role models on which the individual can model their own behaviour
• Individuals are able to use the defiance of peers as an opportunity to extricate themselves from having to cause any further harm to a victim as a result of their obedience
• For example, in one of Milgrams variations, the participant was one of a team of three testing the learner
• The other two were actually confederates who, one after another, refused to continue shocking the learner and withdrew
• Their defiance had a liberating influence on the real participants, with only 10% continuing to the maximum 450V shock level

Question 76

Resistance to social influence: Locus of control

Answer 76

• The term locus of control refers to a persons perception of personal control over their own behaviour
• It is measured along a dimension of ‘high internal’ to ‘high external,’ although most of us would be somewhere between the two extremes
• A strong internal locus of control is associated with the belief that we can control events in our life
• People with an internal locus of control believe that what happens to them is largely a consequence of their own ability and effort
• They are more likely to display independence in thought and behaviour
• People high in internality rely less on the opinions of others, which means they are better able to resist social influence
• People with an external locus of control tend to believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors, such as the influence of others or luck
• They have a sense that things ‘just happen to them’ and are largely out of control
• People high in externality tend to approach events with a more passive and fatalistic attitude than internals, taking less personal responsibility for their actions and being less likely to display independent behaviour and more likely to accept the influence of others

Question 77

Resistance to social influence: internality and resistance to social influence

Answer 77

• Locus of control research has uncovered a number of characteristics of internals that have relevance for resisting social influence
  1. High internals are active seekers of information that is useful to them, and so are less likely to rely on the opinions of others, making them less vulnerable to social influence
  2. High internals tend to be more achievement-oriented and consequently more likely to become leaders rather than follow others. For example, Spector found that a relationship exists between locus of control and leadership style, with internals being more persuasive and goal-orientated than externals
  3. High internals are better able to resist coercion from others. For example, in a simulated prisoner-of-war camp situation, internals were better able,to resist the attempts of an interrogator to gain information. The more intense the pressure, the greater the difference between the internals performance and that of the externals

Question 78

What is externality?

What is internality?

Answer 78

• Individuals who tend to believe that their behaviour and influence experience is caused by events outside their control
• Individuals who tend to believe that they are responsible for their behaviour and experience rather than external forces

Question 79

Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (social support: the importance of response order)

Answer 79

• Allen and Levine (1969) studied whether the response position of the person providing social support made any difference to a participant resisting the majority
• In one condition, a confederate answered first, giving the right answer, while other confederates all gave the same wrong answer
• The real participant always answered fifth (last)
• In the second condition, the confederate answered fourth, i.e after the confederates
• Support was significantly more effective in position 1 than in position 4
• The researchers suggest that a correct first answer, in confirming the participants own judgement, produces an initial commitment to the correct response that endures even though other group members disagree

Question 80

Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (social support: support may not have to be valid to be effective)

Answer 80

• Allen and Levine (1971) looked at whether social support that was not particularly valid would also be effective in helping participants resist conformity
• In one condition, the confederate providing the support wore glasses with very thick lenses
• Therefore he provided invalid social support, given that this was a test of visual discrimination
• In the second, the supporter had normal vision i.e he provided valid social support
• Both conditions reduced the amount of conformity, but the valid social supporter had much more impact, showing that an ally is helpful in resisting conformity, but more so if they are perceived as offering valid social support

Question 81

Evaluation: Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (Locus of control is related to normative but not informational influence)

Answer 81

• Spector (1983) measured locus of control and predisposition to normative and informational influence in 157 undergraduate students
• He found a significant correlation between locus of control and predisposition to normative social influence, with externals more likely to conform to this form of influence than internals
• However, he found no such relationship for predisposition to informational social influence, with locus of control not appearing to be a significant factor in this type of conformity

Question 82

Evaluation: Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (Locus of control: people are more external than they used to be)

Answer 82

• Research suggests a historical trend in locus of control
• A meta-analysis by Twenge found that young Americans increasingly believed that their fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions
• In the studies used for this analysis, researchers found that locus of control scores had become substantially more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002
• Twenge interprets this trend towards increasing externality in terms of alienation experienced by young people and the tendency to explain misfortunes on outside forces

Question 83

Evaluation:Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (Social support in the real word: the Rosenstrasse protest)

Answer 83

• In 1943, a group of German women protested in the Rosenstrasse in Berlin, where the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) were holding 2000 Jewish men, most of whom were married to non-Jewish partners or were the male children of these ‘mixed’ marriages
• The women stood toe-to-toe with Gestapo agents who threatened to open fire if they did not disperse, and demanded the release of their husbands and sons
• Despite the threats, the women’s courage eventually prevailed and the Jews were set free
• Milgram found that the presence of disobedient peers gave the participant the confidence and courage to resist the the authority’s order
• These women defied the authority of the Gestapo together
• One woman commented that ‘normally people were afraid to show dissent, but but on the street where they knew they were among friends because they were risking death together’

Question 84

Evaluation: Evaluation: Resistance to social influence (Research support: locus of control)

Answer 84

• Avtgis (1998) carried out a meta-analysis of studies of the relationship between locus of control and different forms of social influence, including conformity
• This showed a significant positive correlation for the relationship between scores of internality/externality and scores on measures of persuasion, social influence and conformity
• The analysis showed that individuals who scored higher on external locus of control tend to be more easily persuaded, more easily influenced and more conforming than those who score as internal in terms of locus of control