Social Influence Flashcards

Question

Evaluation: Variables affecting conformity (unconvincing confederates)

Answer 1

- 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

Answer 2

- 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

Answer 3

- 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

Answer 4

- 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

Answer 5

- 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

Answer 6

- 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

Answer 7

- 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

Answer 8

- 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.

Answer 9

- 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

Answer 10

- 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

Answer 11

- 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

Answer 12

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

Answer 13

- 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.'

Answer 14

- 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.

Answer 15

- 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

Answer 16

- 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

Answer 17

- 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

Answer 18

- 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

Answer 19

- 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

Answer 20

- 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

Answer 21

- 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

Answer 22

- 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

Answer 23

- 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

Answer 24

- 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

Answer 25

- 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

Answer 26

- 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

Answer 27

- 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

Answer 28

- 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

Answer 29

- 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

Answer 30

- 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

Answer 31

- 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

Answer 32

- 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

Answer 33

- 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

Answer 34

- 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

Answer 35

- 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)

Answer 36

~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

Answer 37

- 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

Answer 38

- 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

Answer 39

- 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

Answer 40

- 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'

Answer 41

- 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

Answer 42

- 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

Answer 43

- 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

Answer 44

- 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

Answer 45

- 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

Answer 46

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

Answer 47

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

Answer 48

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

Answer 49

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

Answer 50

- 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

Answer 51

- 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

Answer 52

- 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

Answer 53

- 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

Answer 54

- 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

Answer 55

- 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

Answer 56

- 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

Answer 57

- 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

Answer 58

- 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

Answer 59

- 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'

Answer 60

- 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

Social Influence Flashcards

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