Social Influence

Question 1

what is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

A collection of traits developed from strict parenting (conservative, conventional, obedient towards people with a perceived higher status)

Question 2

state 3 dispositional factors affecting obedience found by Milgram

Answer 2

Authoritarian personality, agentic state, legitimacy of authority

Question 3

What is the agentic state?

Answer 3

person ‘unthinkingly’ carries out orders and diffuses the responsibility

Question 4

what is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 4

person is perceived as authoritative either due to genuine authority or the context/setting

Question 5

State the factors affecting minority influence

Answer 5

Consistency, commitment and flexibility

Question 6

explain how commitment in social influence might be effective

Answer 6

minority might engage in extreme/sometimes dangerous activities to make people pay attention to their views

Question 7

What is the Augmentation principle?

Answer 7

when the majority begin to pay attention to the ideas of the minority

Question 8

Explain how flexibility might be effective

Answer 8

members of majority will have to be willing to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable counter-arguments

Question 9

Explain how consistency is effective

Answer 9

asserting views consistently over time increases interest from others (could be an agreement between minorities)

Question 10

what is synchronic consistency?

Answer 10

when everyone is arguing/saying the same thing

Question 11

Give a study to support minority influence

Answer 11

Moscovici 1969 - blue/green slides
2 confederates consistently said the slides were green and the participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.5% of trials compared to 1.25% with no confederates

Question 12

what is minority influence?

Answer 12

situations where a person or a small group influences the beliefs and/or behaviour of other people (the opposite to conformity)

Question 13

Give a reason why commitment may be ineffective

Answer 13

Nemeth 1986 said that commitment may put off the majority as it can be seen as too rigid and inflexible

Question 14

Give one weakness of Moscovici’s study

Answer 14

the tasks he used to study minority were artificial and therefore lack external validity

Question 15

What is conformity?

Answer 15

a change in persons behaviour or opinion due to a real or imagined pressure from others

Question 16

What is ISI?

Answer 16

Information social influence (Wittenbrink & Henley 1996) - the desire to be right

Question 17

What is NSI?

Answer 17

Normative social influence - the desire to fit in

Question 18

Example of NSI

Answer 18

Schultz at al 2008 - found that hotel guests were more likely to reuse their towels if they knew other guests were reusing them

Question 19

Weakness of ISI

Answer 19

the type of task might impact the desire to be right

Question 20

Weakness of NSI

Answer 20

it will affect people in different ways (resistance to conformity)

Question 21

What are the factors affecting conformity found by Asch?

Answer 21

Group size, unanimity of the group, difficulty of the task

Question 22

What is said to be the optimum group size for conformity?

Answer 22

3-6 people

Question 23

Evaluation of Asch’s study of conformity

Answer 23

Lacks population validity (-)
Reliable, as his test was repeated by many (+)
Androcentric (-)
Lacks ecological validity (-)
Deception - there was no fully informed consent

Question 24

Can Do Can’t Do With Participants

Answer 24

Confidentiality, Deception, Consent, Debrief, Withdrawal, Protection from harm,

Question 25

What is compliance?

Answer 25

The most superficial form of conformity - when a person changes their beliefs publicly to fit in but will disagree in private

Question 26

What is identification?

Answer 26

person conforms publicly and privately because they have identified with the group but is often temporary when they separate from the group

Question 27

What is internalisation?

Answer 27

deepest form of conformity - involves publicly and privately agreeing with the views of the group and will remain even when separated from the group (e.g religion, vegetarianism)

Question 28

What is the dual-process model of conformity?

Answer 28

Deutsch & Gerard 1955 - ISI motivates desire to be correct and so leads to internalisation and NSI motivates desire to fit in and leads to compliance

Question 29

what are the factors affecting resistance social influence?

Answer 29

locus of control, social support

Question 30

How does locus of control affect social influence?

Answer 30

High internal locus of control - a person is more likely to take responsibility for their own actions because they believe their life is in their control
High external locus of control - someone who believes things that happen to them are out of their control and so don’t take responsibility for their actions

Question 31

How does social support affect social influence?

Answer 31

if there are others involved in the scenario that dissent, a person is much less likely to some under influence

Question 32

What are the situational factors affecting obedience as tested by Milgram in his variations?

Answer 32

Location Uniform Proximity

Question 33

How might location affect obedience?

Answer 33

the place where the order is issued must be prestigious or associated with status (e.g Milgram’s first study took place in the university labs where there was a higher level of conformity compared to the variations where the study took place in a worn down abandoned building)

Question 34

How much uniform affect obedience?

Answer 34

people in positions of authority often wear a specific outfit that is symbolic of their authority - indicates to others who is entitled to expect our obedience (Milgram replaced the ‘experimenter’ wearing a white lab coat with a stranger in plain clothes to order the administering of the shocks)

Question 35

How might proximity affect conformity?

Answer 35

physical closeness or distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving the order to