Social Influence

Question 1

What is Social Psychology?

Answer 1

Social Psychology looks at the relationships between people and how people affect each other (social influence).

Question 2

What is Conformity?

Answer 2

Conformity is a form of social influence where a person changes their behaviour, attitudes or views so that they are in line with the majority, because of pressure from the majority. This pressure can be real or imagined.

Question 3

What is Compliance?

Answer 3

Compliance is when an individual adjust their behaviour, attitudes or beliefs that they voice in public, so that they are in line with the majority. There is no change to privately held views and beliefs hence conformity only lasts while the group is present. It is therefore a superficial and temporary form of conformity.

Question 4

What is Internalisation?

Answer 4

Internalisation is when an individual adjusts their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs they voice in public, so that they are in line with the majority. The individual examines their own beliefs against what others are saying and decide that the majority is correct. This leads the individual to accept the group’s point of view privately as well as publicly. This is the deeper and more permanent form of conformity.

Question 5

What is Identification?

Answer 5

Identification is when an individual accepts social influence because they want to be associated with another person or group. By adopting the group’s views, attitudes and beliefs, the person feels more part of that group.

Question 6

Explain Normative Social Influence as an explanation for conformity

Answer 6

People have a fundamental need to be liked and to be part of a group. Therefore any behaviour that will make others reject or ridicule us is avoided. This can lead us to copy the behaviour of others in order to ‘fit in’. Research has shown that people like those who are similar to them and so conformity can be an effective strategy to ensure acceptance. Normative social influence is likely to lead to compliance.

Question 7

Explain Informational Social Influence as an explanation for conformity

Answer 7

People have a need to be confident that their perceptions and beliefs are correct. Individuals may make objective tests against reality (e.g. check the facts) but when this is not possible they will rely on the opinions of others to check if they are correct and then use this as evidence about reality. Informational social influence is more likely to occur when the situation is ambiguous (the correct answer is not clear) or when others are experts. Informational social influence leads to internalisation.

Question 8

Positively Evaluate Normative Social Influence as an explanation for conformity

Answer 8

+ Linkenbach and Perkins provided research support for normative social influence. They 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.

+ Tanford and Penrod discovered that in the 95% of cases they looked at, the vote of the first member of a jury matched the final outcome of the case. This strongly indicates that normative social influence is affecting the decisions reached by juries.

Question 9

Positively Evaluate Informational Social Influence as an explanation for conformity

Answer 9

+ Wittenbrink and Henley provided research support for informational social influence. They found that participants who were exposed to negative information about African Americans (which they were led to believe was the view of the majority) later expressed more beliefs about an African American individual.

+ Another study which supports Informational Social Influence was conduced by Lucas et Al. They asked students to give answers to easy or difficult mathematics questions. There was more conformity with the difficult questions and students who were not confident in their mathematical ability conformed more.

Question 10

Negatively Evaluate Normative and Informational Social Influence as an explanation for conformity

Answer 10

• Normative and Information Social Influence cannot explain cultural differences in conformity. Bond and Smith conducted a meta-analysis of cross-cultural studies using the Asch (1956) design. They found that Indian teachers in Fiji had the highest rates of conformity (58%) and Belgium students had the lowest rates of conformity (14%). This suggests that a person’s culture is an important factor in determining whether or not they will conform.
• Normative and Informational Social Influence cannot explain individual differences. Kurosawa found that people with high self-esteem were far more resistant to conformity.

Question 11

Describe Asch’s (1956) experiment into conformity

Answer 11

• Asch placed a naive participant (someone who doesn’t know what the experiment is about) into a group of confederates (people who pretend to be participants but are actually part of the experiment).
• The participants were shown a standard line and were asked which of the three other test lines were the same length as the standard line, without discussing it with each other.
• The participants then had to say their answer out loud one at a time, the naive participant was always the last or second to last person to answer so they heard everyone else’s answer before saying their own.
• The chance of making a genuine mistake on the questions was only 1% but 33% of answers given by participants were incorrect.
• The confederates answered wrong on 12 out of the 18 trials. 75% of participants conformed on at least one trial, 25% did not conform on any trial and 5% conformed on every trial.
• Asch interviewed his participants afterwards and found that the majority of participants had continued to trust their own judgement throughout the trials however they said the same answers as the group to avoid disapproval. This is normative social influence.

Question 12

How does group size affect conformity?

Answer 12

Asch changed the sizes of the groups. He found that groups with one confederate had a conformity rate of 3%, with two confederates this rose to 13% and finally with three confederates there was a massive jump to 32%. This shows that we can resist the influence of 1 or 2 people fairly easily but it is much harder to resist the influence of 3 people. There was little change in conformity once groups reached 4 confederates. Group size only has an effect up to a certain point because conformity does seem to increase in groups larger than 4, this is considered the optimal group size for conformity.

Question 13

How does task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 13

Asch made the test lines more similar in length and it was much harder to judge the correct answer. Conformity increased due to informational social influence having an impact. This is because when we are uncertain, we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task became the greater the informational social influence and the conformity.

Question 14

How does unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 14

When the group was unanimous, conformity increased. When only one other person said a different answer from the others, meaning the group was no longer unanimous, conformity reduced from 33% to 5%. Even when the confederate said a different answer that was wrong, conformity dropped to 9%. If there is someone else that refuses to conform, it makes it easier for us to resist conformity.

Question 15

Positively evaluate Asch’s experiment

Answer 15

+ Asch’s methodology was a laboratory experiment which means that the study was well controlled and so any extraneous variables would not have affected the dependant variable and therefore affected the validity of the study.

+ Tanford and Penrod’s research support the findings of Asch. They found that in 95% of cases they reviewed, the vote of the first member of jury matched the final outcome of the case. This strongly indicates how normative social influence is affecting the decisions taken by juries.

+ Linkenbach and Perkins’ study also supports Asch’s findings. They 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.

Question 16

Negatively evaluate Asch’s experiment

Answer 16

• The study has gender bias as the sample only contained males, this means that the study may not represent female behaviour.
• The task given to participants of matching line lengths is artificial and is unlikely to occur in real life. As well as this, conformity usually takes place in a social context, often with people we know rather than strangers. The study therefore lacks mundane realism (it does not reflect real life) and ecological validity (cannot be generalised to real life).
• The study was conducted 80 years ago and it is possible that people were more conformist then. Post-war attitudes that people should work together and consent rather than dissent may have affected the results. Perrin and Spencer repeated the Asch experiment with engineering students in the UK. They only found one conforming result out of 396.

Question 17

What are social roles?

Answer 17

Social roles are the behaviours expected of an individual that occupies a social position or status. People can conform to the social roles assigned to them.

Question 18

Describe Zimbardo’s (1973) experiment into conformity to social roles

Answer 18

• Zimbardo wanted to investigate whether conformity to social roles would alter a persons behaviour. A simulated prison was created in the basement of Stanford University’s Psychology department.
• 24 psychologically and emotionally stable young men were recruited and were randomly assigned to the role of either prison guard or prisoner.
• The guards had complete control over the prisoners, who were confined to their cells around the clock except for meals, toilet privileges, head counts and work.
• The guards were told to maintain order using any means necessary, except physical violence.
• On the second day, the prisoners tried to rebel, they ripped off their prison numbers and barricaded themselves in their cells.
• The guards responded by spraying the prisoners with carbon dioxide, stripping them naked, taking their beds away and forcing the ringleaders into solitary confinement.
• Over the next few days, the guards became increasingly cruel and aggressive, creating a brutal atmosphere. Prisoners became passive and depressed as the guards used verbal abuse, forced them to do repeated press-ups, pushed them into urinals and left them in a pitch black cupboard for hours.
• The guards became so aggressive that the study had to be ended after only 6 days (it was meant to last for 2 weeks) because of concerns about the psychological health of the prisoners who were showing signs of severe distress.

Question 19

Positively evaluate Zimbardo’s experiment into conformity to social roles

Answer 19

+ Zimbardo argues that the same conformity to social roles found in his experiment occurred in Abu Ghraib, a military prison in Iraq notorious for the torture and abuse of prisoners by US soldiers. The role of guard influenced the soldiers’ behaviour.

Question 20

Negatively evaluate Zimbardo’s experiment into conformity to social roles

Answer 20

• The study was highly unethical as the prisoners were subjected to psychological harm. Five prisoners had to be released early because of their extreme reactions such as crying, rage and acute anxiety. However, Zimbardo did not expect the prison guards to behave in that way so this harm could not have been anticipated.
• Zimbardo took on the role of prison warden, became very involved in the experiment and lost his objectivity. He had to be told by a colleague to end the experiment because of concerns over the distress of the prisoners. This means the vailidity of the findings can be questioned.
• The guards in Zimbardo’s experiment may have behaved the way that they did due to demand characteristics. Some of them reported afterwards that they behaved in an aggressive manner because they thought this is what the experimenters wanted them to do.
• Some of the guards did not conform to the role given to them and were very reluctant to become involved in cruelty towards the prisoners whereas others guards were very abusive. This seems to suggest that individual differences are important in determining the extent to which people will conform to social roles.
• The sample was unrepresentative as all the participants were young, middle class, male students from Stanford University. Therefore the results cannot be generalised to other people.

Question 21

Define Obedience

Answer 21

Obedience is doing as instructed by an authority figure. Authority figures have status and/or power over others.

Question 22

Describe the Milgram (1963) experiment into obedience to authority

Answer 22

• Milgram placed an advert in a newspaper asking for male participants to take part in a study about the effect of punishment on learning. 40 participants were invited to the psychology department of Yale University.
• They were introduced to Mr Wallace, a confederate who pretended to be a participant with a weak heart and an experimenter who was a confederate in a white labcoat.
• Mr Wallace and the participant were asked to pick notes out a hat to determine their role in the experiment and this was set up so the participant was always the teacher and Mr Wallace was always the learner.
• The participant was then told that his role as teacher was to punish the learner if they made a mistake on a memory test by administering an electric shock, increasing the voltage each time the learner made a mistake.
• The learner was taken to a room and was hooked up to the electric shock machine. The teacher was placed in an adjoining room with the electric shock machine controls and the experimenter. The machine had a series of switches starting at 15 volts, increasing in 15 volt increments to 450 volts. Each set of four switches was labelled with text such as ‘Slight Shock’, ‘Moderate Shock’, ‘Danger: Severe Shock’ and ‘XXXX’.
• As the shocks became more severe, Mr Wallace screamed, kicked the wall, demanded to be released, complained about his weak heart, refused to answer the questions and finally went silent.
• The experimenters ensured that the teachers continued with the experiment by using phrases such as ‘please continue’ and ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’.
• All of the participants delivered all the shocks up to 300 volts and 65% of participants gave shocks all the way up to the maximum 450 volts. Participants felt a high level of stress during the experiment, they showed symptoms such as trembling, sweating and in some cases, anxious and hysterical laughter. Despite this, most were obedient and were willing to inflict potentially lethal shocks on a man with a weak heart.

Question 23

Positively evaluate Milgram’s (1963) experiment into obedience to authority

Answer 23

+ Milgram’s study is supported by Hofling’s study which shows people are willing to obey dangerous orders. He arranged for nurses to receive a phone call from an unknown doctor called Dr. Smith (who was really an actor). The doctor asked them to administer 20mg of a drug called Astroten (which was really a sugar pill) to patients. This broke hospital rules as the doctor was unknown, the instructions were given over the phone, the medicine was not on the stock list and the dose exceeded the maximum dose stated on the bottle. 95% of nurses carried out the order despite the potential danger.

+ Another study that supports Milgram’s experiment was conducted by Sheridan and King. They asked participants to administer real (but unbeknownst to them small) electric shocks to a puppy. The obedience rate was 75% even though participants could see the puppy and hear it squeal in pain.

+ Milgram’s methodology was a laboratory experiment which means the study was very well controlled and so extraneous variables would not affected the validity of the study.

Question 24

Negatively evaluate Milgram’s (1963) experiment into obedience to authority

Answer 24

• The participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment. They were told it was an experiment about the effect of punishment on learning (memory) when in fact it was about obedience. This means they did not give their informed consent to take part. Also, they were led to believe that the electric shocks they were delivering were real.
• During the experiments, participants became extremely distressed, and may have even thought they had killed Mr Wallace and so were not protected from psychological harm.
• Several participants asked to leave the experiment however they were told that they were not allowed. This violates their right to withdraw from the experiment.

Question 25

Why did Milgram conduct several variations of his original study?

Answer 25

He wanted to determine which situational factors lead to high levels of obedience, and which reduce obedience.

Question 26

What happened in the proximity variation?

Answer 26

In the proximity variation, the teacher and learner were seated in the same room. Obedience levels fell to 40% as participants were now able to experience Mr Wallace’s anguish directly.

Question 27

What happened in the touch proximity variation?

Answer 27

In a more extreme variation, the teacher had to actually force the learner’s arm into a metal plate to administer the shocks. The obedience rate was 30%. It seems harder to obey orders to harm someone when we can see the negative consequences of our actions.

Question 28

What happened in the absent experimenter variation?

Answer 28

In this variation, the experimenter left the room after giving his instructions and gave subsequent orders by telephone. The obedience rate was 21% as the vast majority of participants missed out shocks or gave lower voltage shocks than they were meant to. This shows it is easier to disobey someone when we are a distance from them.

Question 29

What happened in the alternative setting variation?

Answer 29

In this variation, the experiment was carried out in a rundown office in Bridgeport, Connecticut by an experimenter wearing casual clothes. All other variations took place at the impressive Yale University. The obedience rate was 48%. Participants did report the location of Yale University gave them confidence in the integrity of the people involved and indicated that they would not have shocked Mr Wallace if the study had been conducted elsewhere.

Question 30

What is the effect of uniform on obedience?

Answer 30

In the alternative setting variation, the experimenter did not wear his ‘uniform’ (white laboratory coat). Uniforms have a powerful impact on obedience as they are easily recognisable symbols of power and status. Sometimes uniforms show that someone does have power and status (e.g. police officer’s uniform), however, sometimes uniforms show that someone does not have power or status (e.g. prisoner’s uniform).

Question 31

Describe Agentic State as a situational explanation of obedience

Answer 31

Milgram argued that people can obey horrific orders not because of their personalities but because of the situation they are in. He suggested people following orders go into an agentic state and lose their autonomy. They percieve themselves as an instrument of the authority figure and lose their conscience. They believe that the authority figure is responsible for their actions. This is called agentic shift. This state occurs because in people’s experience, authority figures are trustworthy. The orders seem reasonable at first before becoming more aggressive (gradual commitment) and people cannot see the negative consequences of their actions (buffers).

Question 32

Why do people adopt an agentic state?

Answer 32

One explanation for why people enter an agentic state to maintain a positive self-image. It does not matter what negative behaviour they show, because they are not responsible for their actions. Once a person has entered an agentic state, they stay in it as they are concerned that breaking their commitment to the authority figure would seem arrogant and rude.

Question 33

Why is an agentic state necessary?

Answer 33

The agentic state is necessary for hierarchies to function in society, which prevents chaos. Milgram thought the agentic state had developed during human evolution. We live in a society where we are constantly submitting to authority figures such as parents, teachers, the police and doctors and so obedience is necessary for society to function.

Question 34

Evaluate Agentic State

Answer 34

+ Milgram asked participants to deliver electric shocks to a confederate, Mr Wallace, every time he answered a question wrong. The shocks were not real but the participants thought they were.65% of participants delivered shocks all they way to 65%. Participants were constantly asking throughout the experiment, ‘who is responsible for what happens to that man’. Participants were more willing to inflict shocks once the experiment told them the experimenter, and not them, was responsible for Mr Wallace. Tilker repeated the Milgram experiment and found a substantial reduction in obedience once he told participants that they, and not the experimenter, was responsible for Mr Wallace. This shows that feelings of responsibility need to be lost in order for someone to obey and this fits with the theory of an agentic state.

+ Participants were less likely to shock Mr Wallace if they could see the negative consequences of their actions (i.e. there were less buffers). This fits with the theory of an agentic state as being in the same room as Mr Wallace and seeing him in pain would have prevented some people from from going into an agentic state as they could not deny they were responsible.

• Agentic state does not explain why 35% of participants in Milgram’s study refused to shock Mr Wallace all the way to 450 volts. If all people go into an agentic state when the situational factors are right, how come these people didn’t?

Question 35

Describe Legitimate Authority as a situational explanation of obedience

Answer 35

Legitimate authority claims that people are more likely to obey an order given by someone of legitimate authority. Milgram believed that there is a shared expectation among people that situations have a socially controlling figure. The power of legitimate authority stems not from the authority figure’s personal characteristics but from their perceived position of social control within a situation. Legitimate authority can be shown through symbols of power, such as uniform.

There is a tendency for people to accept the definitions of situations provided by a legitimate authority figure. Although it is the participant that performs the action, they allow the authority figure to define its meaning. Often legitimate authority figures need an institution (e.g. prison or military), especially if the commands are of a potentially harmful or destructive form.

Question 36

Evaluate Legitimate Authority

Answer 36

+Bickman asked confederates to order passersby to pick up litter or move away from a bus stop. The confederates were dressed as either a guard, milkman or in smart clothes. 90% of people obeyed the guard whereas only 50% obeyed the civilian. A person in a guard uniform is more likely to be perceived as a legitimate authority figure.

+ Tarrow studied aviation accidents where the flight crew’s actions were a contributing factor in the accident and the black box was available. He found excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise. One-second officer claimed that although the captain’s approach was risky but he said nothing because he assumed that ‘the captain knew what he was doing’.

• Legitimate authority does not explain why some people are able to resist the order of legitimate authority figures. 35% of participants in Milgram’s study refused to obey the experimenter even though he had legitimate authority in that situation.

Question 37

Describe Authoritarian Personality as a dispositional explanation of Obedience

Answer 37

A dispositional explanation of behaviour claims that an individual’s personality characteristics determine their behaviour rather than situational influences in the environment. Adorno argued that people with authoritarian personalities are more likely to obey authority figures.

They have particular traits that make them more obedient: servile towards people of perceived higher status, hostile towards people of lower status, conformist and conventional (e.g. rule following), dogmatic (intolerant of ambiguity), likely to categorise as ‘us’ or ‘them’, preoccupied with power and inflexible in their beliefs and values.

Adorno thought that people develop these personalities after receiving extremely harsh discipline from their parents during their parents. This creates feelings of hostility which are directed towards weaker others who cannot fight back and are therefore safe. They cannot take out the anger on their parents because they fear them, instead they act in a submissive way towards them. They then extend this submissive behaviour to all authority figures.

Adorno developed a questionnaire to measure authoritarian personalities called the F (Fascism Scale). Participants are asked to rate how much they agree to statements such as ‘obedience and respect for authority are important virtues children should learn’.

Question 38

Describe the Elms and Milgram (1966) study

Answer 38

Milgram asked participants to deliver electric shocks to a confederate called Mr Wallace whenever he answered a question wrong. The shocks were not real but the participants believed they were. 65% of participants delivered shocks all the way to 450 volts.

20 participants who delivered shocks all the way to 450 volts (obedient) and 20 participants who refused to shock all the way to 450 volts (disobedient) were selected to take part in a follow-up study carried out by Elms and Milgram. They were asked to complete an MMPI scale (which measures several personality traits) and an F Scale. Participants were also asked a series of open ended questions about their relationship with their parents and their attitude to the experimenter and the learner during the previous experiment.

There was little difference between the two groups in terms of MMPI scale however there was a higher levels of authoritarian traits displayed by obedient participants in the F Scale. Obedient participants were more likely to report that they had a difficult relationship with their father. They were also more likely to perceive the experimenter (the authority figure) as admirable.

Question 39

Positively evaluate Authoritarian Personality as a dispositional explanation of obedience

Answer 39

+ Miller found that those who scored highly on the F Scale were more likely to follow an order to hold onto some electric wiring while working through an arithmetic question compared to those who scored low on the F Scale.

+ Altemeyer asked participants to give themselves increasing levels of electric shock as they got a question wrong on a learning task. There was a correlation between those who scored highly on the F Scale and those who were willing to shock themselves.

Question 40

Negatively evaluate Authoritarian Personality as an dispositional explanation of obedience

Answer 40

• Situational factors seem more important than dispositional ones. Milgram conducted several variations of his experiment, each provided varying results. When Mr Wallace made no noise (did not scream and made no requests to leave), obedience was 100%. When another teacher was the one to press the button to deliver the shocks, obedience was 92%. When there were two other teachers who refused to carry out the experiment, obedience was 10%. When there were two experimenters who disagreed with each other (one wanted to continue, the other wanted them to stop), obedience was 0%.
• Authoritarian Personalities are not common, far fewer than 65% of people have authoritarian personalities so it cannot be the only explanation for the level of obedience found in the original Milgram study.
• Elms and Milgram found important differences between the characteristics of an authoritarian personality and the characteristics of an obedient participant. For instance, many of the fully obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with their parents, rather than having grown up in the strict family environment associated with an authoritarian personality.
• It is possible that rather than Authoritarian Personality causing obedience, a lack of education causes authoritarian personality and obedience. Middendorp and Meleon found that less educated people are more likely to have an authoritarian personality and Milgram found that participants with lower levels of education were more obedient.

Question 41

What is the Social Support Theory?

Answer 41

Social support is a situational explanation of resistance to social influence. It argues that when one person refuses to conform/obey it makes it far more likely that other people will also resist social influence and refuse to conform/obey.

People are more likely to not conform if they have an ally who resists social influence and refuses to conform. By refusing to conform, the ally breaks the unanimity of the group and groups are far more influential if they are unanimous. When the unanimity is broken, people start to think that there are other, equally legitimate, ways of thinking or responding. The presence of an ally gives them an independent assessment of reality and makes them feel more confident in their decision and better able to stand up to the majority.

People are also more likely to defy an authority figure if they see a disobedient role model refusing to obey. This is because when someone rejects the instructions of an authority figure it challenges that authority figure’s legitimate authority.

Question 42

Evaluate the Social Support Theory

Answer 42

+ Milgram asked participants to deliver electric shocks to a confederate, Mr Wallace, when he got a question wrong. The shocks were not real but participants believed they weee. 65% of participants shocked Mr Wallace up to 450 volts. However, when there was another confederate who acted as a disobedient role model and refused to shock Mr Wallace, only 10% of the participants delivered electric shocks up to 450 volts.

+ Asch asked participants to say which of three ‘test lines’ was the same as the ‘standard line’. The participants were in a group with confederates who gave the wrong answer. In 37% of the trials the participants conformed to the group. However, conformity dropped to 5% when one confederate acted as an ally to the participant and gave a different answer to the rest of the group.

• In neither of the above studies did social support manage to completely eradicate social influence. This suggests that other factors such as an individual’s personality also play a role in deciding if a person will conform/obey or show independent behaviour. 35% of people in Milgram’s study and 25% of people in Asch’s study refused to yield to social pressure even though they didn’t have social support.

Question 43

Explain Locus of Control as a dispositional explanation of resistance to social influence

Answer 43

Rotter argued that a person’s personality determines whether or not they will conform. This is therefore a dispositional explanation. A person’s locus of control refers to the extent to which they believe they have control over their own behaviour.

People with an internal locus of control believe that whatever occurs in their life is the result of their own behaviour and actions. They can therefore alter what happens to them. For example, if they did badly on a test, they consider it to be the result of their own inadequate revision.

People with an external locus of control would believe strongly that what happens in their lives is outside of their control. They think what occurs in their lives is determined by chance or other people so they have no ability to alter it. If they do badly on a test, they would blame it on bad luck or inadequate teachers.

People with an internal locus of control are more likely to resist social influence and not conform/obey as they have more self-confidence, feel like they have more control over their lives, feel more responsible for their actions and rely less on external explanations.

Question 44

Evaluate Locus of Control as a dispositional explanation of resistance to social influence

Answer 44

+ Oliner and Oliner interviewed 406 German people who sheltered Jewish people from the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s. These German people had an internal Locus of Control, which allowed them to disobey the Nazis.

+ Milgram asked participants to deliver electric shocks to a confederate, Mr Wallace, when he got a question wrong. The shocks were not real, but the participants believed that they were. 65% of participants shocked Mr Wallace up to 450 volts. Milgram gave the participants a questionnaire to measure their locus of control and found that the 35% who had disobeyed were far more likely to have an internal locus of control than those who had obeyed.

• Williams and Warchals found that conformers were less assertive than non-conformers but these two groups did not score differently on a test to determine their locus of control. This suggests that assertiveness is more important than locus of control.

Question 45

Define Minority Influence

Answer 45

Sometimes very persuasive small groups or even individuals gain social influence and can change the way the majority behaves and thinks. This is known as minority influence.

Question 46

What did Moscovici say about minority influence?

Answer 46

He argued that different psychological processes are behind minority and majority influence. He held that only minority influence truly makes you change your privately held thoughts and beliefs as it leads to careful and creative thought caused by the cognitive conflict between the majority’s current beliefs and the new deviant ideas proposed by the minority.

He also considered majority influence to lead to compliance but minority influence to lead to conversion. This is when individuals change their private beliefs and views because of minority influence but may continue to alter their behaviour, beliefs and views in public so as to avoid being rejected. Conversion is deeper and longer-lasting than compliance. However, it is a slower process than compliance and may even be unconscious. Sometimes, the individual is not even aware of where the new idea originated from, this is social crypo-amnesia.

Question 47

Minority groups are more likely to be successful when they are:

Answer 47

• Committed: Joining the minority costs more to an individual than staying with the majority, therefore the degree of commitment shown by minority members is greater than that down by majority members. This greater commitment can lead people to take them more seriously.
• Consistent: When people are first exposed to a minority view, they assume the minority is wrong. However if the minority is consistent, people come to reassess the situation and consider the issue more carefully.
• Flexible: The minority must not be rigid because they are less powerful than the majority therefore they must negotiate their position rather than enforce it. A rigid minority that will not compromise risks being seen as dogmatic and failing to consider that the opinions of others might be justified. However, a minority that is too flexible and willing to compromise risks being seen as inconsistent.

Question 48

Positively evaluate Minority Influence

Answer 48

+ Moscovici researched the role of consistency. He showed groups of six female participants blue slides. In the consistent condition, the confederates said the slide was green on every trial and in the inconsistent condition, the confederates said that slide was green on some of the trials. When the minority was consistent, the majority followed them on 8% of the trials. When the minority was inconsistent, the majority only followed them on 1% of the trials. In the consistent condition, 32% of participants were swayed by minority influence at least once.

+ Nemeth and Brilmayer studied the role of flexibility in a simulated jury situation where group members discussed the amount of compensation due to someone who had been involved in a ski-lift accident. When a confederate put forward an alternative point of view and refused to change his position, there was no effect. A confederate who compromised did exert some influence on the rest of the group. However, this was only evident when the confederate compromised late (flexible) rather than early (lack of commitment) in the negotiations.

Question 49

Negatively evaluate Minority Influence

Answer 49

• Mackie argued that the views of the minority do not necessarily lead to greater processing, in fact many people tend not to waste time trying to process a minority idea. Whereas a majority idea that is different to our own is processed because we want to understand why people we believe to have similar beliefs to us are expressing a different one.
• A meta-analysis by Wood et al suggests that people who are confronted with a minority viewpoint on important social issues tend to not only resist the appearance of agreement with the minority, but also privately resist agreement as well.
• Nemeth found that people quickly became irritated with a dissenting view that persists because they fear a lack of harmony in the group. As a result, they belittle the dissenting view.

Question 50

Define Social Change

Answer 50

Social change refers to the changes in attitudes, behaviours or laws that take place on a large scale and affect all of society.

Question 51

Describe how social change occurs through minority influence

Answer 51

If an individual is exposed to a persuasive minority, they may change their viewpoint to match those of the minority. This can happen over 5 stages:

1. Drawing Attention to the Issue - Minorities can bring about social change by drawing the majority’s attention to an issue.
2. Cognitive Conflict - The Minority creates conflict between what the majority group members currently believe and the position advocated but the minority. This results in the majority group members thinking more deeply about the issue.
3. Consistency of position - Minority groups are more influential when they express arguments consistently, over time and with each other.
4. The Augmentation Principle - If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and are taken more seriously.
5. The snowball effect - Minority Influence generally has a relatively small effect but this then spreads more widely, as more and more people consider the issue being raised, until it reaches a tipping point, where the minority becomes the majority and there is wide-scale social change.

Question 52

Evaluate social change through minority influence

Answer 52

+ Maass and Clark found that publicly expressed view on gay rights followed the majority viewpoint but privately expressed opinions shifted towards the minority viewpoint, it did not matter whether these views were positive or negative, participants would publicly comply with the majority but be privately converted to the minority viewpoint. This study indicates that minority influence is required to make people change their privately held beliefs and allow social change.

+ Nemeth and Wachtker found that participants who were exposed to both majority and minority influence converged, with little thought, on majority responses. However, the presence of minority influence stimulated more creative thinking and more active information processing. Over time this may lead people to question their views on important social issues.

• A meta-analysis by Wood et al suggests that people who are confronted with a minority viewpoint on important social issues tend to not only resist an appearance of agreement with the minority, but also privately resist agreement as well.

Question 53

Describe how conformity could be used to bring out social change through majority influence

Answer 53

If people perceive something to be the social norm, they alter their behaviour to fit that social norm, in order words they conform. Behaviour is based on the perceived norm, what people think others believe and do rather than the actual norm, the majority’s real beliefs and actions. The gap between actual norm and perceived norm is referred to as misperception and correcting this misperception is the basis for an approach to social change known as social norms interventions.

These start by identifying a widespread misconception relating to a specified risky behaviour within a target population. Perception correction strategies can then be used in media campaigns, promotional material etc. The aim of these strategies is to communicate to the target population the actual norm so that people will moderate their own behaviour to bring it more in line with the behaviour of their peers.

Question 54

Describe how obedience can be used to bring about social change through majority influence

Answer 54

Zimbardo suggested that obedience could also be used to bring about social change. For example, changing the law to allow gay marriage and adoption has meant that people may be more accepting of homosexual rights because they are inclined to obey the law.

Question 55

Evaluate social change through majority influence

Answer 55

+ 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.

+ The US state of Montana had a problem with alcohol-related car crashes among 21-34 year olds. While only 20% of people in this age group had driven after drinking, 92% of this age group believed that the majority of their peers did this. By correcting this misperception with adverts stating that most young adults (4 out of 5) do not drink and drive, alcohol-related car crashes were massively reduced.

• Not all social norms interventions lead to social change. Dejong et al tested the effectiveness of social norms marketing campaigns to bring down the use of alcohol among students across 14 different college sites. Surveys were conducted at the start of the intervention and three years later. Students did not show lower perceptions of other students’ drinking, or lower alcohol consumption themselves.