Social Influence Flashcards
(Conformity: types and explanations)
Types of conformity
- Internalisation
Genuine acceptance of groups of norms
Permanent
Public and private change - Identification
Acceptance of group norms because we want to be a part of it
Public change, may also be private - Compliance
‘Going along’ with a group
Temporary
Public change only
Kelman
(Conformity: types and explanations)
Explanations for conformity
Two-process model
‘The need to be right’ and ‘the need to be liked’
- Informational Social Influence - Cognitive process
- We conform with others if we believe they are better informed than us
- Most likely to occur in new, ambiguous or crisis situations - Normative Social Influence - Emotional process
- We observe and conform to norms of a group as to gain social approval
- Most likely to occur when social approval is desired; with strangers, friends or in stressful situations
Deutsch and Gerard
(A03 for informational social influence)
- Maths students more likely to conform to incorrect answers if the question was difficult than if it was easy
- Most common in those who rated their maths ability as poor
Demonstrates how we look to others for informational influence when we are uncertain of something
Lucas
(A03 for normative social influence)
Individual differences
Students in higher need of affiliation more likely to conform than those with less need for social approval
McGhee and Teevan
(Asch’s conformity study)
- Procedure
- Period
- Number of participants
- Number of confederates
- ‘Critical trials’ - Variations
- Group size
- Unanimity
- Task difficulty - Findings
- Procedure
- 1950’s
- 123 male students
- 6-8 confederates (+ naive participant)
- Wrong answers given for 12 out of 18 trials - Variations
- Group size: Increases very little after 4 participants, falls after 7
- Unanimity: Having a dissenter reduces conformity by a quarter, even for incorrect answers
- Task difficulty: More ambiguity increased conformity (ISI) - Findings
- 36% gave wrong answers
- 75% conformed at least once
(A03 for Asch)
May be subject to temporal relevance
- Only 1 engineering student conformed
- May be due to mathematical ability or conformist nature of 1950’s America
Perrin and Spencer
(A03 for Asch - conformity)
Beta bias
- All-male study
- Higher conformity may occur in women who are more concerned with social approval
Neto
(Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment - conformity to social roles)
- Procedure
- Findings
- Day 1
- Day 2
- Day 4
- Day 6
- Procedure
- Volunteer sample, emotionally stable students selected
24 participants
- Randomly assigned to role of guard or prisoner
- Arrested in homes, strip-searched, given uniforms or number - Findings
- Day 1: 1 prisoner released due to psychological disturbance
- Day 2: Prisoners rebelled - ripped uniforms
- Day 4: 2 more released
- Day 6: Experiment ends
Intended length was 14 days
Guards harassed prisoners with constant headcounts, over-zealous punishments
1 prisoner on hunger strike sent to ‘the hole’
(A03 for Zimbardo)
Lack of realism
- Participants were merely play-acting based on stereotypes of role they were given
- One participant said he based his role on a character from ‘Cool Hand Luke’
However, Zimbardo’s quantitative findings show that 90% of conversation was about prison life
Banuazizi and Mohavedi
(A03 for Zimbardo)
Role of dispositional factors
- One-third of guards acted in brutal manner
- The rest either wanted to play fairly or actively supported prisoners
E.g. offering them cigarettes
Fromm
(A03 for Zimbardo)
Alternative explanation - Social identity theory (SIT)
- Partial replication of Zimbardo’s study broadcast on BBC
- Prisoners took control of the prison and disobeyed or harassed the guards
- Used social identity theory (SIT) to explain - the prisoners were able to develop a shared identity as members of a social group that refused to accept limits of roles, whilst the guards were unable to do the same
Haslam and Reicher
(Milgram’s obedience experiment)
- Procedure
- Period
- Participants
- Sample
- Confederates - Shocks
Shocks - Prods
- Findings
- Debriefing
Used to explain obedience during Nazi regime
- Procedure
- 1963
- 40 20-50 year old males
- Volunteer sample, financial incentive
- ‘Mr. Wallace’, experimenter
Rigged draw for learner role
Shock machine tested once
Mr. Wallace mentions heart condition - Shocks
15-450 volts
300- Learner pounds on the wall
315 - Repeats, no further response - Prods
4 in total
“Please continue” to “you have no choice”
“The experiment requires you to continue” - most effective
4. Findings Stopped below 300 - 0 ppts Stopped at 300 - 5 ppts Continued to 450 - 65% Physical observations - 3 had uncontrollable seizures, shaking, sweating
- Debriefing
Glad they participated - 84% (16% regretted it)
Believed shocks were real - 70% (30% not convinced)
(A03 for Milgram’s shock experiment)
Supporting research - Obedience still high in study with real shocks
- Participants gave real shocks to a puppy
- 45% of men and 100% of women gave what they believed was a fatal shock (puppy tranquilised to appear dead)
May be evidence of a beta bias in Milgram’s study
Sheridan and King
(A03 for Milgram’s shock experiment)
Good external validity - findings reflect obedience to authority figures in real life
21 of 22 nurses administered unnecessary drug on doctor’s command over the phone
Hofling
(A03 for Milgram’s shock experiment)
Alternative explanation - social identity theory (SIT)
- Participants identified with the science of the study
- Obediene decreases when they begin to identify with the learner more
- First 3 prods most effective- science-related
E.g. “The experiment requires you to continue” - 4th prod - Caused ppt to quit whenever used
“You have no choice, you must continue”
Haslam and Reicher
(Milgram’s situational variables)
- Proximity
- Learner in same room
- Touch proximity variable - hand forced onto plate
- Over the phone - Location
- Run-down building - Uniform
- Member of the public variable
Baseline study - 65% Run-down office - 47% (location) Same room - 40% (proximity) Hand forced onto plate - 30% (proximity) Orders over the phone - 20.5% (proximity) 'Member of the public' - 20% (uniform)
(A03 for situational variables)
Uniform
- 3 confederates: milkman, businessman and security guard
- Asked members of the public to perform tasks
E.g. pick up litter, give change for parking to another confederate - People twice as likely to obey security guard
Bickman
(A03 for situational variables)
Cross-cultural replications
Found an obedience rate of over 90% in replication, suggesting Milgram’s findings are not limited to the American men studied
Miranda
(A03 for situational variables)
The ‘obedience alibi’
- Milgram’s research was conducted to understand the obedience during the Nazi regime
- Using situational variables to explain obedience in a deterministic way takes responsibility away from offenders
Mandel
(Social-psychological factors)
The agentic state
The autonomous state
- Acting independently according to own free will
- Full responsibility for actions
The agentic state
- Allows us to deflect responsibility because we are acting on behalf of somebody else. We are an ‘agent’
- Not necessarily emotionless
Agentic shift
- Shift from autonomous to agentic state
- Occurs we perceive somebody as higher in the social hierarchy than ourselves
Bindings factors
- Used to explain why people continue to obey destructive authority
- Aspects of the situation that allow them to reduce moral strain
E.g. denying damage done to victim
(Shock experiment - some ppts said they didn’t feel responsible for any harm done to the learner as they were following instructions)
Milgram
(A03 for the agentic state/ legitimacy of authority)
- Students identified the experimenter as responsible in Milgram’s shock experiment
- This was because he had legitimate authority (higher in social hierarchy) and expert authority (scientist)
Blass and Schmitt
(A03 for the agentic state/ legitimacy of authority)
Can be used to explain war crimes
My Lai Massacre
- Hundreds of innocent civilians killed, sexually assaulted, village destroyed
- The one soldier who faced charged said he was ‘just following orders’
- Can be explained in terms of US military hierarchy
Kelman and Hamilton
(Dispositional factors)
The authoritarian personality
- The F-scale
- Participants
- Method - Findings
Characteristics
- Excessively obedient to authority
- Status-conscious
- Holds distinct stereotypes of social groups
- Prejudiced
- Conventional attitudes
Origin
- Conditional love
- Criticism, discipline
Psychodynamic explanation
- Can’t take resentment over strict upbringing on authority figures, so displaces anger onto ‘socially inferior’ as scapegoats
Adorno
- The F-scale
-2000 middle-class white American males
- 1-6 scale (level of agreement)
- Investigates attitudes to social groups
E.g. “There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not have love and respect for his parents” - Findings
- High scorers demonstrated characteristics of the authoritarian personality
E.g. Identified with ‘strong’, contemptuous of ‘weak’, excessively obedient to authority
(A03 for the authoritarian personality)
Validity
Interviewed small sample of fully obedient participants who also scored highly on the F-scale, believing there may be a correlation
Milgram
(A03 for the authoritarian personality)
Politically biased
- Ignores extreme left-wing authoritarianism
E.g. Bolsheviks - These emphasis some similar things, such as compelte obedience to legitimate political authority
- Left-wing authoritatians are less likely to be identified by the F-scale as they may have liberal views regarding lower status social groups
Christie and Jahoda
(Resistance to social influence)
Locus of control (LOC)
Continuum
- People can fall anywhere between internal and external
Internals - things are within our own control
E.g. hard work, motivation, mood
- Take responsibility for their own actions and believe they are in control - less likely to be socially influenced
Externals - things are beyond our control
E.g. fate, god, textbook
Rotter
(A03 for social support)
A dissenter reduces conformity as they free us from social pressure
- Replicated Asch’s study
- Dissenter with thick glasses who said they could not see properly still had the same effect
- Social support is not about following what somebody else says, but them acting as a model for non-conformity
Allen and Levine
(A03 for LOC)
Research support
- Replicated Milgram’s study and measured LOC
- Internals showed greater resistance to authority
Internals - 37% quit before highest shock
Externals - 23% quit before highest shock
Holland
(A03 for LOC)
Contradictory research
- Analysed data from American LOC studies over 40 years
- People have become more resistant, but also more external (secularisation)
- If resistance to authority was linked to an internal LOC, we would expect people to have become more internal
Twenge
(Minority influence)
Blue-green slides study
- Procedure
- Participants
- Slides
- Confederates - Findings
- Variations
Moscovici
- Procedure
- 6 ppts
- 36 blue slides - had to say if they were blue or green
- 2 confederates - said slides were green two-thirds of the time - Findings
- Wrong answer given 8.42% of time
- 32% gave wrong answer at least once - Variations
Inconsistent minority - 1.25%
Control group - 0.25%
(Minority influence)
Flexibility
- Consistency is not the only important factor in minority influence - too much is makes the group seem dogmatic
- Members should be able to adapt their views and accept valuable counter-arguments to be listened to
Nemeth
(A03 for minority influence)
Consistency
- Carried out meta-analysis of 100 similar studies
- Consistent minorities were the most influential
Wood
(A03 for minority influence)
First opinion heard is deeply processed
- Split ppts in half to listen to either the majority or minority view before hearing the contradictory view
- When ppts heard the minority view first they were less likely to change their mind after hearing the alternative argument
- Minority influence more deeply processed
Martin
(Social change)
Gradual commitment
- Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes more difficult to ignore a bigger one
- People ‘drift’ into new behaviour
Zimbardo
(A03 for social change)
Support for normative influence
- Hung messages on doors stating that the majority of local people had already reduced their energy usage
- Control group - Messages just urged people to reduce energy usage without referencing behaviour of others
- Found significant decrease in energy usage of first group
Nolan
(A03 for social change)
The results of minority influence are indirect and delayed
Indirect - majority is influenced on matters related to issue at hand rather than central issue
Delayed - effects may not be seen for some time
Nemeth
(A03 for social change)
Majority influence causes deeper processing, rather than minority influence
- We like to think most people share the same views as us
- If we find out a majority disagrees with us we tend to think long and hard about their reasoning and doubt ourselves
Mackie
(A03 for social change)
- Ppts less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways due to stereotypes about such groups
- They fear of being labelled in the same way
E.g. ‘tree huggers’ - Minority groups should avoid acting in ways that perpetuate traditional stereotypes as it is offputting to the majority
Bashir
