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Psychology > Social Influence > Flashcards

Social Influence Flashcards

1
Q

(Conformity: types and explanations)

Types of conformity

  1. Internalisation
    Genuine acceptance of groups of norms
    Permanent
    Public and private change
  2. Identification
    Acceptance of group norms because we want to be a part of it
    Public change, may also be private
  3. Compliance
    ‘Going along’ with a group
    Temporary
    Public change only
A

Kelman

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2
Q

(Conformity: types and explanations)

Explanations for conformity

Two-process model
‘The need to be right’ and ‘the need to be liked’

  1. 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
  2. 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
A

Deutsch and Gerard

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3
Q

(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

A

Lucas

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4
Q

(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

A

McGhee and Teevan

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5
Q

(Asch’s conformity study)

  1. Procedure
    - Period
    - Number of participants
    - Number of confederates
    - ‘Critical trials’
  2. Variations
    - Group size
    - Unanimity
    - Task difficulty
  3. Findings
A
  1. Procedure
    - 1950’s
    - 123 male students
    - 6-8 confederates (+ naive participant)
    - Wrong answers given for 12 out of 18 trials
  2. 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)
  3. Findings
    - 36% gave wrong answers
    - 75% conformed at least once
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6
Q

(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
A

Perrin and Spencer

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7
Q

(A03 for Asch - conformity)

Beta bias

  • All-male study
  • Higher conformity may occur in women who are more concerned with social approval
A

Neto

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8
Q

(Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment - conformity to social roles)

  1. Procedure
  2. Findings
    - Day 1
    - Day 2
    - Day 4
    - Day 6
A
  1. 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
  2. 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’

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9
Q

(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

A

Banuazizi and Mohavedi

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10
Q

(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
A

Fromm

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11
Q

(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
A

Haslam and Reicher

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12
Q

(Milgram’s obedience experiment)

  1. Procedure
    - Period
    - Participants
    - Sample
    - Confederates
  2. Shocks
    Shocks
  3. Prods
  4. Findings
  5. Debriefing

Used to explain obedience during Nazi regime

A
  1. 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
  2. Shocks
    15-450 volts
    300- Learner pounds on the wall
    315 - Repeats, no further response
  3. 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
  1. Debriefing
    Glad they participated - 84% (16% regretted it)
    Believed shocks were real - 70% (30% not convinced)
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13
Q

(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

A

Sheridan and King

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14
Q

(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

A

Hofling

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15
Q

(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”
A

Haslam and Reicher

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16
Q

(Milgram’s situational variables)

  1. Proximity
    - Learner in same room
    - Touch proximity variable - hand forced onto plate
    - Over the phone
  2. Location
    - Run-down building
  3. Uniform
    - Member of the public variable
A 
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)
17
Q

(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
A

Bickman

18
Q

(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

A

Miranda

19
Q

(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
A

Mandel

20
Q

(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)

A

Milgram

21
Q

(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)
A

Blass and Schmitt

22
Q

(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
A

Kelman and Hamilton

23
Q

(Dispositional factors)

The authoritarian personality

  1. The F-scale
    - Participants
    - Method
  2. 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

A

Adorno

  1. 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”
  2. Findings
    - High scorers demonstrated characteristics of the authoritarian personality
    E.g. Identified with ‘strong’, contemptuous of ‘weak’, excessively obedient to authority
24
Q

(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

A

Milgram

25
Q

(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
A

Christie and Jahoda

26
Q

(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

A

Rotter

27
Q

(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
A

Allen and Levine

28
Q

(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
A

Holland

29
Q

(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
A

Twenge

30
Q

(Minority influence)

Blue-green slides study

  1. Procedure
    - Participants
    - Slides
    - Confederates
  2. Findings
  3. Variations
A

Moscovici

  1. 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
  2. Findings
    - Wrong answer given 8.42% of time
    - 32% gave wrong answer at least once
  3. Variations
    Inconsistent minority - 1.25%
    Control group - 0.25%
31
Q

(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
A

Nemeth

32
Q

(A03 for minority influence)

Consistency

  • Carried out meta-analysis of 100 similar studies
  • Consistent minorities were the most influential
A

Wood

33
Q

(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
A

Martin

34
Q

(Social change)

Gradual commitment

  • Once a small instruction is obeyed, it becomes more difficult to ignore a bigger one
  • People ‘drift’ into new behaviour
A

Zimbardo

35
Q

(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
A

Nolan

36
Q

(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

A

Nemeth

37
Q

(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
A

Mackie

38
Q

(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
A

Bashir

Psychology (8 decks)

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