Social Influence Flashcards
What is internalisation?
The deepest type of conformity in which people change their beliefs permanently, so the beliefs become part of their way of seeing the world
What is identification?
Type of conformity in which people change their beliefs to fit in with a group but the change may only be temporary
What is compliance?
Superficial type of conformity in which people conform publicly but privately disagree
What is normative social influence?
Conformity based on the desire to be liked and accepted
What is informational social influence?
Conformity based on the desire to do the right thing
What is unanimity?
Complete agreement from a group of people about an answer or a viewpoint
How does group size affect conformity?
Asch found that Confederate with a real participant was only 3% of changing the view with two Confederates and one participant the conformity rate increase to 13% when the group increased to 3 Confederates and one real participant conformity became 33% when the group becomes larger such as 15 Confederates to one real participant the participants become suspicious and conformity drops
How does unanimity affect conformity
Ash found that conformity dropped to 5.5% when a Confederate was added who gave the correct answer instead of an incorrect answer as this increased the real participants confidence giving the correct answer that they have chosen
How does task difficulty affect conformity
Task difficulty is likely to affect conformity as if the task given is easy the real participant is likely to go with their own answer or own method however if the task difficulty increases and becomes harder the real participant is likely to conform to the rest of the group to have the desire to be right
Briefly describe Ashes study into conformity
Ash created an experimental paradigm to study response to group pressure he recruited 123 male students and asked them to take part in a task of visual perception they were placed in groups of 7 to9 and seated around a large table experimenter show them two cards one displaying a line and the other showing three comparison lines participants were asked to call out in 10 which of the three comparison lines a B or C match the standard line in length to which there was a clear obvious answer each group carried out a total of 18 trials
Evaluate Ashes study into conformity
As ashes study has a high level of control there is a lack of ecological validity as participants are placed with groups of strangers in an artificial situation for the purpose of the experiment in real life conformity usually takes place when people are in groups of who they have long-lasting ties or friends colleague or family members in ashes experiments the answer to the question of line length with obvious in real life conformity often occurs when there is no correct answer
What is conformity to social roles
Social roles such as a doctor teacher or prison officer are associated with patterns of expected behaviours which people may adopt
