Social Influence Flashcards
What is Conformity?
Conformity is a change is a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
What are the different types of conformity?
Internalisation
Identification
Compliance
Who suggested that there are three ways in which people conform to the opinion of the majority?
Herbert kelman
What is internalisation?
Internalisation is a deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct. It leads to a far-reaching and permanent change in behaviour even when the group is absent.
What is Identification?
A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be part of it. But we don’t necessarily agree with everything the majority believes.
What is Compliance?
A superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. The change in our behaviour only lasts as long as the group is monitoring us.
What did Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard say the two main reasons are that people conform?
Informational Social influence
Normative social influences
What are informational social influence and normative social influence based on?
The two central human needs the need to be right and the need to be liked.
What is informational social influence?
An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority view because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well.
What could informational social influence lead to?
Internalisation
What situations are informational social influence likely to occur?
New situations (so you don’t know what is right)
Situations with some ambiguity (isn’t clear what is right)
Crisis situations where decisions have to be made quickly
When one person is regarded as being more of an expert
Is informational social influence a cognitive process or emotional process?
Cognitive because it is to with what you think.
What is Normative social influence?
An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked.
What can Normative social influence lead to?
Compliance
Where is normative social influence likely to occur?
Situations with strangers where you may feel concerned about rejection.
May occur with people you know because we are most concerned about the social approval of our friends
More prominent in stressful situations where people have a greater need for social support.
What research study supports Informational social influence causing conformity?
Lucas et al 2006
What was the Lucas et al 2006 study?
Lucas et al 2006 asked students to given answers to mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than when they were easier ones.
What does the Lucas et al 2006 study tell us?
The study shows that people conform in situations where they feel they don’t know the answer, which is exactly the outcome predicted by the Informational social influence explanation.
We look to other people and assume they know better than us and must be right.
What are nAfilliators?
These are people who have a greater need for affiliation a need for being in a relationship with others.
What type of people are less affected by normative social influences?
People who are less concerned with being liked and are less affected by normative social influences than nAffilators.
What research supports that people high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform?
McGhee and Teevan 1967
What does McGhee and Teevan 1967 research show?
That students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform.
This shows that the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. Therefore there are individual differences in the way people respond.
What was Asch’s experiment?
Asch conducted one of the most famous laboratory experiments examining conformity. He wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform
What was the findings from Asch’s experiment?
The naive participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of te time. Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials which means that 75% conformed at least once.
What is the Asch effect?
The extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous
What does unambiguous mean?
Admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and leading to only one conclusion
What were the three variations Asch did to his experiment?
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
What is a confederate?
An actor who participates in a psychological experiment pretending to be a subject but in actuality working for the researcher.
What is the group size and how did it affect conformity in Asch’s experiment?
Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. Conformity increased with the group size, but only up to a point, leveling of when the majority was greater than three.
What is unanimity and how did it affect conformity in Asch’s experiment?
The extent to which all the members of a group agree. In Asch’s studies, the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line. This produced the greatest conformity in the naive participants.
What is task difficulty and how did it affect conformity in Asch’s experiment?
Asch’s line judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer. Conformity increases because naive participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right.
In Asch’s experiment when there was an increase in the task difficult and conformity increased because naive participants assume the majority is more likely to be right, what does this suggest?
Informational social influence plays a greater role when the tasks becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong.
What is a naive participant?
A participant or subject who has no previous experience of the procedure, or one who is unaware of the purpose of the research or the hypothesis being tested. In research involving confederates, the term is used to denote a participant who is not one of the confederates.
What was Perrin and Spencer 1980’s experiment?
Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK. Only one student conformed out of 396.
How does Perrin and Spencer’s experiment make Asch’s original research less relevant and limited?
As it could show that in the 1950’s were an especially conformist time in America, and therefore it made sense to conform to established social norms. But society has changed a great deal since Asch’s experiment and people are possibly less conformist today.
This is a limitation of Asch’s research but it means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time and so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour.
What are limitations of Asch’s research?
Only Men were tested in his research, research suggests that women might be more conformist possible because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted than men are Neto 1995.
Asch’s study were from the United States, an individualist culture, (where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group). In collectivist cultures like China where the social group is more important than individuals have found that conformity rates are higher.
This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found. Asch’s findings may only apply to American men because he didn’t take gender and cultural differences into account.
What are possible Ethical issues with Asch’s research?
The naive participants were deceived because they thought the other people involved in the procedure were also genuine participants like themselves.
Who ran the Standford prison experiment?
Zimbardo
What are Social roles?
Social roles are the parts people play as member of various social groups. Everyday examples include parent, child, student and passenger. These are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role, for example caring.
What was the Standford prison experiment?
Zimbardo and his colleagues wanted to find out do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation the crates such behaviour.
What was the procedure for the Standford Prison experiment?
Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of a psychology department at Standford University. They advertised for students willing to volunteer those who were deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after psychological testing.
Students were randomly assigned to roles of guards or prisoners. The social roles of the prisoners were strictly divided, prisoners names were never used just their number.
What was happened during the Standford Prison experiment?
Slow start, guards behaviour became a threat to the prisoners’ psychological and physical health and the study was stopped after six days instead of 14.
There was prison rebellions, hungry strikes, frequent head counts in the middle of the night,
The guards identified more and more closely with their role. Their behaviour became more brutal and aggressive, with some of them appearing to enjoy the power they had over their prisoners.
What was the conclusions from the Standford Prison experiment?
The simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour. Guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their roles within the prison.
These roles were very easily taken on by the participants who found themselves behaving as if they were in a prison rather than in a psychological study.
What is there to support the findings and back up the Standford prison experiment conducted by Zimbardo?
One strength is that Zimbardo and his colleagues had some control over the variables, such as selecting the most emotionally stable individuals.
This way individual personality differences can be ruled out as an explanation of the findings.
Having such control over variables is a strength because it increases the internal validity of the study. So we can be much more confident in drawing conclusions about the influence of roles on behaviour.
What did Banuazizi and Mohavedi say about the Standford Prison experiment?
They said it lacked realism as the participants were merely play-acting rather than genuinely conforming to a role. Their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave.
For an example one guard claimed he based his role on the brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke. This would also explain why the prisoners rioted because they thought that was what real prisoners did.
What evidence was there that limited Banuazizi and Mohavedi degrading the Standford Prison experiment?
Zimbardo pointed to evidence that the situation was very real to the participants. Quantitative data gathered during the procedure showed that 90% of the prisoners’ conversations were about prison life. On balance it seems the situation was real to the participants which gives the study a high degree of internal validity.
What evidence did Fromm have that Zimbardo was exaggerating the power of the situation to influence the behaviour and minimizing the role of personality factors?
A minority of the guards behaved in a brutal manner only about a third. Another third were keen on applying the rules fairly, the rest actively tried to help and support prisoners e.g. giving them cigarettes.
What conclusions can we make from Fromms argument about the Standford Prison Experiment?
This suggests that Zimbardo’s conclusion that participants were conforming to social roles may be over-stated.
The differences in the guards’ behaviour indicate that they were able to exercise right and wrong choices, despite the situational pressures to conform to a role.
What did the BBC Prison study show that contradicted the Standford prison experiment?
The BBC prison study findings were very different to Zimbardo, it was the prisoners who eventually took control of the mock prison and mocked the guards the opposite to the Standford Prison experiment.
What ethical issues was there with the Standford Prison experiment?
Zimbardo had dual roles in the experiment, as the superintendent and a researcher.
So when a prisoner came to him asking to leave, he responded as the superintendent saying no whereas the if he was playing his role as a researcher whom has responsibilities for the participant the response would have been different.
What is Obedience?
A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
Why did Milgram conduct his obedience study?
Stanley Milgram sought an answer to the question of why the German population had followed the orders of Hitler and slaughtered over 10 million Jews, Gypsies and members of other social groups in the Holocaust.
What did Milgram want to find out from his obedience study?
If Germans were different- were they more obedient than other humans.
What was the procedure for Milgram’s original obedience study?
Milgram recruited 40 male participants through newspaper adverts and flyers, The participants recruited were aged 20-50 and jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. They were offered $4.50 to take part.
When they arrived at Milgrams Lab they were paid and there was a rigged draw for their role. A confederate ‘Mr Wallace’ always ended up as the learner while the true participant was the ‘teacher’, there was also an ‘experimenter’ another confederate dressed in a lab coat.
The learner was strapped in a chair in another room with electrodes, the teacher was required to give the learner an increasing severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake, the shocks were demonstrated to the teacher.
From now the shocks weren’t real, the apparent shock level started at 15 labelled ‘slight shock’ and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts labelled danger severe shock.
When the teacher got to 300 volts ‘intense shock’ the learner pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question. After the 315 volt shock the learner pounded on the wall again but after that there was no further response from the learner.
When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance the experimenter gave a standard instruction ‘An absence of response should be treated as a wrong answer’.
If the teacher felt unsure about continuing the experimenter used a four standard prods which were repeated if neceessary:
Prod1: Please continue or Please go on
Prod2: The experiment requires that you continue
Prod3: It is absolutely essential that you continue
Prod4: ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’
What were the quantitative findings of Milgrams Obedience study (What did the participants do)?
No participants stopped below 300volts
12.5% stopped at 300 volts ‘intense shock’
65% continued to the highest level 450 volts.
What qualitative data was collected from the Milgrams obedience study?
Observations that the participants showed signs of extreme tension, many of them were seen to sweat, tremble, stutter bite their lips etc.
Before the Milgrams obedience study, Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the participants behaviour. What percentage did they predict?
They estimated no more than 3% of the participants would continue to 450 volts.
What does the student prediction about Milgrams obedience study tell us about the results of the study?
The results were not expected.
What happened to the participants of the Milgrams obedience study after it finished?
All participants were debriefed and assured their behaviour was entirely normal. They were also sent a follow-up questionnaire, 84% reported that they felt glad to have participated.
What are several of issues forbid in the Code of Ethics and Conduct?
A participants right to withdraw from the research
The need to get fully informed consent from the participants
The use of deception
The importance of protecting participants from the risk of psychological and physical harm
How was Milgram deceptive in his obedience study?
The participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram’s.
What did Milgram say about using deceptive practices?
Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths.
How did Milgram expose his participants to potential psychological and physical harm?
Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.
Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.
How did Milgram help reduce harm to his participants in his obedience study?
Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.
Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment. Participants were assured that their behavior was common and Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found that there were no signs of any long-term psychological harm. In fact, the majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were pleased that they had participated.
In Milgrams Obedience study did he give participants the right to withdraw from the research?
The experimenter gave four verbal prods which mostly discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
How did Milgram argue that he did give participants the right to withdraw?
Milgram argued that his prods are justified as the study was about obedience so orders were necessary. Milgram pointed out that although the right to withdraw was made partially difficult, it was possible as 35% of participants had chosen to withdraw.
How does the external validity of Milgram’s obedience study, help improve the validity of Milgram’s study.
Good external validity in the study, the central feature of the situation was the relationship between the authority figure (the experimenter) and the participant. Milgram argued that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life. This is supported by Hofling et al 1966 whom studied nurses on a hospital ward and found that levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors were high with 21/22 nurses obeying.
This suggests that the process of obedience to authority that occurred in Milgram’s lab study can be generalized to other situations, so his findings do have something valuable to tell us about how obedience operates in real life.
Who questioned the validity of Milgram’s findings and what was their reason for questioning his validity?
Orne and Holland 1968 argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up- they guessed it wasn’t real electric shocks. In which case Milgram was not testing what he intended to test, i.e. the study lacked internal validity.
Gina Perry’s 2013 recent research confirms this. She listened to tapes of Milgrams participants and reported that many of them expressed their doubts about the shocks.
Who supported the internal validity of Milgrams findings?
Sheridan and King 1972 conducted a similar study where real shocks were given to a puppy. Despite the real shocks, 54% of the male student participants and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock.
This suggests that the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved the same way with real shocks. Milgram himself reported that 70% of the participants said they believed the shocks were genuine.
What support replication is there to Milgram’s obedience study?
The game of death is a documentary that included a replication of Milgram’s study. Participants were paid to give fake electric shocks when ordered by the presenter to other participants who were in fact actors in front of a studio audience.
80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man. Their behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s participants - nervous laughter, nail biting and other signs of anxiety.
This replication supports Milgram’s original conclusions about obedience to authority and demonstrates that his findings were not just a one-off change occurrence.
What did Diana Baumrind say regarding the ethical issues with the Milgram obedience study?
Baumrind was critical of the ways Milgram deceived his participants. Milgram led participants to believe that the allocation of roles was random, when it was fixed. As well as deceiving participants into thinking the electric shocks were real.
Baumrind objected because she saw deception as a betrayal of the trust that could damage the reputation of psychologists and their research.
