SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Question 1

what is compliance?

Answer 1

Individuals may go along with the group in order to gain approval or avoid disapproval

Fitting in is seen as desirable and so motivates conformity

Doesn’t result in any change in underlying attitude (private views) but changes public views expressed

Question 2

what is identification?

Answer 2

Might accept influence because they want to be associated with another person or group

Has elements of compliance and internalisation

Question 3

what is internalisation?

Answer 3

Go along with the group because of an acceptance of their views

Undergo a validation process of their own beliefs, examining the group position may mean you come to the conclusion that you are wrong and they are right

This can lead to acceptance of the groups view both publicly and privately

Question 4

what is normative social influence?

Answer 4

an individual conforms with the expectations of the majority in order to gain approval or avoid social disapproval.
the person tends to go along with the majority without accepting their point of view. (Conforming publicly but not changing their private views)

Question 5

what does normative social influence result in?

Answer 5

compliance

Question 6

what does informational social influence result in?

Answer 6

internalisation

Question 7

what is informational social influence?

Answer 7

occurs as a result from the desire to be right and so people look to others as a way of gaining evidence about reality

human beings not only have a need to be accepted but also be confident that their beliefs are correct, and so often rely on others to provide the correct information

most likely to occur in an ambiguous situation where there is an unclear answer or in a situation where others are experts

Question 8

outline the procedure of Ashc’s experiment (1956)

Answer 8

123 male US undergraduates were asked to look at lines of different lengths and told to compare with the ‘standard line’

Took it in turns to call out which number matched, with the ‘real’ participant answering second to last

There were fairly obvious solutions, 12 out of 18 were critical trials were the confederates would give the same incorrect answer

Question 9

outline the findings and conclusion of Ashc’s experiment (1956)

Answer 9

• On the 12 critical trials, conformity was 33%
• ¼ of participants never conformed
• ½ conformed on 6 or more
• 1/20 conformed on all 12

Conclusions:
Asch, after conducting interviews with participants found that they had demonstrated Normative social influence (compliance). This is because they had changed their public behaviour but continued to trust their own perceptions

Question 10

what are the three variables affecting conformity?

Answer 10

Group size, unanimity and difficulty of the task

Question 11

how does group size affect conformity?

Answer 11

The size of the majority affects levels of conformity but only up to a certain point
(Asch found there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of 1 or 2 confederates but under the pressure of 3 as the majority, conformity increased up to 30%)

Question 12

how does unanimity of the majority affect conformity?

real participant gave same answer… and dissenter provided different answer …

Answer 12

When the real participant was given the support of a confederate who gave the same answer then conformity levels dropped to 5.5%
When a dissenter provided an answer different from the group and the real participant, conformity dropped to 9%

Question 13

how does difficulty of the task affect conformity?

Answer 13

Levels of conformity increased (Asch made the differences between the lines a lot smaller so the correct answer was less obvious)

Question 14

what are weaknesses of Achs experiment?

Answer 14

low in ecological validity, biased sample of 50 male students - harder to generalise to females, lacks population validity

ethically questionable - deception and protection from harm (was required though) - did interview afterwards

Question 15

Outline the procedure in Zimbardos experiment

Answer 15

the study comprised 24 male college students (chosen from 75 volunteers) who were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment.

Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and ‘booked.’

All guards were dressed in identical uniforms of khaki, and they carried a whistle around their neck and a billy club borrowed from the police.

Guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners.

No physical violence was permitted.

Zimbardo observed the behavior of the prisoners and guards (as a researcher), and also acted as a prison warden.

Question 16

Outline the findings in Zimbardos experiment

Answer 16

The prisoners were taunted with insults and petty orders, they were given pointless and boring tasks to accomplish, and they were generally dehumanized.

Less than 36 hours into the experiment, Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage.

Zimbardo (1973) had intended that the experiment should run for a fortnight, but on the sixth day it was terminated. Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw the prisoners being abused by the guards.

Question 17

Outline the conclusion drawn from Zimbardos experiment

Answer 17

People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards.

The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study).

Therefore, the findings support the situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.

Question 18

what are weaknesses in zimbardo’s research?

Answer 18

breaches almost every ethical principle in contemporary psychology but debriefing was used, and follow-up questionnaires monitored any permanent harm at weeks, months and years after the study

Question 19

what are strengths in zimbardo’s research?

Answer 19

the methodology used by Zimbardo is the balance it strikes between control and ecological validity. By producing a simulation, he manages to obtain more control than a field experiment (e.g. by ensuring that his participants were “normal”) whilst ensuring more ecological validity than a lab experiment

Question 20

Outline the BBC Prison study (reicher and haslam 2006)

Answer 20

randomly assigned men to the role of guard or prisoner and examined their behaviour in a specially created prison.

15 male participants were divided into 5 groups of 3 who were as closely matched as possible on key personality variables. From each group of 3, two became prisoners and the other a guard.

The study was to run for 8 days.

Participants did not conform automatically to their assigned role as the prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the authority of the guards in order to establish better relations.

The guards failed to identify with their role and impose authority so there was a shift of power.

Question 21

Outline the procedure in Milgrams experiment

Answer 21

40 participants owere told it was an experiment of how punishment affects learning

There were two experimental confederates, an experimenter and a 47 year old man who was introduced as another volunteer.

The two participants drew lots to see who would be the ‘learner’ and the ‘teacher’ - rigged so the real participant was always the teacher

The teacher tested the learner on ability to remember word pairs, when he got one wrong he was administered an increasingly strong electric shock starting at 15 and going to 450 (15V increments)

The learner was in the other room and received fake shocks in silence until 300v where he stopped answering, the teacher gave ‘prods’ for him to continue

Question 22

Outline the findings in Milgrams experiment

Answer 22

65% continued to 450 Volts despite it being labeled at 420 - Danger, and XXX at 450 Volts
100% went to 300V
12.5% stopped at 300V

Question 23

what situational factors affect obedience?

Answer 23

proximity, location and power of uniform

Question 24

how did proximity affect obedience?

touch proximity and experimenter absent

Answer 24

Obedience fell to 40% when the learner and teacher were in the same room because they could experience the anguish more directly

In the ‘touch proximity’ condition (where the learner had to force their hand onto the shock plate, obedience dropped to 30%

In the ‘experimenter absent’ condition (where instructions were given over the phone, obedience fell to 21%

Question 25

how did location affect obedience?

Answer 25

Studies were conducted at Yale university and p’s remarked that it gave them confidence in the integrity in the people involved

When moving the location to a rundown office,, obedience dropped to 48%

Question 26

how did uniform affect obedience?

Answer 26

Bushman (1988) carried out a study where a female researcher dressed in ‘police style’, business executive or as a beggar and stopped people in the street and told them to give change to a male researcher for an expired parking meter.

In the uniform obedience = 72%, business executive = 48%, beggar = 52%

Question 27

what are weaknesses into research into obedience?

Answer 27

Ethical issues - deception and lack of consent for the true purpose, but this would have led to demand characteristics.
Orne and Holland (1968) claimed p’s in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know the true purpose of the study may be disguised

Question 28

what are strength into research into obedience?

Answer 28

A commonly held assumption that women would be more susceptible to social influence than men. (Eagly 1978). Blass (1999) conducted nine replications of Milgram’s work and found that 8/9 times there was no evidence of gender differences.

Question 29

what is the agentic state?

Answer 29

when a person sees himself or herself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes

Question 30

what is legitimate authority?

Answer 30

a person who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation

Question 31

why do some people feel they have to adopt an agentic state?

Answer 31

the need to maintain a positive self-image. Because the action is no longer their responsibility, it no longer reflects their self image. Actions performed under the agentic state are, from the p’s perspective, virtually guilt-free, however inhumane they might be.

Question 32

what is a binding factor?

Answer 32

something which keeps the participant in the experiment as they fear breaking it off will appear rude

Question 33

why does legitimate authority require an institution?

Answer 33

If an authority figures commands are of a potentially harmful or destructive form then for them to be perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure