Social Influence

Question 1

What did Asch do?

Answer 1

He conducted research into conformity
- 123 male americans

• confederates deliberately gave wrong answers to see if participant would conform
• naive participant conformed on 36.8% of trials. 25% never conformed
• conformity increased up to a group size of four
• conformity increased when task was harder
• dissenter reduced conformity

Question 2

Evaluation of Asch’s research?

Answer 2

• Perrin and spencer - found less conformity in 1980 than 1950
• artificial task meant that participants just played along with the trivial task (demand characteristics)
• only conducted the research on men - limited application
• findings only apply to certain situations

Question 3

What did Zimbardo do?

Answer 3

The Stanford prison experiment

• mock prison with students randomly assigned as guards or prisoners
• guards became increasingly brutal, prisoners withdrawn and depressed
• found that participants conformed to their roles as guards or prisoners

Question 4

Evaluation of Zimbardo’s research

Answer 4

• the participants were randomly assigned to roles which increased internal validity
• there was a lack of realism - the participants were play acting their roles according to media-derived stereotypes
• only 1/3 of the guards were brutal so conclusions exaggerated
• lack of research support
• ethical issues

Question 5

What did Milgram do?

Answer 5

• participants gave fake electric shocks to a ‘learner’ in obedience to instructions from the ‘experimenter’
• 65% gave highest shock of 450v
• 100% gave up to 300v
• many showed signs of anxiety

Question 6

Evaluation of Milgram’s research

Answer 6

• low internal validity - participants realised shocks were fake - replication with real shocks gave similar results - Sheridan and King
• good external validity
• game of death found 80% gave maximum shock
• an alternative explanation is the social identity theory - obedience lies in group conformity
• ethical issues

Question 7

What are the situational variables of Milgram’s research?

Answer 7

• proximity - obedience increased to 40% when teacher could hear learner and to 30% when in touch proximity condition
• location - obedience decreased to 47.5% when study moved to rundown office block
• uniform - obedience decreased to 20% when ‘member of the public was experimenter’

Question 8

Evaluation of Milgram’s situational variables

Answer 8

• Bickman showed power of uniform in field experiment
• Orne and Holland - some of Milgram’s procedures showed not so genuine obedience
• cross cultural findings support Milgram
• not generalisable only conducted in western cultures
• the ‘obedience alibi’
• control of variables - one at a time

Question 9

What are the different types of conformity?

Answer 9

• internalisation - private and public acceptance of group norms
• identification - change behaviour to be part of a group we identify with
• compliance - go along with group public ally but no private change

Question 10

What are the explanations of conformity?

Answer 10

• informational social influence
  
  • conform to be right
  • assume others know better than us
• normative social influence
  
  • conform to be liked of accepted by group

Question 11

Evaluation of the explanations of conformity

Answer 11

• more conformity to incorrect maths answers when they were difficult, as predicted by ISI
• nAffiliators want to be like more NSI
• dissenter may reduce power of ISI and NSI

Question 12

What are the social-psychological factors of obedience about the agentic state?

Answer 12

• Agentic state - acting as agent of another
• Autonomous state - free to act according to conscience
• switching between the two - agentic shift
• binding factors - reduce the moral strain they are feeling

Question 13

What are the social-psychological factors of obedience about the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 13

• legitimacy of authority- created by hierachical nature of society
• destructive authority - charismatic and powerful leaders - Hitler

Question 14

Evaluation of the social- psychological factors of obedience about the agentic state

Answer 14

• agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience - Hofling et al (nurses should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants but this wasn’t the case)
• Blass and Schmitt found that people do blame the legitimate authority for the participant’s behaviour

Question 15

Evaluation of the social- psychological factors of obedience about the legitimacy of authority

Answer 15

• explains obedience in different cultures because it reflects different social hierarchies
• the obedience alibi - cannot be explained in terms of authority and an agentic shift
• can help explain how obedience can lead to real life war crimes

Question 16

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 16

• Adorno et al used the F-scale to study unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
• found that people with authoritarian personalities identify with the ‘strong’ and have fixed cognitive style
• an authoritarian characteristic is that they have extreme respect for authority and obedience to it
• harsh patenting creates hostility that cannot be expressed against parents so is displaced

Question 17

Evaluation of the authoritarian personality

Answer 17

• some of Milgram’s obedient participant had authoritarian personalities
• can’t explain increase in obedience across a whole culture. A better explanation is social identity theory
• equates authoritarian personality with right-wing ideology and ignores extreme left-wing authoritarianism
• Methodological problems - ‘a comedy of methodological errors’
• correlation not causation

Question 18

What is included in resistance to social influence?

Answer 18

Social support

Locks of control

Question 19

What is social support?

Answer 19

Social support can help people to resist conformity.

• Asch’s research shows that only one needs to not conform even if they aren’t giving the right answer they act as a model
• it’s reduced by presence of dissenters from the group
• it decreases in presence of disobedient peer who acts as a model to follow

Question 20

The evaluation for social support

Answer 20

• support - conformity decreases when one person dissents even if they are not credible (Allen and Levine)
• support - obedience drops when disobedient role models are present (Gamson et al)

Question 21

What is a locus if control?

Answer 21

Sense of what directs events in our lives (Rotter)

• it’s a continuum high internal at one end and high external at the other
• people with high internal LOC are more able to resist pressures to conform or obey

Question 22

Evaluation of locus of control

Answer 22

• support- internals less likely to fully obey in Milgram- type procedure (Holland)
• against - people have become more external and more disobedient recently (Twenge et al) makes it had to explain evens with LOC
• limited role of locus of control - if you conform to a specific situation in the past you are likely to do so again even if you have an internal locus of control

Question 23

What is minority influence?

Answer 23

Where the minority of people persuade others do adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours

Question 24

What will the minority do to try to change people’s beliefs?

Answer 24

• consistency - (synchronic consistency - they’re all saying the same thing. Diachronic consistency- they’ve been saying the same thing for some time)
• commitment - sometimes engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their view
• flexibility - prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments

People switch from the majority to the minority. The more it happens the faster the rate of conversion this is called the snowball effect. This happens until the minority becomes the majority

Question 25

Evaluation of the minority influence

Answer 25

• support for consistency- Moscovici et al - a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion
• support for depth of thought - minority views have longer effect because they are deeply processed (Martin et al)
• tasks often trivial so tell us little about really life influence
• limited real world application as real life situations are much more complicated
• support for internalisation - Moskovici- when asked to write their answers down private agreement with the minority position was greater

Question 26

What is social change?

Answer 26

This occurs when whole societies adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things eg. Accepting that the earth orbits the sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental issues

Question 27

What is the special role of minority influence?

Answer 27

1- drawing attention 
2- consistency 
3- deeper processing 
4- augmentation principle 
5- the snowball effect 
6- social cryptomnesia - people have a memory that change has occurred but don’t remember how it happened 

Use civil rights movement in the USA

Question 28

Explain social change

Answer 28

• normative social influence can lead to social change by drawing attention to what majority is doing
• obedience research - Zimbardo ‘gradual commitment’ - once a small instruction is obeyed it becomes harder to resist a bigger one. People drift from one behaviour to another

Question 29

Evaluation of social change

Answer 29

• support - NSI valid explanation of social change eg. Reducing energy consumption (Nolan et al)
• effects of minority influence are limited because they are indirect and appear later (Nemeth)
• Mackie- it’s majority influence that may create deeper processing if you do not share their views. This challenges a central feature of minority influence
• Doubts on the validity as there are methodological weaknesses in their studies (Asch, Moscovici and Milgram)
• barriers to social change - some didn’t agree with the minority to behave in environmentally friendly ways even though they agree that it is necessary because they didn’t want to be associated with the stereotypical environmentalists