Social influence Flashcards
What is conformity?
A type of social influence where beliefs and for behaviours change to fit in with a group. Group pressure can be real or imagined.
What are the three types of conformity?
Compliance, internalisation and identification
What is compliance?
When you don’t believe with behaviour but do it to fit in. They publicly agree with the group, but privately disagree. A temporary change.
What is internalisation?
When you do believe in an action, adopt as it fits your view. You agree with the view both publicly and privately. This is the deepest level of conformity, as its the individual’s own belief system.
What is identification?
The individual conforms with the majority because they want to become a part of the group or become associated with them. Behaviour and private views only change when they are with the group.
What is normative social influence?
When someone feels pressure in a group to fit in and be normal. This is compliance, and is temporary/superficial.
What is informational social influence?
When someone feels pressure in a group to be correct. This results in internalisation and is a permanent change.
What happened in Asch’s study?
Male US university students were seated round a table and asked to look at lines of different lengths and call out which line they thought was the standard line, with a real participant answering second to last.
What were the findings of Asch’s study?
The average conformity was 33% when participants agreed with the incorrect answer given by confederates.
How does group size affect conformity?
Asch found there was little conformity when there was less majority of confederates. He found that when the group size/majority size is bigger then the individual is more likely to conform.
How does the unanimity of the majority affect conformity?
Asch found that when there is another confederate that gives the right answer, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing percentage of wrong answers from 33% to just 5.5%. When the participant had support from someone else with their right answer, they are a lot less likely to conform and are more confident.
How does the difficulty of the task affect conformity?
Asch made the differences between the line lengths smaller so it was less obvious and the levels of conformity increased. Informational social influence- the ppt wants to be correct.
How does self-efficacy affect conformity?
In taks, high self-efficacy participants (ppl more confident in their abilities) remained more confident than low self-efficacy participants, even in difficult tasks. This shows as well as situational factors, individual differences are also important.
How does Asch’s study lack historical validity?
Because during 1956 in US history, people were scared to go against the majority and therefore they conformed. This may have meant Asch’s findings were unique; they were replicated in the UK in the 80s and conformity levels dropped.
How are there cultural differences in conformity (Asch)?
Asch- type studies from across the globe were analysed; and found that individualist cultures (UK, US) the average conformity rate was 25% whereas in collectivist cultures (Africa) it was around 37%
What are social roles?
The behaviour expected of an individual who occupies a given social position or status
What was the procedure of the Stanford prison experiment?
A mock prison was set up in Stanford Uni basement and 24 male student volunteers were assigned to play the role of ‘prisoners’ or guards’. The prisoners were randomly arrested at home and treated like actual prisoners. Zimbardo played the role of superintendent, and was planned to last 2 weeks.
What were the findings of the Stanford prison experiment?
The ‘guards’ grew abusive towards the prisoners and abused their power a lot, to the point where the prisoners were dehumanised. Five prisoners had to be released because of extreme reactions (e.g. anxiety, rage) after 2 days. The study was meant to last 2 weeks, but was terminated after 6 days.
What happened in the BBC prison study? (Halsam and Reicher)
The BBC made a documentary where they replicated the SPE; fifteen males were divided into 5 groups, in the 3 there was one guard and 2 prisoners. It was run for 8 days. The ppts did not conform to their roles and authority was not determined, meaning the prisoner-guard system collapsed.
How is the SPE not supported by the BBC prison study?
They found that in the BBC study conformity was not automatic and it challenged Zimbardo’s belief that the guards will develop sadistic behaviour in their role. Even in the SPE their was a few guards who did not conform and degrade the prisoners; this suggested that the guards chose to behave. Also, Zimbardo will have had investigator effects.
How was there demand characteristics in SPE?
The behaviour/conformity of the SPE participants may have been due to demand characteristics because they presented the theory to a sample of students who haven’t heard of the study and the majority guessed the hypothesis of the study.
How were their ethical problems in SPE?
Because the participants were arrested against their knowledge which could have been traumatic, and many of the participants experienced anxiety disorders and PTSD and they didn’t really get offered support for this harm. They were denied the right to withdraw, which is now a violation of the BPS. Studies like these help psychologists now to establish a better and more ethical procedure.
How does Abu Ghraib support SPE?
Abu Ghraib was a military prison in Iraq, where US soldiers tortured iraqi prisoners. They conformed to the roles. Real world application/validity.
What is obedience to authority?
A type of social influence; someone acts in a response from someone with perceived authority. In many cases, this act would not have been done if it wasn’t for the authority of the higher figure.
