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.
What was the aim of Milgrams study?
To investigate why germans were willing to kill jews during the holoucast. He wanted to investigate obedience in doing horrible things to other people.
What was the procedure of Milgrams study?
Participants were told that the study was for how punishment affects learning. Participants were ‘randomly’ assigned to the role of the teacher whereas the confederate was the learner. The teacher had to test the learner on the learner’s ability to remember word pairs, and for every one wrong they had to be shocked. These shocks started at 15V and went up to 450V. By 300V the ‘learner’ started to show extreme distress. After 315V the ‘learner’ made no noise at all. The experimenter continually reiterated that it was essential the experiment continues.
What were the findings of Milgram’s study?
100% of participants carried on up to 300V (completely contrary to what Milgram’s peers predicted)
65% of participants carried on up to 450V which was very shocking. The 450V even had warnings like ‘severe shock’ and ‘danger’.
In general, this shows that the majority of normal people are willing to be obedient to orders and this doesn’t make them evil?
What were the three situational factors involved in obedience?
Proximity, location, and the power of uniform
How does proximity have an influence on obedience?
When the authoritative figure is within close proximity, the individual feels more pressure to obey. This is demonstrated via Milgram’s study; the ‘experimenter absent study’ ,in which the teacher was given instructions via telephone, where only 21% continued to 450V instead of 65% in the original study.
How does location have an influence on obedience?
A more professional location increases obedience; several of Milgrams ppts said that because it was carried out at a prestigious American university that they felt it had more integrity. Milgram moved his study to a run down office; less than 50% of ppts delivered the 450V.
How does the power of uniform affect obedience?
Uniforms convey power and authority via schema, so a professional/authoritative uniform means someone is more likely to obey them. For example, in a study, 70% of people obeyed when a figure was dressed in police-style uniform, in comparison to around 50% when the figure was dressed in a business suit or as a beggar.
What is a strength of Milgram’s study?
It was heavily controlled within a laboratory setting which means it has a standardised, scientific procedure and establishes a causal relationship. However, this means that it lacks internal validity because the participants knew it was a scientific experiment. Also cannot be generalised on a wider scale; done in America which is a individualist culture, in a collectivist culture like in Africa more empathy for others may mean they are likely to obey less. Small no. of participants (40)- idiographic.
