Social Influence Flashcards
What is social influence?
The effect of other people on our behaviour.
What are the 5 types of social influence?
- Conformity
- Obedience
- Resistance
- Minority influence
- Social change
What is conformity?
A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from others, in line with the group’s behaviours or opinions.
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Internalisation
Identification
Compliance
What are the two explanations for why we conform?
Informational social influence
Normative social influence
What is internalisation conformity?
When a person genuinely accepts a group’s norms and privately and publicly changes their opinions or behaviours.
What are the 6 steps for social change to happen through minority influence?
Drawing attention Consistency Deeper processing The augmentation principle (commitment) The snowball effect Social cryptomnesia (no memory of how change happened)
What is identification conformity?
When a person conforms because there is something about the group they admire. They are seen to go along with the group although they may privately not agree with everything the group stands for.
What is compliance conformity?
Going along with others in public, but not privately changing opinions or behaviours.
Describe Asch’s baseline procedure.
123 American male participants.
One naive participant in each trial, others were confederates.
Task was that there were two white cards, one had a standard line and the other had 3 lines of different lengths, and one was the same as the standard line. Participants had to say which line had the same length as the standard line.
Confederates purposely said the wrong answer before the participant said their answer.
Unambiguous task.
What were the results of Asch’s baseline study?
Naive participants agreed with the other’s incorrect answer 36.8% of the time.
25% never conformed.
75% conformed at least once.
What are 3 criticisms of Asch’s research?
Lack of temporal validity - 1950s, more general fear of being different.
Artificial situation and task - demand characteristics, act differently with strangers rather than friends.
Not generalisable - only American men, women tend to conform more.
What evidence is there in Asch’s study for Informational social influence and Normative social influence?
Participants were interviewed - some said the group must be right as there were more of them.
There was still some conformity when the responses were secret - they internalised their answers.
What happened in Lucus et al’s study and how does it support Asch’s research?
Participants solved easy and hard maths questions and 3 other students gave answers.
Participants conformed more often when the questions were harder, it supports Informational social influence, Asch claimed conformity increases when the task is more ambiguous.
What are the 3 variables affecting conformity in Asch’s research?
Group size - 3 confederates made conformity rise to 31.8%, any more makes little difference.
Unanimity - with a disagreeing confederate, conformity reduced to a quarter.
Task difficulty - task made more ambiguous makes participants more likely to look for other people’s answers and assume they are right.
How were a sample of participants gathered and assigned into two groups in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
24 male student from Stanford University were selected to play roles of Prisoners and guards in a mock prison after being screened for physical and mental health. They were decided into two groups by a flip of a coin - half were guards and half were prisoners.
What did the researchers do to emphasise the different roles in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
Guards: Picked uniform Reflective sunglasses Keys, handcuffs, batons Went home after work Prisoners: Got arrested, blindfolded, stripped, deloused Given numbers Stayed in prison cells all day
What were the behaviours displayed during the study of the Stanford Prison Experiment?
Guards: Put prisoners in cupboards Made prisoners clean toilets with bare hands Abused and humiliated prisoners Prisoners: Rebelled Emotional breakdowns after 36 hours (5 prisoners) Obedient
What were Zimbardo’s conclusions relating to conformity in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
The prisoners and guards behaved the way they did because of the social roles they were in.
He felt it was evidence for the power of the situation to influence behaviour.
What evidence is there that the prison felt real to the participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
90% of prisoner’s conversation were about prison life.
One prisoners said afterwards ‘a prison run by psychologists instead of the state’.
One guard was dismayed at the way he acted, it wasn’t his character.
Prisoner wanted to do a hunger strike.
One refused to leave to repair his reputation.
Why do the controls Zimbardo used improve the validity of his study?
Independent groups design - screening for physical and mental health so we know the breakdowns were due to the situation.
Random allocation - removes bias, controls participant variables.
