Social influence AO1 Flashcards
Outline 3 types of conformity
- Internalisation
A genuine change of private views to match a group - Identification
Changing our opinion because it is a group we value - Compliance
Publicly conforming to a group
Outline explanations of conformity
- NSI
Need to be liked and gain approval - causes compliance - ISI
A Need to be right - causes internalisation
Outline Asch’s Study - to see if Ps would conform to majority social influence
(Include Findings)
Pro: Asch misinformed the Ps stating it was a Perception of Line study
- 123 College students
- Ps we’re put in groups of 7 and included only one real participant , the rest were confederates
They were asked to see which line matched the three given and the confederates would answer wrong
Findings: the average conformity rate was 33%
- 75% confirmed at least once
Control group was created and found that participants made mistakes 1% of the time concluding the task didn’t have a clear and obvious answer
Outline variables affecting conformity (Asch)
- Group Size - Asch found that increasing group size up to a point increases conformity rates
- Unanimity - the breakdown of unanimous decisions can cause conformity to decrease
- Difficulty - the more difficult the task is, the more likely people conform
Outline Conformity to Social Roles
(Investigated by Zimbardo)
Pro: - set up a mock prison in a psychology department
- used volunteer sample
- students were randomly assigned to a guard or a prisoner
- staged the arrest of the prisoners
a guards were told they had power over the prisoners and had to refer to them by their numbers not names
Findings:
- Guards behaviour grew increasingly abusive
- Guards highlighted differences in social roles
- within two days the prisoners rebelled
- the guards put down the rebellion by using fire extinguishers
- the study was terminated after 6 days due to the poor treatment of the prisoners
Outline studies of Obedience (Milgram)
Pro: Ps were told they were investigating punishment and learning
- Teacher was the P and the Learner was a confederate
- Teacher would give shocks if the learner got a Question wrong and would increase the shock level by 15 Volts up to 450V
Findings: All Ps went up to 300 Volts
65% went up to the max 450 Volts
Outline explanations of obedience
(Situational)
Milgram carried out variations to see if situational variables effect obedience
These were:
- Location - obedience fell in a less professional setting - 47.5%
- Proximity - obedience was effected by
Prox to victim - 40%
Prox to authority - 20.5%
- Uniform - obedience fell when the authority figure was dressed casually
20% lowest
Outline explanations for obedience
(Dispositional)
Agentic State - you are more likely to obey an order when you see yourself as having no personal responsibility for your actions
Legitimacy of Authority - we are socialised to recognise authority figures such as Police and Doctors and we give up our independence to hand over control to these figures
Outline explanations of obedience
(Dispositional explanation)
Adorno believed it was the persons personality (Authoritarian) who are susceptible to conformity and obeying
According to Adorno, the authoritarian personality is developed during childhood due to harsh parenting. Therefore the child displaces fear onto others who they perceive to be weaker
F-Scale - a measure for the authoritarian personality via questionnaire
Findings: those who scored high tended to be very obedient to authority as they hold respect for them
Outline resistance to social influence
Social support - pressure to conform is more likely when the group in unanimous,
However if one person in the group resist pressures, this can help others do the same
Locus of Control - those with a high internal LOC are more likely to resist pressures to conform
- Internal LOC - I control
- External LOC - They control
