Social Influence - AO1 Flashcards
What’s conformity
- type of social influence
- changes in beliefs/ behaviour to fit in
- real or imagined social pressure
Types of conformity
- compliance (weakest) = superficial change: change in public with a group but don’t change personal, private opinion
- identification = conforming to the group while with them
- internalisation (strongest) = permanent change: accept the norms and change publicly and privately
What’s Deutsch’s and Gerard’s theory
- people conform to be right = informative social influence (ISI)
- people conform to be liked = normative social influence (NSI)
Asch’s research into conformity (baseline study)
- measuring length of lines
- 75% conformed at least once in all trials
Asch’s variations
- Group size = with 3 confederates conformity rose but adding more didn’t effect
- Unanimity = when all confederates said the same answer (was unanimous) there was highest conformity
- task difficulty = the harder it was to work out the correct line length, conformity increased as participants look at others for guidance
Zimbardo’s research (conformity to social roles)
- Picked random under-graduate males from the USA to play the role of prisoners or guards
- the prisoners and the guards identified with their social roles: prisoners referred to themselves as their number , the guards became abusive
What’s obedience
- form of social influence
- where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual
Milgram’s obedience study (baseline)
- wanted to understand why the German population followed Hitler’s orders in the Holocaust
- male participants were told to give the learner an electric shock if they got the wrong question
- 65% continued to the highest level of volts when the experimenter/ authorativr figure told them to
Milgram’s variations
- Proximity = distance between the participant & the experimenter or the participant & the learner (when the authoritative figure gave orders to participants over the phone obedience was the lowest)
- Location = conducted the study in a run down area rather than Yale University and obedience fell (the experimenter has less authority)
- Uniform = the experimenter wore ordinary clothes rather than a lab coat and the obedience rate dropped to the lowest
What’s the agentic state
Where someone feels no personal responsibility for their actions/ behaviour = acting as an agent for the authority
- doing something you don’t want to do but doing it anyway to obey
What’s the autonomous state
A person feels free to behave to their own personal principals = feel a sense of responsibility
What’s the agentic shift
The shift from autonomy to ‘agent’
What’s binding factors
Aspects of a situation that allow people to ignore/ minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour
What’s legitimacy of authority
A social psychological explanation for obedience that suggests we are likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
- the authority is justified (legitimate) by the individuals position of power within the social hierarchy
What’s social hierarchy
People in authority hold certain power over others below them
- the idea that we accept the fact that authoritative figures have to be allowed to exercise power in order for society to run
- people are willing to give up our independence and control to authority to exercise their power
- legitimate authority is learned from childhood
Dispositional explanations of obedience
Focus on internal characteristics (personality) that lead to a person to become more or less likely to obey
What’s the authoritarian personality
A type of personality that Adorno argued was highly susceptible to obey authority
• submissive to those with a high social status
• dismissive of inferiors
- said to originate from childhood as a result of harsh parents
Adorno’s research
Developed the f-scale (fascism scale) to investigate why people during the Holocaust obeyed so strongly
- High f scale score = authoritarian personality
Resistance to social influence
To ability to withstand social pressures to conform to the majority of obey to the authority
- influenced by situational factors (environment) and dispositional factors (internal)
Resistance to social influence - situational factors
Social support
- the presence of people who resist pressures to conform/ obey can help others to do the same
Resistance to social influence - dispositional factors
Locus of control
•internals = believe that things happen to them are due to themselves (high LoC)
- more likely to resist pressures of social influence as they feel responsible for their own actions
•externals = believe things happen out of their control (low LoC)
- it’s a continuum = people constantly differ in the way they explain their successes and failures
Minority influence
- form of social influence
- minority group tries to persuade others to adapt their beliefs, attitudes, behaviour
- the minority shaping the view of the majority
- leads to internationalisation or conversion
Three processes that allow the minority to have an impact
- CONSISTENCY
•synchronic = all saying the same thing
•diachronic = same thing overtime - COMMITMENT
•show dedication and risk to the cause = majority are more likely to consider their view and they can clearly see how important it must be - FLEXIBILITY
• need to accept the possibility of compromise / adapt to enact smaller changes
Moscovici’s study
- blue green slides
- groups where a minority of confederates consistently said the same colour, participants also answered the same wrong answer ~ 32% gave the same answer as the minority (confederates) at least once
Research into conformity
Asch
Research into conformity to social roles
Zimbardo
Research into the effect of situational variables on obedience
Milgram
Social psychological factors
Agentic state
Legitimacy of authority
The authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience
Adorno’s f-scale
Explanations of resistance to social influence
Social support
Locus of control
Social change
Where whole societies adapt new attitudes and beliefs, which then becomes widely accepted as the norm
6 stages needed to encourage the majority to favour the minority and internalise their view
Drawing attention
Consistency
Deeper processing
Augmentation principle
The snowball effect
Social crytomnesia
