Social Influence AO1 Flashcards
What is conformity?
Yielding to either real or perceived group pressure
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Internalisation, Identification and Compliance
What is Compliance?
- The weakest form of conformity
- When an individual accepts influence because of the hope to achieve a favorable reaction from those around
- No change to private beliefs only public behavior
What is Identification?
- The middle form of conformity
- A person changes their public behavior and also their private beliefs but only while with the group they identify with
What is Internalisation?
- The strongest form of conformity
- When an individual accepts influence because the content of the attitude is consistent with their own beliefs
- Vegan/ Vegetarian
What are the 2 explanations for conformity?
Normative Social Influence (NSI) and Informative Social Influence (ISI)
What is Informative Social Influence (ISI) ?
- When we have a desire to be correct and a need for certainty
-Refer to groups for more information - This leads people to change their private opinion and they now think the way they behave is correct
- Private Acceptance (Conversion)
What is Normative Social Influence (NSI) ?
- We conform because we have a desire to be approved
- Social groups have the power to reward or punish
- Does not necessarily lead to change in private opinion and they just need to behave differently
- Public Compliance ( Following Social Norms )
What is Asch’s Experiment?
- Asch carried out an experiment to determine whether people would conform to the majority when the answer was clear
- Fifty MALE college students
- He had 6 confederates and 1 naive participant draw simple conclusions for different length lines on a projector
- He had the naive participant go last after the confederates had stated the incorrect answer
- As a result 75% of the participants conformed at least once throughout the experiment and only the remaining 25% never once conformed
What were the variables found to affect conformity in Asch study?
Group Size, Task Difficulty and Unanimity
How did Group Size affect conformity?
As found in Asch’s study
- The percentage of conformity increased when the amount of confederates increased but only up until a certain point e.g. 3 confederates
- Any further increase of conformity does not lead to an increase in conformity
How does Unanimity affect Conformity?
As found in Asch’s study
- If someone else gives a different answer to the rest of the group it is less likely that people will conform because frees for more independance
- Breaking up a group consensus has an impact
How does Task Difficulty affect Conformity?
As found in Asch’s Study
- Conformity increased because it was less clear
- Lucas et al (2006) found that self-efficacy ( self-belief in yourself) has an impact as participants are confident in their own answer remain independant
What was the Stanford Prison Experiment and what happened?
- Volunteers had joined through a newspaper ad and were interviewed and then randomly assigned roles as prisoner or guard
- On Sunday (the 1st day) prisoners were ‘arrested’ and transported to the prison where they were stripped and sprayed one by one
- The guards were given no rules or limitations
- At 2:30 AM the prisoners were awakened for a count of their numbers and were joking around, while guards did not assert authority
- On the second day prisoners removed their caps and numbers and barricaded themselves inside their cell
- Guards got fire extinguishers and shot in CO2 to usher prisoners away from the door
- Guards broke into the cell and stripped the prisoners until they were naked and took their beds away
What happened in the second part of the Stanford Prison Experiment?
After the prisoners were stripped naked and beds taken away.
- 36 hours in Prisoner 8612 showed signs of emotional disturbance which led him to be released and let go
- Prisoners had visitor day and some parents were disturbed by the state of their children
- The guards began to escalate and increased the scale of their harassment
- Prisoner 819 had a mental breakdown and was released
- There was a mock parole hearing
- The newly brought in prisoner was rebellious and in turn was locked in ‘the hole’ over night
- The experiment was ended and the prisoners were released because of the new sadistic ways of the guards
- Both the guards and prisoners underwent psychological treatment
What is the definition of obedience?
A type of social influence where a person follows a direct order from another person who is seen as an authority figure e.g. police officer
How is obedience different to conformity?
You are not changing your beliefs or behavior you are only following an instruction
What was the procedure of Milgrams ‘Electric Shock’ study?
- His aim was to prove ‘Germans are different’ based on the atrocities of WW2
- 40 male participants (white, middle class, American) aged between 20 and 50
Took place in a lab at Yale University and a naive participant was always assigned the role of teacher and the confederate was always the learner - The learner was strapped to an ‘electric chair’ and the teacher was told to ask about word pairs, and when the learner was wrong an electric shock was administered
- Every time the answer was wrong the voltage was increased by 15 ( and went up to 450 volts)
- The confederate would yell up until 180 volts, and then began to scream and complain about his heart, and then 315 volts onwards refused to answer the questions
- An experimenter would tell the participants he had to continue and had no other choice
What were the findings of Milgrams Study?
- All participants continued to give volts up to the 300 level
- 65% continued to reach the maximum level of 450 volts (contradictory to the initial prediction on 35%)
What were some of the variations completed in Milgrams study?
- Venue was moved to run down offices
- Teacher and learner were in the same room
- Teacher had an assistant who administrated the shocks
What did Milgrams variations prove?
Obedience is heavily related to situational factors
What are the 3 situational variables associated with obedience?
Location, Proximity and Uniform
How does Location affect obedience?
- Location can give more authority to the situation and can make the experiment appear more genuine
- If a not as sophisticated location it has less credibility and less trust
- In Milgrams variation where the location was a run down office, the percentage was 47.5% (who reached 450 volts)
How does Proximity affect obedience?
- An increased proximity makes the participant less aware of the harm caused
- Being further away from an authority figure decreases obedience
- A decreased proximity allows people to distance themselves from consequences
- Being in the same room as the learner decreased the obedience
- Teacher and learner in the same room has a 40% 450 volts reach
How does Uniform affect obedience?
- Uniform is a physical and visible sign of legitimate authority and power
- When the lab coat was swapped to an ordinary man (20% obedience)
- Beckman’s Field Experiment (1924) where 3 people were dressed as a milkman, a security guard and a normal person. Asked members of the public to pick up litter, move or pay for parking. The guard was obeyed 76%, the milkman 46% and ordinary clothes at 30%
What was Hofling’s (1966) Study?
- An unknown doctor phoned 22 nurses and asked them to give a high dose of fake medicine
- The doctor then said they would sign it off once they reached the ward
- 21/22 of the nurses obeyed
- Location could be more important than proximity
What are the 2 explanations for obedience?
Legitimate Authority and Agentic State
What is Legitimate Authority?
- Societies are set up in hierarchical ways
- This means some people hold authority over them e.g. Prime Minister
- We learn to accept legitimate authority figures during childhood
- People obey when they recognise where they are in the hierarchy
- Recognise these figures have a right to make a demand
What are the 2 different states in the Agentic State?
Autonomous State and Agentic State
What is the Autonomous State?
Where people take responsibility for their own actions and act independently according to principles
What is the Agentic State?
Where we are instructed to do something by an authority figure and we pass responsibility for our actions onto them
What are Binding Factors?
Once you start obeying you can’t stop
What is the dispositional explanation of obedience?
The Authoritarian Personality
What is an Authoritarian Personality?
- Where a person shows extreme respect for authority and believe a society need strong and powerful leaders
- Likely to obey orders from authority figures
- Traits such as hostile towards those with a lower social status, conformist and conventional
How does an Authoritarian Personality develop?
- Develops from harsh parenting in childhood
- Parenting Style = very high standards and criticism
- Love from a parent is conditional and based on their behavior
- Creates resentment and hostility in child but can’t direct it towards parent so displace onto people they see as weaker
What was Adorno et al’s Research?
Procedure:
-Studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups
- He created the F-Scale (Potential-for-Fascism)
- Examples of statements on the F-Scale is ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’
Findings:
- People with authoritarian leanings identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally conscious of status and extreme respect for authoritarian figures
- Also found that these people have a very black-and-white way of thinking and used frequent stereotypes
What are the two explanations for resistance to social influence?
Locus of Control and Social Support
What is the insight for Social Support from Asch and Milgram?
Milgram:
- If you see another disobey it is easier for you too and acts as a model for how to behave and frees you to act based on consciousness (challenges legitimacy)
Asch:
- Easier to not conform if there are others who aren’t
- Acts as a social support factor and gives confidence and independance
What is Locus of Control?
How much a person believes that they have control over their life
What is an internal locus of control?
We believe that we have control over what happens in our lives
-Take responsibility for our actions
What does a high internal LOC mean?
We are less likely to obey and conform
What is an external locus of control?
We believe that things that happen are outside of our control and down to external factors
What is a high external LOC?
We are more likely to obey and conform
What is Minority Influence?
When one person/ small group influences the beliefs and behaviors of other people (can lead to internalisation)
What are the 3 different areas needed in minority influence?
-Consistency
-Commitment
-Flexibility
What is consistency in minority influence?
-An agreement between people in the minority (synchronic)
-Minority must be consistent in their views
-Over time this increases the amount of interest from other groups making them rethink
-Consistent over time (diachronic consistency)
What is commitment in minority influence?
-Minority must show commitment to their views/cause e.g. engaging in extreme activities
-If these activities present some risk to minority then this has an even bigger influence
-Majority realise that they are serious so pay attention (augmentation principle)
What is flexibility in minority influence?
-Some consistency can be off-putting (gets repetitive)
-Minority needs to be prepared to adapt their point of view and accept reasonable counter arguments
-Need a balance between consistency and flexibility
What is the supporting study for Minority Influence?
Moscovici (1969) ‘Green/Blue Slides’
How does minority influence the majority?
-Snowball Effect (more people keep joining the behavior)
What is social change?
Shift or change in society’s beliefs, behaviors and attitudes
What are the 6 steps of the role of minority influence in social change?
- Drawing Attention
- Consistency
- Deeper processing
- Augmentation Principle
- Snowball Effect
- Social Cryptomnesia
