Social Influence AO3

Question 1

Social change

Answer 1

+Nemeth - minority arguments engage in divergent thinking - stimulate new ideas

-Deeper processing applies to majority - majority thinking different creates pressure to think different

-NSI doesn’t produce long term change - foxcraft found small effect on drinking quantity but none on drinking frequency

Question 2

Milgram

Answer 2

+Research support - 54% males 100% females gave shocks to puppies, beauvois found 80% gave 460v to unconscious man

-Findings not due to blind obedience - social identity theory - 4th prod didn’t involve identification with science and saw more obedience

-Demand characteristics - some didn’t believe shocks were real

Question 3

Situational variables

Answer 3

+Research support - Bickman - obey security guard not confederate jacker/tie

-Low internal validity - results due to obedience or demand characteristics

+Cross culture replication - found obedience fell when proximity did, replications didn’t take place in culturally different societies from US (lacks cultural validity)

Question 4

Conformity types

Answer 4

+Research support (NSI) - Asch, wrote answers, conformity fell to 12.5%
+Research support (ISI) - (Lucas et al) found harder questions = more conformity
-DIssenter reduce power of ISI and NSI as hard to separate, operate together

Question 5

Asch

Answer 5

+Evidence support - lucas et al
-Artificial tasks - can’t generalise to every day
- Collectivist culture studies (china) found higher conformity

Question 6

Zimbardo

Answer 6

+Control key variables (internal validity) - emotionally stable ppts randomly allocated

-Ethical issues - caused psychological disturbance

-Lacked realism - stereotypes
-CP - 90% conversation about prison life. 416 thought real prison ran by psychologists

Question 7

Agentic state

Answer 7

+Research support - ppts acted easier as agents in Milgram when knew they weren’t responsible
-Rank + Jacobsen - nurses disobeyed doctor to give excessive dose

Question 8

Legitimacy of authority

Answer 8

+Explains cultural differences in authority
-Can’t explain all disobedience - innate tendancies to disobedience more important than LoA

Question 9

Social support

Answer 9

+ Pregnant adolescents resist smoking with buddy
+ Gamson found 88% rebelled agaisnt orders (supports dissenting peers)

Question 9

Authoritarian personality

Answer 9

-Can’t explain whole countries behaviour - millions germans anti sematic, social identity theory better explanation

-F scale favours rightwing - not comprehensive dispositional expalantion

+Elms and Milgran found disobedient people scored higher on F scale

Question 10

Locus of control

Answer 10

+ Holland found 37% of internals didn’t continue but only 23% of externals didn’t (increases validity)
-Twenge found people became more independent but have more external

Question 11

Minority influence

Answer 11

+Wood et al conducted meta analysis and found consistency most influential

-Artificial tasks - lacks external validity

+Minority has more enduring effect - martin et al found less willing to change opinions when listen to minority