Social Influence AO3 Flashcards
Evaluate Asch’s research into conformity
+One strength is that there is research evidence to support Asch’s findings from Lucas et al when asking participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems. Participants were found to conform more often when the problems were harder, implying credibility regarding Asch’s findings.
-However, the experiment was conducted in a lab setting, so the situation and task were artificial. As a result, participants were aware that they were in a research study and thus may have simply gone along with what was expected of them (demand characteristics). This limits the generalisability of the findings.
-Another limitation is that Asch’s findings have little application due to the sample consisting of only American men. For example, psychologist Neto suggested that women might be more conformist, due to their concerns about social relationships, which is not reflected in Asch’s study.
Evaluate explanations for conformity
+One strength of NSI is that there is research support from Asch’s line judgement task as Asch found that many participants conformed due to fear of social disapproval/rejection. Thus, when participants wrote the answers down, conformity dropped to 12.5%, supporting NSI.
+One strength for NSI is that there is also research support from psychological studies. For example, Lucas et al found that participants conformed more when they were given difficult questions as the situation was ambiguous so they relied on the answers that the group gave.
-However, it is unclear if NSI or ISI operate in these studies. For example, the dissenter in Asch’s study may reduce the power of NSI (social support) and/or reduce the power of ISI (alternative source). Thus the two are hard to separate as they are potentially operating together and the studies findings give invalid evidence for the explanations.
Evaluate conformity to social roles.
+One strength is that, during the experiment, Zimbardo had control over key variables as only emotionally-stable participants were recruited and randomly allocated the roles of prisoner or guard. Thus the guards and prisoners had their roles only by chance so their behaviour was due to the role itself and not their personalities, increasing the study’s internal validity.
-However, the Stanford prison experiment lacks the realism of a true prison as participants were, arguably, play-acting with their performances reflecting stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are meant to behave. For example one guard says that he based his role on a character from ‘Cool Hand Luke’. COUNTERPOINT: participants behaved as if the prison was real as 90% of conversations were about prison life.
-A further limitation is that Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles and their influence on behaviour. This is because only a third of the guards behaved brutally, another third applied the rules fairly and the rest supported the prisoners by offering them cigarettes and reinstating privileges. Thus, Zimbardo arguably exaggerates the power of social roles and ignores dispositional factors (e.g. individual’s personality).
Evaluate obedience.
-One limitation is that Milgram’s study lacked internal validity
-A further strength is that the findings are not due to blind obedience
-A final limitation is that there are ethical issues surrounding the experiment
Evaluate situational variables of obedience.
+One strength is that there is research support for the influence of situational variables
-However, the studies have low internal validity
-A further limitation is that there is a danger of the situational perspective
Evaluate situational explanations of obedience.
+One strength is that the agentic state explanation has research support
-However, the agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings
+One strength is that legitimacy can explain cultural differences
-However, legitimacy cannot explain all (dis)obedience
Evaluate dispositional explanations of obedience.
+One strength is that there is research support for Adorno’s theory that authoritarians are obedient
-However, authoritarianism cannot explain a whole country’s behaviour
-A further limitation is that the F-scale is politically biased
Evaluate resistance to social influence.
+One strength is that research support for the role of support in resisting conformity
+Another strength is evidence for the role of support for dissenting peers
+One strength is evidence to support the role of LOC in resisting obedience
-However, there is research showing there is a limited role of the LOC
Evaluate minority influence
+One strength is that there is research support for consistency from Moscovici et al’s study. He found that a consistent minority opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. Additionally, Wood et al conducted a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities seen as being consistent were most influential.
-However, minority influence research often involves artificial tasks and can be said to lack mundane realism. For example, Moscovici et al’s task was identifying the colour of a slide, far removed from how minorities try to change majority opinion in the real world. Thus, findings of the study lack external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real-world situations.
-A further limitation is that studies have indicated little use for the concept of minority influence. For example, in Moscovici et al’s study, the figure of agreement with a consistent minority was, on average, only 8%. This suggests that minority influence is rare and thus not useful when explaining conformity and/or social change.
Evaluate social influence processes
+One strength of social influence processes is that there is research support for the effects of normative social influence in social change. For example, Schultz left a message in half of the rooms in a hotel saying “75% of our guests re-use their towels”. From this he found a 25% reduction in the request for fresh towels in those rooms, showing the effectiveness of NSI as a social influence process.
+Another strength is that minority influence can explain social change. Nemeth says that minority arguments cause people to engage in divergent thinking, leading to better decisions and creative solutions to social problems and further showing how minorities are valuable and useful in society.
-However, Bashir et al points out that people can still resist the social influence processes. This is because they found that participants were less likely to behave in environmentally-friendly ways because they did not want to be associated with stereotypical and minority ‘environmentalists’ who had previously been described in negative ways (e.g. ‘tree-huggers’).
