Social Influence Evaluations Flashcards
Types of Conformity: Research Support
Asch’s (1951) study into conformity provides research support for normative social influence.
In his study Asch asked participants to decide which of two lines were the same length. He found that many of the participants went along with the obviously wrong answers of the other group members. When asked by Asch in post-experimental interviews why they did this, participants said that they changed their answer to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group. Further to this, Asch demonstrated in a later variation (1955) that when the pressure to publicly conform is removed by asking participants to write down their answers on a piece of paper, rather than say them aloud, the conformity rates fell to 12.5% as the fear of rejection became far less. This clearly shows that compliance had occurred as the participants conformed in order to ‘fit in’; thus supporting normative social influence as an explanation of conformity.
Types of Conformity: Individual Differences
One limitation of research into explanations of conformity is that NSI does not predict conformity in all cases. For example, some people (nAffiliators) are greatly concerned with being liked by others, and as a result they have been found to be more likely to conform. Further research by Perrin and Spencer, who replicated Asch’s experiment using science and engineering students, found far lower conformity rates than Asch. This shows that NSI underlies conformity for some people more than it does for others. There are individual differences in conformity that cannot be explained by one general theory of situational pressures.
Asch’s research: A child of its time
One weakness is that Asch’s findings have failed to be replicated in other time periods. For example, Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch’s study in the UK using science and engineering students. Their findings were significantly different from Asch’s original study, with only 1 conforming response out of 396 trials. Interestingly, in a further replication using youths on probation as participants and probation officers as confederates, they found very similar results to what Asch had found in the 1950s. Therefore, suggesting that the social dynamic was more akin with the social climate at the time of Asch’s research. This is a weakness as it suggests that Asch’s findings lack temporal/historical validity as they cannot necessarily be applied to other time periods.
Asch’s research: Artificial Situation and Task
Asch’s research has been criticised as both the situation and task were artificial and did not reflect real-life. For example, participants may have been affected by demand characteristics as they were aware that they were in an experiment and so they may have changed their behaviour to reflect what they expected the researcher wanted to find. In addition to this, the task was trivial and so it didn’t reflect real-life problems. There was no major consequence if they chose to conform. This is a weakness as both of the task and situation did not reflect real-life so the study lacks ecological validity as it is difficult to generalise findings beyond the experiment setting.
Asch’s research: Limited Application
Asch’s research has also been criticised due to the unrepresentative sample involved. All participants were male. This imposes a gender bias as the information obtained can only tell us about how males would react in this situation, and therefore we cannot say for certain that females would react in the same way. In fact, other research (e.g. Neto) suggests that females may be more likely to conform than males as they may be more concerned about social relationships. In addition to this, all participants were American. This creates a culture bias as again it only gives us limited insight into conformity at a universal level. Other research has suggested that conformity may be higher in collectivist cultures than individualist cultures (such as the USA). This is a weakness as Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from other cultures, and therefore lacks population validity.
Asch’s research: Ethical Issues
Finally, Asch’s research has also been criticised as the study may be considered unethical. First of all, participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment. Participants were told the aim of the experiment was investigating perception of line length, when in fact it was investigating conformity. Participants also believed that the confederates were also genuine participants. As a result of this, participants may have been caused some distress. Participants may have felt uncomfortable or embarrassed throughout the experiment. This is a weakness as although Asch’s procedure would not have been possible without these ethical issues, it is possible that the benefits do not outweigh the costs.
Zimbardo’s Research: Demand Characteristics
Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that the behaviour of the participants in the SPE was more a consequence of demand characteristics than conformity to roles. They presented some of the details of the SPE procedure to a large sample of students who had never heard of the study. The vast majority correctly guessed that the purpose of the experiment was to show that ordinary people assigned a role would change their behaviour - the guards would act in a hostile, domineering way and the prisoners would be passive. Interviews with participants from the SPE have increased the reliability of this criticism. One guard stated that his behaviour was inspired from a character in the film ‘Cool Hand Luke’. This media portrayal shows the role of a prison guard as being aggressive towards prisoners. This suggests that the behaviour of Zimbardo’s guards was not due to their response to a ‘compelling prison environment’, but rather it was a response to powerful demand characteristics in the experimental situation itself.
Zimbardo’s Research: Lack of Research Support
A recent replication of the Stanford Prison Experiment, carried out by Reicher and Haslam, contradicts the findings of Zimbardo. Reicher and Haslam replicated Zimbardo’s research by randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard. In this replication, the participants did not conform to their social roles automatically. For example, the guards did not identify with their status and refused to impose their authority; the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guards’ authority, which resulted in a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system. These results clearly contradict the findings of Zimbardo and suggest that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as Zimbardo originally implied, but may in fact be more down to the shared social identity of a specific group.
Zimbardo’s Research: Real World Application
The results from the SPE have been used to explain some real world atrocities committed in prisons. Zimbardo argued that the same conformity to social role effect that was evident in the SPE was also present in Abu Ghraib, the military prison in Iraq notorious for torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in 2003 and 2004. Zimardo believed the guards who committed the abuse were the victims of situational factors which made the abuse more likely. Zimbardo suggests that situational factors, such as lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority, were present in the SPE and at Abu Ghraib. These combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned roles of ‘guard’, led to prisoner abuse in both situations. Research in this field provides positive consequences as by understanding situational influences we are able to apply these findings to prison brutality in the real world and prevent this from occurring.
Zimbardo’s Research: Individual Differences
Fromm accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour, minimising the role of personality. In Zimbardo’s original experiment the behaviour of the guards varied dramatically. There was extremely sadistic behaviour displayed by around one third of the participants in that role, but also a few guards who actually helped the prisoners by offering support, sympathy, offering them cigarettes and reinstating any privileges lost. This suggests that situational factors are not the only cause of conformity to social roles, and dispositional factors such as personality also play a role, implying that Zimbardo’s conclusion could have been overstated.
Milgram’s Research: Ethical Issues
One criticism of Milgram’s study is that it broke several ethical guidelines. Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment affects learning, rather than on obedience. They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that was in fact predetermined. Furthermore, due to the nature of the task Milgram did not protect the participants from psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment and may have continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human being. Some critics of Milgram believed that these breaches could serve to damage the reputation of psychology and jeopardise future research.
Milgrams Research: Low Internal Validity
Orne and Holland claim that participants did not believe in the setup of the experiment. Despite the fact that the learner cried out in pain, the experimenter remained cool and distant, leading participants to suppose that the victim could not really be suffering any real harm. To support this, Perry listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and discovered that many of them had expressed doubts at the time about whether the shocks were real. This means, that participants may have just been going along with the study, and not behaving naturally, which would suggest that Milgram’s was not testing what he said he was testing, thus lowering the internal validity of his findings.
Milgrams Research: Good External Validity
Although Milgram’s study may at first glance seem to lack external validity as it was conducted in a lab, it was argued that the relationship between the authority figure and the participant accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life.
Research conducted by Hofling et al. (1966) supports this claim. Nurses on a hospital ward were studied and they found high levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors, with 21/22 nurses obeying. This suggests that the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in the lab study can be generalised to other situations, giving us valuable information about obedience in real life.
Situational Variables: Research Support
One strength is that other studies have demonstrated the influence of situational variables on obedience. Bickman conducted a field experiment in NYC where three confederates were dressed in different outfits - jacket and tie, a milkman’s uniform and a security guard’s uniform. They asked pedestrians to perform a small task, e.g. pick up litter. Participants were twice as likely to obey the assistant dressed as a security guard than the one dressed in a jacket and tie. This supports Milgram’s idea that a uniform adds to the legitimacy of the authority figure and is a situational variable that has a powerful effect on obedience
Situational Variables: Low Internal Validity
One criticism of Milgram’s experiments is that participants may have been aware that the procedure was faked. Orne and Holland claim that participants did not believe in the setup of the experiment, and this may have been more likely in his variations due to extra manipulation. For example, in the uniform variation even Milgram recognised that the experimenter being replaced was so contrived that participants may have worked out the truth and therefore demonstrated demand characteristics. This means, that participants may have just been going along with the study, and not behaving naturally, which would suggest that Milgram’s was not testing what he said he was testing, thus lowering the internal validity of his findings.
