Social Influence I (obedience)

Question 1

what are the 3 situations studied in this chapter?

Answer 1

obedience, conformity, compliance

Question 2

Who studied conformity in ambiguous situations?

Answer 2

Sherif’s study of autokinesis

• Ps responses converged into a small range of responses.
• group normative estimated
• people are unsure of their own responses

Question 3

Why do people conform? (informational influence is most powerful when…)

Answer 3

situation is ambiguous and unsure
no available script for thought
in a crisis
task difficulty

Question 4

Who studied conformity in unambiguous situations?

Answer 4

Soloman Asch (1951): social influence eliminated when unambiguous.

• presented a standard line and 3 comparison lines; Ps asked to choose which ones match
• when asked privately, they all give the right answers
• when asked collectively, they shut up about their real answers due to fear of rejection and public humiliation and feel the need to belong in the group.
• approx. half of Ps conformed to the groups incorrect answers

Question 5

Factors affecting normative influence: Why are people influenced?

Answer 5

1. Contextual factors
   Milgram: proximity of the experimenter; immediacy or emotional distance of victim e.g. train track dilemma; authority of the situation (location and person)
   Kleinke (1977) people are more likely to conform on the streets if the requester looks at them or touches them
2. Group related factors
   Milgram: group pressure makes it easier for Ps to give up torturing
   Asch (1955): unanimous groups breed conformity, whereas if there is only one person in the group who dissents, conformity occurs 1/4 as often. A single dissenter can distract conformity. People are less likely to change their minds about a decision under the pressure of a group. The larger the group size, the higher level of conformity. This level goes up to 4-5 people and stops.
   Normative influence: wishing to gain social approval, private views do not change
   Informative influence: the desire to be right, ambiguous situations, private views do change, look to others for source of information in unknown situations.
3. personality
   Milgram: blue collar Ps were more influenced by the experimenter than the ‘professional’ ones
4. Gender
   Women are somewhat more open to conformity than men.
   Milgram’s study shock did not find any correlation.
   Sistrunk and McDavid (1971) showed that people are more likely to conform when the context is more unfamiliar to them. Women-> masculine objects, men-> feminine objects
5. Culture

Question 6

Who studied obedience with electric shocks?

Answer 6

Milgram

Question 7

Who studied obedience alongside and counter to Milgram’s results?

Answer 7

BBC prison study

Question 8

Why do norms guide behaviour so effectively?

Answer 8

• group punish norm violations
• groups reward conformity
• the backlash effect: women who violated gender stereotypes by occupying male social roles are ‘punished’
• provide action heuristics or scripts
• guide behaviour when situations are novel, ambiguous, difficult, highly emotional

Question 9

what is deindividuation?

Answer 9

When individuals see themselves as purely in terms of group identity their behaviours are likely to be guided by norms alone

Question 10

One example of Deindividuation is the Bystander Effect. Explain this effect:

Answer 10

Catane and Darley: the more people present, the less likely an individual is to take responsibility to intervene to help another individual
Facilitators: no. of bystanders, ambiguity of situation, lack of action= not an emergency
Inhibitors: no diffusion of responsibility among friends, knowing the victim

Question 11

Social facilitation effect- groups can achieve more than the sum of their individual parts is by influencing the efforts and achievements of their members. Name some examples used to illustrate this effect:

Answer 11

• Triplett (1989) observed cyclist’ racing times were faster when racing against the clock than when racing untimed.
• Markus (1978): when Ps performed easy task, they took most time when performing alone, less in attentive audience and least in inattentive audience
  For difficult tasks, the results were inverse. Ps took shortest when alone, more time in inattentive audience.
• Zajonc (1965) when people are being monitored or observed, they perform well on simple tasks and worse of difficult tasks.
  e.g. Pool example by Michaels (1982)
  e.g. The Away-game Advantage (Baumeister and Steinhiber 1984) the presence of others who expect us to do well and are particularly distracting

Question 12

The mere presence effect studied by zajonc involved the taking-clothing-on/off experiment. Explain this experiment in more detail:

Answer 12

• audience do not need to be doing anything at all to influence people’s behaviour.
• the mere presence is a source of non specific and non direct arousal that enhances the dominant responses of the performer
• Ps asked to put on a set of unfamiliar and uncomfortable clothing and time was recorded for the process
• two groups: inattentive audience and no audience
• the group with an audience showed longer time
• the group alone showed shorter time