Social influence- important stuff

Question 1

What is informational social influence?

Answer 1

When someone conforms to be right and assumes that the group knows best. It is also usually long lasting and leads to internalisation.

Question 2

What is normative social influence?

Answer 2

When someone conforms to be liked or accepted by the group. It usually leads to a temporary change and leads to compliance.

Question 3

Research for informational social influence.

Answer 3

Lucas et.al found that participants conformed more often to incorrect answers they were given, when the maths problems were difficult.

Question 4

Research for NSI.

Answer 4

Asch interviewed his participants and some said that they conformed because they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer.

However, when participants wrote their answers down, conformity fell to 12.5%. This is because they were not subject to group pressure.

Question 5

What is internalisation?

Answer 5

A type of conformity where a person publicly and privately accepts the behaviours and norms of the group.

The change is usually permanent.

Question 6

What is identification?

Answer 6

A type of conformity where a person takes on the majority view because they accept it as correct only in the presence of the group.

Public attitudes change but not private.

Question 7

What is compliance?

Answer 7

A type of conformity where a person goes along with the group publicly but their private views don’t change.

Question 8

What are the three variables that Ssch changed in his study to measure conformity?

Answer 8

Group size- He varied the umber of confederates from 1 to 15. He found that conformity increased as group size increased but only to 3 confederates then levelled off.

Unanimity- In one variation Asch gave the participants a confederate who believed in their views. This caused conformity to decrease.

Task difficulty- he increased the difficulty of the line- judging task by making the lines closer to the control line. He found the conformity increased.

Question 9

Limitation of Asch’s study.

Answer 9

The task and situation were artificial. Participants knew that they were in a study and may have tried to skew the results. (demand characteristics).

All the participants were American men- gender bias. Also may not be able to generalise across cultures. Individualistic vs collectivist.

Question 10

Strength of Asch’c study.

Answer 10

Support from other research by Lucas et al.
He asked his participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. participants were given answers from three other students.

It was found that the participants conformed more often when the maths was harder.

Question 11

Strength of Zimbardo’s SPE.

Answer 11

There was high control over variables.

Only emotionally-stable participants were chosen and randomly assigned to roles.

This increased the interval validity of the study, so we can be much more confident about drawing conclusions about the influence of roles of conformity.

Question 12

Limitations of Zimbardo’s SPE.

Answer 12

It did not have realism of a true prison. Some psychologists argued that the prisoners were acting rather than conforming to a role.
This could explain why the prisoners rioted.

Lacks population validity as all of the participants were American males so can’t generalise to all genders and cultures.

Ethical issues- deception, protection from harm- stress, anxiety, emotional harm.

Question 13

Strength of Milgram’s study.

Answer 13

Highly replicable

Participants were thoroughly debriefed on the aims of the study.

High internal validity- 70% of the participants believed that the electric shocks were real.

Question 14

Limitations of Milgram’s research

Answer 14

Ethical issues- Participants were deceived and there was psychological harm on the participants.

Study lacks mundane realism and ecological validity as the task the participants has to take was not something that people would need to do in everyday lives.

Question 15

What are the three situational variables in Milgram’s later research?

Answer 15

Proximity- if the learner was in the same room and touching distance to the teacher or is they were in separate rooms.

Uniform- Lab coat/ normal clothes

Location- Run down office block/ Yale university

Question 16

Evaluation of the situational variables.

Answer 16

Research support- Bickman showed the power of uniform in a field experiment. (milkman, security, suit) Got them asked to ask passers-by to pick up litter.

Low internal validity- Some of Milgram’s procedures in the variations were especially contrived so not genuine obedience.

Question 17

What is the agentic state?

Answer 17

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe that we are acting on behalf of a authority figure.

Question 18

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 18

A person is free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their actions.

Question 19

What are binding factors?

Answer 19

Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and therefore reduce the moral strain that they are feeling.

Question 20

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 20

An explanation of obedience that suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us.

Question 21

What is a strength of the agentic state?

Answer 21

Milgram’s own research supports this, as most of the participants resisted giving the shocks at some point, and often asked the experimenter ‘who is responsible for this’
This shows that once the participants perceived they were no longer responsible for their own actions, they acted more easily.

Question 22

Strength of legitimacy of authority.

Answer 22

It is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. As in Australia 16% obeyed but in Germany 85% obeyed.

Question 23

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 23

Adorno

• people with an authoritarian personality show an extreme respect for authority.

-They view society as weaker than it once was.

• They show contempt for those of inferior social status. Everything is either right or wrong.

Question 24

What are the origins of the Authoritarian personality?

Answer 24

Adorno believed the Authoritarian personality forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting.

Extremely strict discipline, and an expectation of absolute loyalty.

Adorno argued that these childhood experiences create resentment and hostility in a child. But the child cannot express their feelings and so their fears are displaced onto others that they perceive as weaker. (scapegoating)

Question 25

Explain Adorno’s research into the authoritarian personality.

Answer 25

He studied more than 2ooo middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards ethnic groups.
He developed the F-scale which is used to measure authoritarian personality.

Findings: People with an authoritarian personality and scored high on the F-scale identified with strong people and looked down on the ‘weak’.
They had a fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.

Question 26

Evaluation of the authoritarian personality.

Answer 26

+ Evidence from Milgram supporting the authoritarian personality. Milgram interviewed a small number of people who had participated in the original studies and had been fully obedient. He got them to complete the F-scale and they all scored highly on it in comparison to 20 disobedient groups.

• It cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population. WW11 Germany- the majority of the country all showed anti-Semetic behaviour. It is very unlikely that they all had an authoritarian personality.
• The F-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme

Question 27

What is resistance to social influence?

Answer 27

The ability of people to withstand the social pressures to conform to the majority or to obey authority.

Question 28

What is social support?

Answer 28

The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same.

Question 29

What is an external locus of control?

Answer 29

Rotter proposed LOC.

People with an external locus of control tend to believe that the things that happen to them are outside of their control.

Question 30

What is an internal locus of control?

Answer 30

They believe that the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves.

Question 31

What is some research into locus of control?

Answer 31

Charles Holland- Repeated Milgram’s baseline study and measured wether participants were internals or externals.

He found that 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level. But 23% of externals did not continue.

This shows resistance is at least partly related to LOC, which increases the validity of LOC.

Question 32

What is Moscovici’s research into minority influence?

Answer 32

6 people were asked to look at a set of 36 blue-coloured slides that varied in intensity and the state whether the slides were blue or green.
In each group these were 2 confederates who consistently have the same wrong answer.

8% of the true participants agreed with the confederates.

With a second group where the confederates were inconsistent, it fell to 1.25%

Question 33

Evaluation of moscovici’s study.

Answer 33

-Task was artificial

• Lack external validity
• Not usual task in real life settings

Question 34

What is the process of social change?

Answer 34

1. Drawing attention
2. Consistency
3. Deeper processing
4. The augmentation principle
5. The snowball effect
6. Social cryptoamnesia