social influence key points

Question 1

what is social influence

Question 2

briefly explain what is meant by ‘conformity’

Answer 2

an individual is said to be conforming if they choose a course of action that is favoured by the majority of the group members

Question 3

state the three types of conformity

Answer 3

1. compliance
2. identification
3. internalisation

Question 4

explain compliance

Answer 4

• individuals follow what the group is doing in order to be accepted or to fit in
• even if there personal views may differ to the one they are portraying
• this will not chance their underlying attitude towards something. (Asch)

Question 5

explain identification

Answer 5

• the individuals attitudes both private and publicly will change
• only for a temporary amount of time
• is in order to fit in and be liked, essentially it is a mix of compliance and internalisation. (Zimbardo)

Question 6

explain internalisation

Answer 6

• this involves both public and private attitudes
• is where the individual may believe that the groups view, after close inspection, is correct and theirs is wrong
• this leads them to changing their public and private view towards something in order to be correct
• • this is the deepest level of conformity and becomes a permanent attitude. (Sherif’s Autokinetic)

Question 7

give an example of compliance, identification and internalisation

Question 8

explain normative social influence

Answer 8

this is where people go along with a majority in order to feel that they fit in and not be ridiculed for having a different opinion to everyone else

Question 9

explain informational social influence

Answer 9

• occurs when an individual accepts information from the majority as they see them as experts or someone with more understanding of a particular subject
• this is done in order to be correct

Question 10

outline and evaluate a study into informational social influence

Answer 10

Jenness setup an ambiguous situation where participants were asked individually to estimate how many beans were in a glass bottle they were shown. This was recorded and participants were then put in a room with a group of people and asked as a group to come to an estimate. Again they were asked individually if they would like to change their original estimate, and nearly all of them decided they would like to change. This shows that most of them went through informational social influence where they conformed with a group in order to be correct.

:) - Unlike other research into conformity there is no deceiving so it is ethically sound

:( - Doesn’t give us any insight into non ambiguous situations where conformity occurs

Question 11

outline and evaluate a study into normative social influence

Answer 11

Asch conducted a lab experiment where 50 male students where individually the participants were put in a room with 7 confederates and took part in a ‘vision test’. The confederates were told before hand to answer wrongly for every task. They were shown a line and then followed 3 lines on a separate card, named A, B and C. They had to match which from A, B and C matched with the original line they were shown. Asch measure the times that participants conformed with the majority and found that around 1/3rd conformed. Over the 12 critical trials 75% conformed at least once, compared to less than 1% in the control group. When interviewed after and asked why they conformed they stated that they wanted to fit in and not be ridiculed by the group.

:( - Asch used a biased sample of only males, of which all were students, meaning it lacks population validity and in turn the findings into normative social influence cant be easily generalised to the population

:( - Asch used a task where the participants had to judge line lengths but realistically when do we naturally come across a situation like this. This means that the study lacks ecological validity and cannot be generalised to other situations

Question 12

outline what Asch did in his study of conformity and the findings of this study

Question 13

explain the role of group size as a variable affecting conformity

Answer 13

• Asch found that when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates then there was very little conformity
• however when there was three then the conforming responses jumped up to around 30%
• further increases did not make a difference in levels of conformity, thus Campbell suggested that group size may have a different effect based on what type of conformity is occurring
• for example if there is no correct answer and the individual wants to fit in then the larger the majority the more likely to be swayed whereas when there is a correct answer and the individual wants to be correct than just one or two will be sufficient

Question 14

explain the role of unanimity as a variable affecting conformity

Answer 14

• when one confederate was told to give the right answer Asch found that conformity dropped considerably from 30% t0 5.5%
• even when one confederate was told to give a different wrong answer to the majority, breaking unanimity, the conformity dropped from 30% down to 9%

Question 15

explain the role of task difficulty as a variable affecting conformity

Answer 15

Asch found that when making the lines a much more similar size that conformity increased a large amount as many people had less confidence in the answer they thought was correct

Question 16

explain the role of culture as a variable affecting conformity

Answer 16

Smith et al. conducted Asch type research across many different cultures and found that in individualistic cultures conformity was at around 25% where as in collectivist cultures it was much higher at 37%

Question 17

outline Zimbardo’s study of comformity to social roles and the findings of this study

Answer 17

Explanation of Zimbardo’s SPE

Question 18

evaluate the standford prison experiment

Answer 18

:( - Demand characteristics could explain the extreme behaviour of both the guards and the prisoners, afterwards in interviews the guards simply stated that they were acting. This lowers the value of the findings into conformity to social roles and thus makes it hard to generalise.

:) - There is in fact a lot of evidence that proves that the guards and prisoners were reacting to the situation as if it were real and not just acting. Zimbardo monitored all conversation that was held and found that 90% of the guards conversation was about the prisoners/other things to do with prison. The guards also rarely ever exchanged their real personal information when on their ‘relaxation breaks’.

:(/:) - There are many ethical guidelines being broken in the such as deception and at risk of harm. However this can be seen as a benefit because of the fact that this is what ethical guidelines were then based upon and were created because of.

Question 19

define obedience

Answer 19

obedience refers to a type of social influence where someone acts in response to a direct order from a figure of authority

Question 20

outline what Milgram did in his study of obedience and the findings of the study

Answer 20

Milgram had 40 participants at a time over a series of conditions each varying in different ways
At the beginning of the experiment the participants were introduced to an experimenter in a lab coat and a confederate who they believed was another participant, the two drew straws to decide who would take the role of the ‘learner’ and who would take the role of the ‘teacher’, however this was rigged so that the real participant always was the teacher
They were taken to a room and shown an electric chair that the learner would be strapped to, the teacher was then bought into a room beside this where there was an instrument panel on a table with switches varying 15v - 450v (XXX). The teacher was told by the experimenter to ask the learner a series of paired words to test his memory through a microphone. The confederate/learner was told to get the answers mainly wrong, and when he did the experimenter gave the teacher instructions to increase the voltage each time. The learner was not actually receiving any shocks but through a microphone had to act out screaming in pain and after 315v stopped saying anything and left it as dead silence. If the teacher wanted to stop the experimenter would say things such as “It is absolutely essential that you continue” etc.
Milgram found that 65% of participants went all the way to 450v and 100% of participants went up to 300v.

Question 21

evaluate Milgram’s study

Answer 21

:( - Milgram used a very biased sample where only males were used and no females, this makes it difficult to generalise to the whole population as half the population were not actually tested/experimented on.

:( - Participants were deceived as to the nature of the study for which they had volunteered, and by making them believe they were administering real electric shocks. However Milgram could not have found results that truly reflected the way people behave in real situations if he had not deceived his participants, they were all however thoroughly debriefed afterwards.

:( - It was not ecologically valid. It can be argued that Milgram’s work was carried out in an artificial setting and has little relevance to the real world. However, less artificial studies have been carried out gaining similar results. For example in Hoffling’s study (1966), nurses were asked to give potentially lethal injections to patients, and 21 out of 22 appeared prepared to do it.

:( - Lack of realism, a man names Perry in 2012 discovered that one of Milgram’s assistants had divided the participants into ‘doubters’ and believers’ and found that the doubters were more likely to obey the experimenter.

Question 22

explain the role of proximity as a variable affecting obedience

Answer 22

Proximity - In this variation the teacher and the learner were sat i the same room, he found that obedience levels fell 40% this was as the teacher was now able to experience the learners pain more directly. In a second variation the teacher was required to push the learners hand onto the plate, here obedience dropped a further 30%. Milgram also changed the proximity of the experimenter (authoritative figure), giving orders over a telephone the cast majority of participants defied the instructions wit only 21% continuing to maximum shock level.

Question 23

explain the role of location as a variable affecting obedience

Answer 23

Location - When Milgram conducted his experiment at Yale University several participants remarked that the location gave them a sense that what they were doing was acceptable. Thus Milgram did his experiment again but this time in a run down office, obedience rates dropped slightly but not a significant amount where this time 48% delivered the full 450v.

Question 24

explain the role of uniform as a variable affecting obedience

Answer 24

Power of Uniform - Bushman conducted an experiment where a women in either a police style uniform, business attire or dressed as a beggar asked people to give a man change for his parking ticket. When in a uniform 72% agreed, 48% as a business women and 52% as a beggar.

Answer 25

The Agentic State - A common way of an individual thinking when carrying out an order is that they are not responsible for their own actions and are simply carrying out a task from a figure of authority. Milgram referred to this as the agentic shift, where we shift from an autonomous state where we take responsibility for our actions to an agentic state where we see ourselves as simply an agent carrying out a task for an authoritative figure.

Answer 26

Legitimate Authority - A condition needed in order to enter an agentic state as the perception of a legitimate authority. Milgram believed that there is a share expectation among people that many situations have a controlling figure and thus people go into a situation expecting there to be a person of authority. If an authorities commands seem harmful then for them to be perceived as legitimate then they must occur within some sort of institute

Question 27

briefly explain what is meant by ‘Authoritarion Personality’

Question 28

explain the dispositional explaination for obedience

Answer 28

Authoritarian Personality - The identification of a specific personality type was done by the use of a scale called the F-Scale, developed by Adorno et al. It contained statements such as ‘respect is the most important outlook for elders’ and other statements similar to this. If a person rated highly on this then they were said to have an authoritarian personality which is someone who sees the world as very black and white and someone who sees obedience as a very important characteristic.

Question 29

Outline Milgram & Elms Study

Answer 29

They carried out a follow up study using participants who had previously taken part in Milgram’s original study. They selected 20 obedient participants and 20 defiant participants and then had each participant take part in a MMPI test and an F-Scale test to measure their personality types. They were also asked a series of questions about particular topics such as relationships with their parents. They found that participants who were obedient as a whole rated higher on the F-Scale as those who were defiant.

Question 30

evaluate research study relating to the Authoritarian Personality explanation of obedience

Question 31

Outline two other studies into obediance

Answer 31

Hoffling - Aimed to create a more realistic study than Milgrams into obediance. He did this by using a field experiment with nurses that were not aware they were taking part. A fake doctor called Dr.Smith called up the hospital on 22 seperate occasions talking to 22 different nurses and asked them do check if they had the drug Astroten. On the drugs box it said that maximum dosage was 10mg, yet Dr.Smith asked them to administer 20mg to a patient Mr.Jones. The drug in reality was just a sugar pill but the nurses were not aware of this. Dr.Smith stated he was in a rush and will sign the authorisation form later on when he gets there. The nurses were watched to see if they would administer the drug, if they did they were breaking three rules:
1. They are not allowed to accept instructions over the phone.
2. The dose was double the maximum limit stated on the box.
3. The medicine itself as unauthorised, i.e. not on the ward stock list.
It was found that 21/22 nurses actually administered the drug yet in a control group 21/22 actually said they would not administer the drug.

Bickman - He carried out a similar study to Hoffling where he had confederates ask 153 randomly selected pedestrians in New York to ‘Pick up this bag for me’ the results showed that people obeyed 80% of the time to the confederate when dressed as a guard, and half this for them dressed as a milkman or a civilian.

Question 32

Outline two other studies into conformity

Answer 32

Schultz - Found that hotel guests exposed to the normative message that ‘75% of guests reuse the towels each day’ reduced their own towel usage by 25%. This study supports thee claim that people shape their behaviour as a result of wanting to fit in with the group.

Wittenbrink and Henley - Found that participants who were exposed to negative information about African Americans (which they were told was the view of the majority) later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual when interviewed.

Question 33

explain the role of social support in resisting social influence

Answer 33

Social Support - Asch’s research showed us how difficult it is to go against the crowd as we have an inherent feeling that makes us want to fit in with a majority. Therefore to test this a bit further, Asch decided to do a variation of his experiment with social support involved. He had a confederate give the right answer before the participants turn and this caused a drop of conformity from 33% to 5.5%. The important factor about social support it seems is that it breaks the unanimous position of the majority. Social support is also seen to cause disobedience as well as resisting conformity, in a variation of Milgram’s study he had 2 confederates doing the same job as the participant however they were told to disobey and not continue, this dropped obedience rates to only 10% going all the way to 450v.

Question 34

evaluate the role of social support

Answer 34

• idea is supported by a variation of Milgram’s study

Question 35

explain the role of locus of control in resisting social influence

Answer 35

Locus of Control - The term refers to a persons perception of personal control of the actions they take and their own behaviour. It is measure from high internal to high external, a strong internal is associated with the belief that we control what happens with our life, they are more likely to show independent behaviour and rely less on others opinions meaning they can resist social influence better. Whereas a strong external would believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors such as others or luck.
A number of characteristics that internals have have relevance with resisting social influence, these are:
-High internals are active seekers of information that is useful to them, making them rely less on others
-They tend to be more achievement oriented making them usually become leaders instead of followers
-They are better able to resist coercion from others. In a simulated prisoner of war camp situation internals were better able to resist the attempts of an interrogator to gain information.

Question 36

evaluate the role of locus of control

Question 37

briefly explain what is meant by ‘minority influence’

Answer 37

With majority influence many people identify with the majority in order to fit in and not particularly as they accept and understand their views. Minority influence on the other hand creates a conversion process where people scrutinise and try and understand the point of view, this leads to a conversion that is deeper and longer lasting as people have internalised and not just shown compliance. In order for this to happen though the minority influence must hold particular characteristics

Question 38

explain the role of consistency in minority influence

Answer 38

Consistency - When people first hear a minority with a different view they believe that the minority is in error. However if they show consistency with their views others reassess the situation and consider it carefully. A meta-analysis of 97 studies found that minorities who were perceived as consistent were also seen as very influential.

Question 39

explain one criticism of the role of consistency in minority influence

Answer 39

being too consisent can suggest that the minority is inflexible, uncompromising and irrational, making their argument less appealing to the majority

Question 40

outline evidence for the importance of consistence in a minority influence

Answer 40

Moscovici - showed female participants 36 blue slides of varying shades. In groups of 6 individuals had to judge what colour each slide was, in these groups two of them were confederates (a minority). In one situation the minority said green for every slide and thus were totally consistent in their views. In another variation they said green 24 times and blue 12 times which is seen as inconsistent.
He found that in the consistent variation 8% said green where as in the inconsistent only 1% agreed and said green as well.

Nemeth & Brilmayer - They studied the role of flexibility in minority influence. A simulated jury situation was setup where they were to decide on the compensation of someone who was involved in a ski lift accident. A confederate on the first variation put forward an alternative view an was very rigid on it and not open to change their opinion. In a second variation the confederate was willing to be slightly flexible. Results showed that when the confederate was flexible it had an impact on the groups overall decision.

Question 41

explain the role of commitment in minority influence

Answer 41

Commitment - Commitment is important in the influence process because it suggests certainty and confidence in the face of a hostile majority. Because joining a minority has greater cost for the individually than staying with the majority the degree of commitment shown by a minority is typically greater.

Question 42

explain the role of flexibility in minority influence

Answer 42

Flexibility - A minority must be flexible in their views, f they are constantly rigid and wont budge at all this makes it difficult to negotiate their position as they are usually powerless. If they are seen as dogmatic it may put people off the idea of wanting to join a minority. However they must avoid being too flexible as this can be seen as inconsistent.

Question 43

explain one criticism of the role of flexibility in minority influence

Answer 43

if they appear flexible, compromising and rational, they are lees likely to bee seen as extremists and attention seekers
- they are likely to be seen as reasonable, considerate and cooperative

Question 44

Define social change

Answer 44

Social change is the process of a society adopting a new belief or way of behaving that becomes widely accepted as the norm.

Question 45

Outline the process of a minortiy influence on social change

Answer 45

ACCAS!
1) Drawing attention to an issue - If a minorities view is different to the majority then their views create a conflict which draw lots of attention to it.

2) Cognitive Conflict - The high amount of attention it has causes the majority to have an internal conflict of ideas and makes them think more deeply about the minorities views.

3) Consistency of position - Research shows that when a minority is consistent in their views than more people will take them seriously and try to gain a deeper idea of what their view is. The minority must be consistent regardless of peoples views around them.

4) The augmentation principle - If a minority appears to be willing to suffer for their views then they are taken more seriously.

5) The snowball effect - The minority influence initially has a small effect but then this spreads more and more until people consider the issues and understand them, it reaches a tipping point at which it leads to a wide scale social change.

Question 46

Outline the process of a majority influence on social change

Answer 46

Many people will act as what they believe the social norm is, for example university students may think the norm is to drink a lot and thus they will do it as well to fit it in. Behaviour is then based of what people think others do (perceived norm) and not on real beliefs and actions that people actually do (actual norm). The gap between these two norms is known as the misperception, correcting this is known as social norms interventions.

These work by identifying the widespread misperception related to a specific risk. For example young adults misperceive the amount their peers drink and thus justify their own heavy drinking with this misperceived information. These can be fixed in social media campaigns and promotional material, with the aim of communicating the actual norm to the group who are misperceiving.

Question 47

Give an example of a social norm intervention

Answer 47

‘Most of us don’t Drink & Drive’ was a campaign in the US to reduce drinking and driving in young adults. A survey found that only 20% admitted to drinking and driving in the past month, 92% of people actually believed that their peers had done so. By correcting this misconception with the message ‘4/5 don’t drink and drive’ they found that it was reduced by 14%.