Social Influence: Key Terms + Points Flashcards
Social Influence
the process by which an individuals attitudes, beliefs or behaviour are modified by the presence or action of others
Conformity
yielding to group pressure or the tendency to change what we do, think or say in response to the influence of others, the pressure to conform can be real or imagined
Majority Influence
an individual is said to conform if they choose a course of action that is favoured by majority of other group members or is considered socially acceptable
3 Variables Affecting Conformity
group size, unanimity, task difficulty
3 Types of Conformity, Kelman (1958)
compliance, identification, internalisation
Compliance
- publicly conforming to behaviour or views of group but privately maintaining ones own views
- temporary
- shallowest type
Identification
- adopting views or behaviour of group both publicly and privately because you value membership of group
- new attitudes and behaviours are temporary and not maintained on leaving group
Internalisation
- conversion or true change of private views to match those of the group
- new attitudes aren’t dependent on presence of group
- deepest type
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
- based on desire to be right
- cognitive process
- look to others we believe to be correct - particularly in novel or ambiguous situations
- links to identification or internalisation
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
- based on desire to be liked
- emotional process
- conform becuase we think others will approve of us so we can be accepted
- links to compliance
Why do we conform?
ISI: when we move from one group to another and experience situational ambiguity
NSI: according to Latames (1981) social impact theory, when group is important to us and when we spend a lot of time with it
Obedience
the result of social influence where somebody acts in response to a direct order from an authority figure, it’s assumed that without such an order the person wouldn’t have acted in this way, motivated by fear of punishment or belief in the legitimacy of authority
Situational Variables
related to external circumstances rather than the personalities of the people involved
3 Situational Variables that Affect Obedience
1) location
2) proximity
3) uniform
How Location Affects Obedience
- the relevant factor that influences obedience is the status or prestige associated with the location
- variation of Milgram: run-down office instead of lab in university
- obedience dropped to 47.5%
How Proximity Affects Obedience
- variation of Milgram: teacher and learner in same room instead of adjoining rooms
- obedience dropped to 40%
How Uniform Affects Obedience
- Bickman (1974) found that participants were more likely to obey experimenter dressed as a guard than milkman or civilian
- Bushman (1988) found 72% obeyed “police”
Situational Explanations
look at external reasons for a behaviour eg environment
2 Situatoinal Explanations for Obedience
1) agentic shift
2) legitimacy of authority
Agency Theory
- states people operate on 2 levels: autonomous state (behaving voluntarily and aware of consequences of actions) and agentic state (see themselves as agents of others and not responsible for their actions)
- obedience due to move from autonomous to agentic (agentic shift)
- occurs in hierachal social systems where individuals act as agents on behalf of those with perceived higher ranks than themselves
- remain in agentic due to binding factors: fear of appearing rude or arrogant, fear of increasin anxiety levels
Research to Support and Refute Agentic State and Legitimacy of Authority
- Milgram (1963): supports, teacher autonomous at start but became agent of experimenter, experimenter above them in social hierachy, wore uniform
- Hofling et al (1966): supports, nurses became agents of doctor, doctors above them in social hierachy
- Rank and Jacobson (1977): refutes, 16/18 remained in autonomous state, didn’t obey those above them in hierachy
Legitimacy of Authority
- obey as we feel obligated to those in power
- respect credentials and assume they know what they’re doing
- legitimate social power is held by an authority figure whose role is defined by society
- usually gives person in authority right to exert control over behaviour of others who usually accept it
- legitimacy increased by visible signs of authority eg uniform
Disposititonal Explanations
look for internal reasons for behaviour eg personaluty characteristics
Dispositional Explanation for Obedience
authoritarian personality
Authoritarian Personality
1) extreme respect for authoruty and submissiveness to it
2) contempt for people who are seen as having inferior social status
3) highly conventional attitudes to sex, race and gender
4) inflexibility - no grey areas
- measured using F-scale by Adorno et al (1950)
- more you agree with statements, more of an authoritarian personality you have
- Adorno et al states origins are result from harsh parenting in childhood
- this parenting featured strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty to family, impossibly high standards and severe criticism of failings
Situational Explanation for Resisting Social Influence
social support
Social Support
research suggest when there are others in social situations who defy attempts to make them conform or obey it becomes easier for individuals to resist forms of social influence
How Social Support Affects Conformity
- a dissenter represents a form of social support, they break the agreement of the majority
- Asch (1956) found social support helps individuals to resist conformity. The introduction of an ally droppped conformity from 33% to 5.5%
How Social Support Affects Obedience
- people are more likely to resist pressure to obey if they can find an ally who’s willing to join them in opposing the authority figure
- Milgram found that obedience levels dropped from 65% to 10% when the teacher was joined by another disobedient confederate
Dispositional Explanation for Resisting Social Influence
locus of control
Locus of Control
- a personality dimension which concerns the extent to which people perceive themselves as being in control of their own lives
- internals: believe they’re in control of their life, believe things happen as result of individuals choices and decisions, more resistant to social pressure as they perceive themselves as having free choice
- externals: believe things happen whichc are out of their control, believe things happen as result of luck, fate or other uncontrollable external forces, passive and fatalistic attitude, less resistant to social pressure
Minority Influence
- type of social influence that motivates indivuals to reject established majority group norms as result of exposure to persuasive minority
- achieved through process of conversion - majority scrutinise minority’s message and gradually won over
- tends to occur through ISI; minority provide new information and ideas to majority
- tends to involve belief/behaviour being accepted both publicly and privately
3 Behavioural Styles of Minority Influence
1) flexibility
2) consitency
3) commitment
Behavioural Styles: Flexibility
- Mugny (1982) distinguished between rigid and flexible negotiating styles
- rigid minority who is too dogmatic risks being seen as narrow-minded, but minority who is too flexible and too prepared to compromise risks being seen as inconsitent
- if minorities are seen as flexible by demonstrating an ability to be moderate, co-operative and reasonable then they will be more persuasive than those who are rigid and uncompromising in their beliefs
- Nemeth and Brilmayer (1987): mock jury arguing for compensation, majority opinion shifted more when minority confederate was more flexible and adjusted to group mean
Behavioural Styles: Consistency
- when first exposed to minority people ten to assume minority is in error, however if consistent others reassess the situation and consider the issue more carefully (Wood et al 1944)
- synchronic consistency: people in minority all saying the same thing
- diachronic consistency: have been saying the same thing for a long time
- Mosovici et al (1969): ps shown blue slides of varying shades and asked to state colour out loud, 0.25% in control said green, 8.4% in consistent minority said green
Behavioural Styles: Commitment
- because joining minority inevitably has greater costs for individual than staying with majority, degree of commitment shown by minority is often greater
- suggests certainty, confidence and courage in face of hostility
- eg hunger strikes, civil rights movement
Social Change
occurs when society or section of society adopts new belief or way of behaving which becomes widely accepted as norm
Social Change Through Majority Influence
- Perkins and Berkowitz (1986) argue that if people perceive something to be the norm, they tend to change their behaviour to fit the norm
- behaviour is based on what people think others do (the ‘perceived norm’) rather than their real beliefs and actions (the’actual norm’)
- suggests majority influence can be used to bring about social change through correcting people’s ‘misperceptions’ (the gap between the perceived and actual norm)
- known as social norms interventions
Social Change Through Obedience
- suggested that obedience can be used to create social change through process of gradual commitment
- once small instituation obeyed it becomes more difficult to resist bigger one
- research: Milgram
- real world example: Nazi Germany
- disobedient example: Rosa Parks
Social Change Through Minority Influence
- mosovici’s explanation of minority influence is based on idea that if individual exposed to persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to match those of the majority
- Mosovici referred to this process as ‘conversion’, a prerequisite for social change, and occures due to flexibility, commitment and consistency
6 Processes of Social Change Through Minority Influence
1) drawing attention to an issue
2) cognitive conflict
3) consistency of position
4) the augmentation principle
5) the snowball effect
6) social cryptoamnesia
Social Change Through Minority Influence: Drawing Attention to an Issue
minorities can bring about social change by drawing the majority’s attention to an issue
Social Change Through Minority Influence: Cognitive Conflict
the minority persuade the majority to think more deeply about issues by creating conflict between what the majority currently believe and the position advocated by the minority
Social Change Through Minority Influence: Consistency of Position
minorities are more persuasive if they express their views over time and agree with each other
Social Change Through Minority Influence: The Augmentation Principle
if a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and are taken more seriously by others
Social Change Through Minority Influence: The Snowball Effect
although a minority’s influence often has a small effect, as their views spread more widely more and more people consider the issues being promoted until it reaches a tipping point, at which point it leads to wide-scale social change
Social Change Through Minority Influence: Social Cryptoamnesia (Perez et al 1995)
- minority views are so strongly associated with their source that to adopt the message risks assuming the negative identity of the source
- if the ideas are dissociated (separated) from the source, the majority group can avoid the stigma of being associated with the minority group while still drawing inspiration fro their ideas
- this may account for why minority influence is often delayed
Key Study: Asch (1956)
Aim: to investigate whether or not people will conform
Procedure: 123 male US undergrads seated at table and asked to match ‘comparison’ lines to ‘standard’ line, on 12 of 18 critical trials group of 6-8 confederates gave incorrect answers, the real participant answered second to last
Findings: naive participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of time, 75% conformed at least once, 5% conformed every time
Conclusion: participants did conform as they rarely got answers wrong in the control condition, didn’t want to be rejected so showed NSI
How Task Difficulty Affects Conformity
- conformity increased when the task became more difficult
- standard line and comparison lines were made more similar in length
How Unanimity Affects Conformity
- introduced one truthful confederate who would state the correct answer (conformity dropped to 5.5%) or a confederate to state the other wrong answer (conformity dropped to 9%)
How Group Size Affects Conformity
- varied number of confederates between 1 and 15
- 2 confederates: 13.6% conformity rate
- 3 confederates: 31.8% conformity rate
- addition further made little difference
Key Study: Zimbardo (1973)
Aim: to investigate the effect of giving someone an allocated social role on their behaviour
Procedure: mock prison where 24 most stable male student volunteers randomly assigned role of ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’, prisoners unexpectedly arrested at home and given uniform and id number and were allowed 3 meals and toilet trips per day, guards given uniforms, clubs, whistles and reflective sunglasses, planned to last 2 weeks
Findings: guards becam increasingly cruel and sadistic, prisoners became increasingly passive and accepting of their plight, 5 released early due to extreme reactions, guards volunteered for extra hours and conformed when unaware they were being watched, terminated after 6 days
Conclusion: if given a social role, people will conform
Key Study: Milgram (1963)
Aim: to investigate whether participants would obey and unjust order from a person in authority to inflict pain on another person
Procedure: 40 male participants in role of ‘teacher’ gave shocks to confederate ‘learner’ when they got answers wrong, started at 15 volts and increased by 15 to 450 volts, ‘learner’ screamed and shouted at different points and before starting said he had a heart problem, experimenter said standardised prompts to ‘teacher’ when they hesitated
Findings: all participants went to at least 300 volts, 65% went to the end, most found it stressful and showed signs of extreme anxiety
Conclusion: under certain circumstances most people will obey orders that go against their conscience
Key Study: Elms and Milgram (1966)
Aim: to investigate whether participants high in authoritarianism are more likely to obey and authority figure
Procedure: used ps from Milgram’s experiments in follow up study, 20 identified as obedient and 20 as defiant, completed MMPI scale and F-scale to measure levels of authoritarianism, asked open-ended qs about childhood and attitude towards experimenter and ‘learner’
Findings: littlle difference between ps on MMPI variables, higher levels of authoritarianism among obediant ps, obediant ps less close to fathers and described them negatively and saw authority figure in original study as more admirable and learner as much less so which wasn’t the case among defiant ps
Conclusion: dispositional factors have some effect on obedience
Key Study: Moscovici (1969)
Procedure: groups consisted of 4 naive ps and 2 confederates, shown blue slides of varying shades, consistent condition had confederates say green everytime, inconsistent condition had them say green 2/3 trials
Findings: consistent condition ps said green in 8.4% of trials, inconsistent condition confederates had very little influence
Conclusion: minorities can influence the majority and their influence is more effective when they’re consistent
