social influence keywords Flashcards
agentic state
- an explanation of obedience offered by Milgram
- is where an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure, acting as their agent
- the shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is reffered to as the ‘agentic shift’
Asch
Solomon Asch was an American Social Psychologist who conducted a series of studies in the 1950s to examen the extent to where people would conform to the opinions of others in an unambiguous situation
authoritarian personality
- first identified by Adorno et al(19)
- refers to a person who has extreme respect for authority and is more likely to be obedient to those who hold power over them
commitment: social influence
- refers to the way that minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority shows dedication to their position
- typically involves some form of personal sacrifice, which shows the majority that one is not just acting out of self interest
compliance
- lowest form of conformity
- a person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs
- usually a short term change and the result of normative social influence
conformity
occurs when someone changes their behaviour or beliefs due to real or imagined pressure from others
conformity to social roles
social roles are the parts individuals play when they belong to social group, and conformity to social roles occurs when people behave in certain ways because they feel that is expected of them in that role.
consistency
- refers to the way in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority members share the same belief and retain it over time
- this then draws the attention of the majority to the minority
dispositional explanations of obedience
focus on internal characteristics that lie within the individual (e.g. personality) that lead them to be more or less likely to follow the orders of an authority figure
flexibility
- refers to the way in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority is willing to compromise
- this means they cannot be viewed as dogmatic and unreasonable
group size
- Asch identified group size as a variable that influences conformity
- Asch found that as he increased the size of the majority, conformity levels icreased
- with two confederates, conformity occurred on 12.8% of trials, rising to 32% for trials with three confederates
- however, after that group size did not make a significant difference to the rate of conformity
identification
- middle level of conformity
- a person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group they are identifying with
- usually a short term change and is often the result of normative social influence
informational social influence
where a person conforms to gain knowledge, or because they believe that someone else is ‘right’.
internalisation
- deepest level of conformity
- where a person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs
- usually a long term change and often a result of informational social influence
legitimacy of authority
- explanation of obedience offered by Milgram
- he suggested that we are more likely to obey a person who has a higher position or status in a social hierarchy
location
- Milgram found that location affected the levels of obedience in his research
- when he conducted a variation in a run-down office block he found that the percentage of participants that went to 450 volts on the electric shock generator fell from 65% (at the prestigious Yale University) to 47.5%
locus of control
- Rotter (1966) proposed the idea of LoC
- it is the extent to which people believe they have control over their lives
internal locus of control
- believe they have high levels of control over their lives
- tend to take personal responsibility for behaviour
- less likely to be influenced or rely on others
- resist pressure
external locus of control
- believe that life is determined by external/ environmental factors i.e luck
- more likely to be influenced by others
Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist who conducted research into obedience