Social Influence - PAPER 1

Question 1

What is conformity

Answer 1

A type of social influence where we choose to go along with the majority

Question 2

What are the three types of conformity

Answer 2

Compliance, identification and internalisation

Question 3

What is compliance

Answer 3

• shallowest level of conformity
• the person conforms publicly buy continues privately to disagree
  -e,g laughing at a joke you don’t find funny

Question 4

What is identification ?

Answer 4

• the person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have incentivised with the group and they feel a sense of group membership
  -the change of belief/ behaviour is often temporary
• e,g supporting a new football team every time you move to a new town

Question 5

What is internalisation?

Answer 5

• the deepest level of conformity
• the person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and accepted the views of the group
  -e,g becoming a vegetarian after sharing a flat with a group of vegetarians at university

Question 6

Deutsch and Gerard two-process theory for conformity

Answer 6

NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- motivated by a desire to be accepted: A desire to fit in with the group and conforming to the group in order to do this
- often leads to compliance, where people agree publicly but not privately
INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- motivated by a desire to be correct and looking at the group for info when we are unsure if we are correct

Question 7

Jenness conformity study (jelly beans in jar)

Answer 7

-101 psychology students estimated number of beans in a glass jar
-when split into groups of 3 to come up with a group answer, nearly all participants changed their answer
- females found to be more conforming

EVALUATION
-Individual differences - some personality types want to relate to
other people so are more likely to conform -> NSI may
not w conformity in everyone

• Difficult to distinguish between NSI and ISI unanimous majority makes conformity more likely - is this because we want to fit in or do we believe everyone else knows something we don’t -> hard
  to separate the two and know which one is causing conformity
• Real life application - better behaviours can be encouraged by implying other people are acting a certain way - e.g. signs saying other hotel guestsare using fewer towels shows a reduction in towel
  use -> understanding causes of conformity can be used to improve behaviour

Question 8

Asch study (majority influence when the situation is unambiguous)

Answer 8

-123 male participants
-each individual had to write down which of the three lines (a, b or c) was the same as the comparison line
- there was only 1 genuine participant in each group- the rest were confederates
-the genuine participant was the last or second last to answer
- in some trials, confederates gave correct answers and on other trials (critical trials) incorrect answers
- the genuine participants performance on the critical trials (whether they conformed) was compared to a control condition in which there were no confederates.

RESULTS
-participants confirmed 40% of the time
-in the control trial with no confederates, people only made mistakes 1% of the time

NSI AND ISI
- When participants wrote answers down, conformity dropped to 12.5% - supports NSI
- Conformity dropped when there was a non-conforming participant - supports both NSI and ISI

EVALUATION
- ethical issues; deception
- real life application. E.g juries in court cases
- cultural bias : smith and bond found that collectivist cultures show higher conformity than individualist in replications of Asch’s study
- participants were all American males- lack of external validity
- artificial validity; demand characteristics - lacks internal validity

Question 9

Variations of Asch’s study (majority influence when the situation is unambiguous)

Answer 9

1. DIFFICULTY OF THE TASK
   - making line lengths closer together and therefore the task harder
   - conformity to the majority increased
   - this may be due to how much confidence individuals have in themselves
2. SIZE OF THE MAJORITY
   - little conformity when the majority was only 1 or 2 people
   - when the size of the majority was increased to 3 people, conformity increased to 30%
   - BUT further increases did not increase levels of conformity as the size of the majority is only important up to an optimal point
3. UNANIMITY OF THE MAJORITY
   - Originally all confederates gave the wrong answer
   - So Asch instructed one confederates to give the right answer
   - Conformity dropped drastically
   - breaking the group’s consensus was one of the main influences in conformity

Question 10

Zimbardo’s study (conformity to social roles - prison)

Answer 10

METHOD
- 24 male volunteers - students
- mock prison experiment
- assessed for emotional stability
- randomly allocated as guard or prisoner and given guard uniforms / loose smock and prisoner number

FINDINGS
- Guards conformed to roles quickly; treating prisoners harshly, enforcing rules, administering punishments, random head counts, humiliation and isolation
- prisoners rebelled - ripped off their numbers
- prisoners became subdued and depressed
- many had to be released by day 4 due to psychological concerns and study had to be stopped after 6 days, instead of 14

EVALUATION
- Lacks population validity; no women, only students, certain type of person may volunteer
- lacks ecological validity; not the same as a real prison
- zimbardo may have overstated the conformity level ; 2 thirds of guards were fair
- good internal validity - random allocation to roles
- investigator effects- zimbardo was the prison warden
- ethical issues: difficult to withdraw, psychological harm, lack of informed consent)

Question 11

What is locus of control and evaluation of it

Answer 11

the extent to which we believe we have control over things. It can be internal or external.

The LOC continuum states that people aren’t just either internal or external LOC and LOC is a scale and individuals vary in their position on it. It is also circumstantial.

EVALUATION
- Contradictory evidence has shown that although people became less obedient over time, they also became more external LOC.
This was a longitudinal study looking at LOC over a 40 year period
It was also found that LOC is not a fixed characteristic; internal and external LOC is dependant on the situation; strong external LOC in new situations

Question 12

Internal vs external locus of control

Answer 12

INTERNAL LOC
- High level of personal control over their lives and behaviour
- actively seek information
- achievement orientated
- self confident and higher intelligence

EXTERNAL LOC
- Don’t believe that they have control over their lives
- Easily influenced by others
- More likely to blame external factors for failures
- Can mean the person cannot improve upon failures

Question 13

Holland study (Replication of Milgram’s study, but also measuring participants LOC)

Answer 13

• 40% of internal LOC people did not continue to the highest shock
• 20% of external LOC people did not continue

Therefore those with an internal LOC show greater resistance to authority

Question 14

What is the effect of Social Support on obedience/conformity

Answer 14

• the presence of other people resisting conformity or obedience can help others to do the same; they act as models to show us that resistance is possible
• Asch’s study showed that if someone else breaks the unanimous position of authority then conformity is reduced (from 65% to 10%)

Question 15

Albrect et al (social support and teen pregnancy advice)

Answer 15

• 8 week programme for pregnant adolescents to resist the pressure to smoke
• some were presented with a mentor (social support)
• at the end of the 8 weeks, those with a mentor were less likely to smoke
• this shows social support can help young people resist influence

Question 16

What is minority influence?

Answer 16

• situations where one person or a small group of people influence the beliefs and behaviours of the majority of group members
• minority influence is most likely to involve informational social influence and lead to internalisation
• the minority must be consistent, committed and flexible

Question 17

Why must the minority by consistent, committed and flexible for minority influence to occur

Answer 17

CONSISTENCY
They should not alter their viewpoint:
-Synchronic consistency; the whole group say the same thing
-Diachronic consistency; the group say the same thing over a long period of time

COMMITMENT
They must live by the guidelines they are trying to encourage others to live by

FLEXIBILITY
If a minority is too consistent and doesn’t consider any other options, they will be less influential. They must be willing to compromise

Question 18

Moscovici et al (blue slide, green slide study - minority influence)

Answer 18

METHOD
- 128 female participants who were told they were taking part in a colour perception task
- participants were out into groups of 6 and shown many slides which were all different shades of blue
- participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide
- 2/6 of participants were confederates and in one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green; in the second condition (inconsistent) confederates day that some were green and some blue

RESULTS
- Moscovici found that in the consistent condition, real participants agreed on 8% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition, they agreed with only 1% of th trials

This shows that a consistent minority is much more effective than an inconsistent one in minority influence.

EVALUATION
- Participants were first given eye tests to ensure they were not colour blind
-ecological validity ; lack of external validity due to artificial environment
- agreement was only up to 8% - minority influence is still very low and therefore not a useful concept
- there is more to groups than just numbers; power, status. So research is limited if only looking at minority/ majority in terms of numbers
- all female participants ; females are more likely to conform than men
- helps explain real-life minority influence (suffragettes, BLM)

Question 19

What is obedience?

Answer 19

• A type of social influence where someone acts in response to satisfy a direct order from authority
• An individual has the choice to comply or defy an order

Question 20

Milgram study (electric shock obedience)

Answer 20

METHOD
- 1963
- participants were told they were investigating learning and they were introduced to another participant (confederate)
- participants were separated from confederate by a partition
- participants gave confederates tasks and whenever confederates got the answer wrong they were ‘given an electric shock’ by the Ps
- The level of shock was increased each time
- Participants were encouraged to continue by an ‘experimenter’ in a white lab coat sitting in the same room

RESULTS
- 65% of participants gave the full 450 volts
- all participants administered at least 300 volts

So ordinary people are very obedient to authority even to the extent of killing a human being

EVALUATION
- unethical - psychological harm as participants walk away knowing how susceptible they are to authority - BUT a follow up questionairre found that 84% were glad to have participated
- sample lacks population validity
- laboratory setting lacks ecological validity
- Milgram’s findings have been replicated in other cultures - external reliability

Question 21

Hofling et al (obedience in real life setting with nurses)

Answer 21

METHOD
- Nurses in a hospital were telephoned by a doctor they didn’t know and asked to give a dosage of a drug they did not know to a patient
- Nurses are not meant to take orders over phone and the dosage was double the recommended dosage.
- nurses were not able to discuss with one another
- 21/22 obeyed

EVALUATION
- Supports Milgram’s work and shows obedience does occur in real life

Question 22

Milgram’s variations of his shock experiment to explain why people obey

Answer 22

SITUATIONAL VARIABLES:

1. Location
   - Change if location from Yale University to a run-down office; obedience dropped to 47%
   - Prestigious setting gives someone more authority
2. Proximity
   - distance of authority figure to the person they are giving an order to
   - Teacher and learner were in the same room in the original experiment (obedience was 65%) and when experimenter gave orders by phone this dropped to 25%
3. Uniform
   - Experimenter wore normal clothes instead of a lab coat: acting as a “member of the public”: obedience dropped to 20%
   - Uniforms can symbolise authority (e.g police)

Question 23

What is the agentic state

Answer 23

• When we are not responsible for something, we lack autonomy
• We obey orders we go into in an agentic state and feel powerless to obey
• In this state we lack responsibility and feel as though we are simply acting as the “agent” for the authority figure

AGENTIC SHIFT
- This happens when we go from being autonomous to an agent
- This happens when we consider the other person to be higher in the social higherarchy

Question 24

Describe legitimate authority in terms of obedience

Answer 24

• in society we obey certain people because they have more authority (teachers, police, parents etc.)
• we trust them and if we disobey they may punish us
• if we believe the person giving orders is a legitimate authority then we are more likely to obey

EVALUATION
- In Milgram’s experiment, this doesn’t explain why some people didn’t obey (only 65% of people obeyed). BUT majority did obey; participants lacked responsibility from what would happen to learner - supports agentic state
- Legitimate authority is a good explanation of cultural differences in obedience (elg in Germany much more people gave the shocks (structured higherarchal society) but in Australia (less authoritative) less gave the shocks)
- Rank + Jacobson: 2/18 of the nurses followed the order; didn’t follow agentic state

Question 25

Dispositional factors to obedience

Answer 25

Factors relating to a person’s personality

AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
- Susceptible to obeying authority figures
- Extreme respect for authority
- They show contempt for people below them in the social hierarchy
- Belief that we need strong powerful leaders
- it is formed in childhood; a result of harsh parenting (strict discipline, high standards, criticism). The child feels feelings of resentment but cannot express these to their parents. The feelings are displaced to those perceived to be weaker.

Question 26

Rank and Jacobson study (lack of obedience in nurses)

Answer 26

METHOD
- nurses were told by a doctor (who they knew) to administer an overdose of a drug which nurses already knew of
- the nurses were able to discuss with each other

RESULTS
- only 2/18 of the nurses obeyed the doctor’s orders
So nurses are less likely to obey in a more realistic situation that Hofling et als

Question 27

Adorno et al. (Authoritarian personality)

Answer 27

-Over 2000 middle class Americans completed a questionnaire measuring their unconscious attitudes towards religious and ethnic minority groups (the F scale)
- Those who showed an authoritarian personality had high levels of prejudice and showed contempt for the weak, they also displayed prejudices and stereotypes against other people
- Elms and Milgram (1966) studied obedient Ps and found they scored higher on the F scale and were less close to their fathers during childhood

EVALUATION

• Elms and Milgram only show a correlation, not causation
• How does it explain when so many people display obedient behaviour (pre-war Germany and the anti-Semitic behaviour), surely there were a number of personality types

Question 28

Answer 28

Question 29

What are the stages of social change?

Answer 29

1) Draw Attention
2) Consistency (diachronic and synchronic)
3) Augmentation principle - commit to the cause (people will listen if you are taking a risk/ willing to suffer). Conversion occurs - conversion is a type of internalisation and happens through informational social influence. This means the minority provide new information and ideas to the majority.
4) Snowball effect (when a few people listen, the number of people increases rapidly)
5) cryptoamnesia - The process by which minority attitudes, behaviours and beliefs become majority held views. The new belief takes form without a conscious understanding of where it came from or the processes involved.

Question 30

Evaluate the idea of social change

Answer 30

ADVANTAGES:
- Research supporting normative influences - Nolan wanted to see if people could reduce their energy intake, and gave out signs for doors in San Diego. One group were given signs saying people in the neighbourhood were reducing their intake, whereas the other group were given signs saying to save energy. The first group had a significant decrease in energy use. This shows that NSI can be used to create social change.

DISADVANTAGES:
- Countering NSI research - Foxcroft studied drinking patterns similarly to Nolan. Only few participants reduced their drinking quantity but did not reduce frequency. This study shows that NSI may not cause long term changes to behaviour.

• Barriers to social change - Bashir found that participants did not want to be associated with stereotypical minority groups, such as environmentalists. This reduces minority influence.

Question 31

Cognitive interview technique

Answer 31

1.Report everything-witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail.Trivial details may trigger other important memories

2.Reinstate the context-visually the witness’s should return to the original crime scene and imagine the environment and their emotions(context dependent forgetting)

3.Reverse the order-events should be recalled in non -chronological order to prevent people from reporting their expectations of the event rather than the actual event and it also prevents dishonesty.

4.Change perspective-witness should recall the event from other people’s perspective.This is done to disrupt the effect of expectations and schema on recall