Social Influence (unfinished) Flashcards
What is conformity?
An individual is said to conform if they follow along with the majority viewpoint.
What are Kellman’s 3 types of conformity?
Compliance - The individual conforms publicly but continues to privately disagree with the majority viewpoint. This tends to be temporary.
Internalisation - AKA conversion. The views are taken in at a deep level and become part of the person’s own way of viewing the world. This acceptance is both public and private.
Identification - An individual may conform due to wanting to be associated with another person or group. This occurs when a person changes their views both public and privately to fit in with their desired group. This change may be temporary.
What is Normative Social Influence?
Conforming due to a desire to be liked and because of a need to fit in and a fear of rejection.
What is Informational Social Influence?
Conforming due to a desire to be right. We look to others who we believe to be correct and alter our views to fit this.
Research support for Normative Social Influence.
ASCH’S STUDY
Linkenbach and Perkins - adolescents exposed to a message that the majority of their peers don’t smoke were subsequently less likely to start smoking.
Schultz - Hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day actually reduced their usage by 25%.
Research support for Informational Social Influence.
Jenness’ Jelly Bean Experiment:
101 psychology students were asked to individually estimate the amount of beans in a glass bottle. They were then divided into groups of three and asked provide a group estimate after discussion. Following this they were provided another opportunity to individually estimate the number of beans to see if they changed their answer. Nearly all of the participants change the original answer when they provided with another opportunity to estimate the number. On average male participants changed their answer by 256 and females changed their answer by 382. This shows the power of conformity in an ambiguous situation which is likely to be the result of informational social influence.
Individual differences in normative social influence.
Normative social influence does not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way. Some people are less concerned with being liked. McGhee and Teevan found that students high in need of affiliation (a need for being in a relationship with others) were more likely to conform.
Individual differences in Informational Social Influence.
Asch found that students were less conformist than other participants (28% versus 37%). Perrin and Spencer found very little conformity in the study, which involved science and engineering students.
Outline Asch’s study.
Ash conducted experiments on 123 mile US undergraduates where they were asked to take part in a visual discrimination task. However, the real purpose of the study was to see how the real participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates. They were asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths and say which they thought was the shortest. The real participant always came second to last. Although the answer was fairly obvious, on 12/18 trials the confederates were instructed to give the wrong answer. On the 12 critical trials, the conformity rate was 33%. 25% of participants never conformed. 50% conformed on 6 or more critical trials and 5% conformed on all 12. In the control condition, participants made mistake 1% of the time. When asked afterwards, participants explained that they only publicly conformed and actually continued to hold their own private view.
Name the 3 variables which affects conformity.
Group Size:
- Asch found very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. However, when the majority had three confederates conformity rates jumped to 30%. Further increases of group size did not change this rate significantly. It is suggested that group size may have a different effect, depending on the type of judgement being made.
The unanimity of the majority:
- In the original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer. When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant, or a confederate, who gave right answers, the conformity levels dropped to just 5.5%.
The difficulty of the task:
- In one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller. This led to an increase in the level of conformity. Lucas found self efficacy (someone’s confidence in their own abilities) to be important.
Assess the generalisability of Asch’s study.
The findings are not very generalisable because only men were tested and other research suggests that women may be more conformist. Also, the research is ethnocentric as all of the men were from the United States, which is an individualist culture. Conformity rates in collectivist cultures are much higher.
Outline Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment.
A mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University. 24 of the most stable male student volunteers were randomly assigned to either play the role of prisoner or guard. The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and were put through delousing process upon entry to the prison. They were also assigned an ID number, which was the only way that the guards refer to them. The guards were also given uniforms, clubs and wore reflective sunglasses. Zimbardo took on the role of superintendent. After the first few days, the guards grew increasingly aggressive towards the prisoners. Some were so enthusiastic they volunteered to do extra unpaid hours, and even when they were unaware of being watched the participants still conformed to the role of prisoner or guard. Five prisoners had to be released early because of extreme reactions, and the study was terminated after six days. This demonstrates the power of the situation to influence peoples.
What is the relevance of the Stanford Prison Experiment to Abu Ghraib?
Abu Ghraib was a military prison in Iraq, notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. Zimbardo believes that the guards who committed abuses were victims of situational factors that made it more likely. These situation or factors included lack of training, unrelenting, boredom, and no accountability to high authority.
Why do Haslam and Reicher dispute the findings of Zimbardo’s research?
Not all of the guards behaved aggressively some did not to grade or harass the prisoners, and even do this shows that they do not blindly conform to the social roles. Their research suggests that the way in which members of strong groups behave, depend upon the norms and values associated with their specific social identity.
Outline Milgram’s study of obedience.
This research demonstrated that ordinary people are astonishingly obedient, even when asked to do something that goes against their own morality. The aim of the experiment was to investigate what level obedience would be shown when participants were told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person. The method used was a type of controlled observation. Milgram recruited 40 male participants by advertising for volunteers to take part in memory study at Yale University. When they arrived, they were met by an experimenter and Mr Wallace, who was a confederate pretending to be another participant. The participant was told that the experiment was about the effect of punishment on learning. It was rigged so that Mr Wallace was always the learner and the participant was the teacher. Mr Wallace told the participant that he had a heart condition. In a separate room, the teacher was asked to deliver shocks via a generator which had clearly marked switches with voltage levels. The teacher was told to deliver an increasingly worse shock each time that an incorrect answer was given. Mr Wallace cried out in pain and complained that his heart was bothering him and eventually gave no response. If the teacher asked a stop, the experimenter had a standard set of prods to repeat. Only if the participant refused to continue after the fourth prod was the experiment stopped.
