Social Psychology

Question 1

Define internalisation

Answer 1

When we take on the group’s behaviour as out own, and believe it’s the right thing to do.

Question 2

Define compliance

Answer 2

When we go along with the group although privately we’d rather behave in a different way.

Question 3

Define normative social influence

Answer 3

When we want to fit in with the group. Fitting in is more important than maintaining our behaviour, so we change our behaviour.

Question 4

Define informational social influence

Answer 4

When we want to act the right way. We think the group is correct, so we change our behaviour to match theirs.

Question 5

What is distortion of judgement (Asch)

Answer 5

When you believe the group must be right so you change your beliefs e.g. ‘I thought they must’ve been right’

Question 6

Why do we conform?

Answer 6

• -When our behaviour doesn’t match the group’s it makes us uncomfortable. We change our behaviour to reduce discomfort.
• -normative social influence
• -informational social infulence

Question 7

What are some factors that influence how likely we are to conform?

Answer 7

• -whether the group is unanimous e.g. role of an ally
• -how difficult the judgement is
• -whether we must agree publicly, e.g. conformity dropped by 2/3 if they could give their answers publicly.
• -the status of the group members
• -personality e.g. the nonconformist personality
• -moral/ religious beliefs

The factors influence our desire to be like the group members and/ or our confidence in our judgement our behaviour.

Question 8

Explain what is meant by conformity (3 marks)

Answer 8

Conformity is when we choose to think or act in a certain way because that way of thinking or acting seems to be favoured by the majority of group members rather than just being the result of our own independent judgement.

Question 9

Describe Griskevicius’ study into conformity

Answer 9

Griskevicius at al. discovered an interesting gender difference in nonconformity. When men and women are seeking a partner women are more likely to conform to what they think others want (e.g. what kind of clothes a man finds attractive) whereas men tend to become more nonconformist in their behaviour. This was particularly true when nonconformity made them appear unique (true nonconformity) rather than difficult or odd.

This fits an evolutionary explanation of male behaviour when seeking romantic partners-nonconformity can be a successful strategy because it offers something different to prospective partners.

Question 10

Explain ‘role of an ally’

Answer 10

Asch showed how the introduction of another dissident gave social support to an individual and caused conformity rates to plummet. This can explained by information social influence. The social support provides an independent assessment of reality that makes them feel confident in their own decision and more confident in rejecting the majority position.

Question 11

Describe Allen and Levine’s study into role of allies

Answer 11

In Allen and Levine there were three conditions in an Asch-type task. In one, the supporter had extremely poor vision (evident from his glasses with thick lenses) i.e. invalid social support) and in the second condition the supported had normal vision (i.e valid social support).Both conditions were sufficient to reduce the amount of conformity, compared to the condition with no support. However the valid social supporter had much more impact, showing that the presence of an ally is helpful to resisting conformity, but more so when they are perceived as offering valid social support.

Question 12

Describe Hornsey’s study into moral considerations into conformity

Answer 12

Hornsey et al (2003) found remarkably little movement towards the majority on attitudes that had moral significance for the individual (e.g. cheating), even when this involved public (rather than just private) behaviours.

Question 13

What did Nail et al. (lol) say about nonconformists?

Answer 13

Nail et al. said that individuals who respond to majority influence with independence tend to be unconcerned with social norms.

Question 14

Describe the nonconformist personality

Answer 14

Those with a nonconformist personality are individuals who are predisposed to react to majority influence by actively opposing the norm. They may be fully aware of it, but choose to oppose it, often on the basis of strong convictions.

Question 15

Describe Asch’s lines experiment

Answer 15

Aim: Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.

Procedure: Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test’. Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates.

The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task. The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves.

Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.

There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view. Asch’s experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a “real participant”.

Results: Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.

Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% of participant never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer

Conclusion: Why did the participants conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought “peculiar”. A few of them said that they really did believe the group’s answers were correct.

Question 16

Evaluation of Asch’s lines experiment

Answer 16

Evaluation: One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group. This means that study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people.

Another problem is that the experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity - judging line lengths. This means that study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real life situations of conformity.

Finally, there are ethical issues: participants were not protected from psychological stress which may occur if they disagreed with the majority. Asch deceived the student volunteers claiming they were taking part in a ‘vision’ test; the real purpose was to see how the ‘naive’ participant would react to the behavior of the confederates. However, deception was necessary to produce valid results.

The Asch (1951) study has also been called a child of its time (as conformity was the social norm in 1950’s America). The era of individualism, ‘doing your own thing’, did not take hold until the 1960s.

Perrin and Spencer (1980) carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using British engineering, mathematics and chemistry students as participants. The results were clear cut: on only one out of 396 trials did a participant conform with the incorrect majority. This shows the Asch experiment has poor reliability.

Question 17

Describe Jenness’s 1932 ‘beans in a jar’ study

Answer 17

A basic study in which Jenness gave a jar of beans to individuals to estimate the number of beans inside. He then grouped the same participant together and got them to discuss the content. Later when they were separated and we again asked to estimate the amount Jenness founds that all the estimates had converged around a central figure.

Conclusion: When we are unsure of an answer we look to others for help assuming the majority figure will be more reliable.

Question 18

Describe minority influence, what leads to it?

Answer 18

The power a small group (less than 3 according to Asch) has over a large group of people (a majority)

Factors that leads to it…

• -consistency of the leader/ are they confident? Do they follow through?
• -snowball effect/ if others join and are welcomed the movement can gain momentum.

Question 19

Describe Moscovici’s study into minority influence

Answer 19

• -172 female participants
• -36 blue slides, 2 confederates out of 6
• -in one group confederates say slides are green all the time
• -in other group the confederates say the slides are greem 24/36 or two thirds of the time

Results:
consistent group= 8.4% (PPs yielded in 8.4% of the trials)
inconsistent group=1.3% (PPs yielded in 1.3% of the trials)

Question 20

Evaluation of Moscovici’s blue slides study

Answer 20

• -lab study. high control over EVs, test re-test reliability, artificial no repercussions
• All female americans, low population validity.
• -ethics, deception, protection from harm
• -practical application, minority can make a difference!

Question 21

Describe Rotter’s questionnaire

Answer 21

Rotter developed a questionnaire to indentify personality type internal locus of control.
e.g. ‘misfortune is usually brought about people’s own actions
agree=internal locus of control

internal locus of control…

• ‘I control my own destiny’
• outcome within your control, determined by own hard work
• more likely to exhibit independent behaviours. Less likely to comfort or obey

external locus of control…

• ‘others control my destiny’
• outcome determined by outside control e.g. ‘fate’.
• always looks at what others are doing, rely on peer group for decisions.

Question 22

Why do people obey?

Answer 22

B-uffer. psychological or physical barriers, such as the wall in Milgram’s study

L-legitimate authority. Obey order if they recognize the authority as morally or legally rights. This response is learned from family, school and work.

A-gency theory. People will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

G-radual committment. By getting someone to do a small thing, you can increase it to big things e.g. the voltage button in Milgram’s study.

Question 23

Describe Migram’s study

Answer 23

Aim: Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.

Procedure:
Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area.

At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles – leaner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate always ended to the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.

The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.

The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, he was given the standard instruction /order (consisting of 4 prods):

Prod 1: please continue.

Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue.

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue.

Results:
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.

Conclusion:
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace.

Question 24

Evaluation of Milgram’s study

Answer 24

The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory type conditions and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations. We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience.

Orne & Holland (1968) accused Milgram’s study of lacking ‘experimental realism’, i.e. participants might not have believed the experimental set-up they found themselves in and knew the learner wasn’t really receiving electric shocks.

Milgram’s sample was biased:

The participants in Milgram’s study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?

Milgram’s study cannot be seen as representative of the American population as his sample was self-selected. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves). They may also have a typical “volunteer personality” – not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so.

Yet a total of 636 participants were tested in 18 separate experiments across the New Haven area, which was seen as being reasonably representative of a typical American town.

Milgram’s findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions as Milgram’s original study and in some cases see higher obedience rates.

However, Smith & Bond (1998) point out that with the exception of Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978), the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialized Western cultures and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behavior has been identified.

Ethical Issues
Deception – the participants actually believed they were shocking a real person, and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram’s.

However, Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths”.

Milgram also interviewed participants afterwards to find out the effect of the deception. Apparently 83.7% said that they were “glad to be in the experiment”, and 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved.

Protection of participants - Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.

Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.

Full blown seizures were observed for 3 participants; one so violent that the experiment was stopped.

In his defence, Milgram argued that these effects were only short term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK) their stress levels decreased. Milgram also interviewed the participants one year after the event and concluded that most were happy that they had taken part.

However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.

Question 25

Outline Milgram’s variations and the obedience rates

Answer 25

• -baseline, 65%
• -location move from Yale Uni to a run-down office, 48%
• -teacher in the same room as learner, 30%
• -experimenter gives order over the phone, 21%
• -PPs view another ‘teacher’ refusing to give shocks, 10%

Question 26

Outline Hofling’s nurses study

Answer 26

Procedure: A naturalistic field experiment involving 22 real nurses. Dr. Smith (a confederate) phoned each of the nurses separately at the hospital and told them to give an unauthorised drug called Astroten to a patient. The maximum dosage is clearly labelled as 10mg but the doctor acts the nurses to give 20mg for the patients ‘Mr.Jones’.

Findings: 21/22 (95%) broke the rules and gave the lethal dosage of Astroten to the patient. Broke three rules!

• -accepting orders over the phone
• -exceeding maximum dosage
• -giving an unauthorised medicine (not on ward stock list).

When another 22 nurses were asked to discuss what they’d do (the control group) 21/22 said they wouldn’t have obeyed. High obedience said to be due to agentic shift.

Question 27

Evaluate Hofling’s nurses study

Answer 27

High external validity-real life situation and non-artificial instructions, real repercussions

Just nurses? Study has been replicated but similar results were not obtained, perhaps nurses are more obedient, cannot generalise to other professions.

Rank and Jacobson, ordered nurses to give a patient a valium overdose, few obeyed, had more knowledge of valium.

Question 28

Outline Bickman’s study

Answer 28

Field experiment, 3 male experimenters each took it in turns to dress as either a civilian (jacket and tie), a milkman or a guard uniform (looked like a police officer). They then gave orders to a total of 153 nearby pedestrians on a street in Brooklyn, New York.

Order e.g.: ‘Pick up this bag for me’

Results…obedience rates:
Guard: 89%
Milkman: 57%
Civilian: 33%

Conclusion: Dress=power
Fear of punishment= obedience

Question 29

Evaluation of Bickman’s study

Answer 29

• -Field experiment, cannot get informed consent, difficult to debrief
• -Extraneous variables e.g. noise, weather, if PPs were in a group or not
• -All male confederates
• -opportunity sampling/ low population validity

Question 30

Who didn’t obey in Milgram’s experiment and why?

Answer 30

1. Gertrude Brant–female who had spent her youth in Nazi germany, as she knoew the dangers of blind obedience.

2 An industrial engineer, has knowledge of the dangers of electricity

3. A minister (priest) as it breached his moral beliefs.

Question 31

Describe Garandeau and Cillessen’s research study into normative social influence

Answer 31

A study by Garandeau and Cillessen (2006) found that children with few friends ( and therefore in more need of social acceptance) were more likely to comply to pressure exerted by a bully and other group members to victimise another child. By comforming to the actions of the bullying group they could maintain the friendship of the other group members regardless of how they felt towards the victimised child or the act of bullying

Question 32

Outline one research study that demonstrated informational social influence.

Answer 32

Fein et al. showed PPs a film of a US presidential debate. They also saw what was supposedly the reaction of the other group members towards the different points that the candidates were making. When individual PPs were then asked about their opinion of each of the candidates performance in the debate, they shifted in the direction of what they thought was the opinion of the majority of other group members.

Question 33

Plan the essay: Outline and evaluate one or more explanations of why people conform

Answer 33

A01–normative social influence, describe Asch’s experiment

A02–Garandeau and Cillessen’s study into children and bullying
–could contradict with Moscovici’s study into minority influence, or nonconformist personalities, role of allies, internal locus of control

A01: informational social influence, Asch

A02: Fein et al, presidential debate
Wittenbrick and Henly

Question 34

What did Wittenbrick and Henly find out about informational social influence?

Answer 34

Wittenbrick and Henly investigated how social stereotypes form. PPs were given negative information about African Americans that they thought was the view of the majority, and when asked about their beliefs regarding African Americans they were more likely to report negative beliefs about a black individual.

Question 35

Obedience are two different kinds of social influence. Explain the difference between conformity and obedience

Answer 35

Conformity involves social pressure felt by an individual merely because they are aware of opinions of a majority. There is no direct pressure to behave in the same way. Obedience, on the other hand, involves social pressure that is more direct, with an individual being pressured by an individual in authority to behave in a certain way.

Question 36

Validity is an important issue in psychological research. In the context of Milgram’s study, explain why validity is important. (6 marks)

Answer 36

It is important that an experiment has experimental realism i.e. participants should believe in the experimental set up and so, as a result, should act naturally. This is a measure of the study’s internal validity. In Milgram’s experiment it was important that the PPs believed the deception, and that they were really giving electric shocks, otherwise the data obtained would be worthless. It is also important that a research finding can be generalised beyond the research situation. Milgram, for example, claimed that his findings could be used to explain many of the Nazi atrocities committed in WW2 (i.e. by obeying orders. In order to be generalised the study must have high external validity.

Question 37

What study contradicts the idea that a buffer increases obedience?

Answer 37

Mandel claimed that close physical proximity made no difference to the actions of killers such as Reserve Police Battalion 101, who readily obeyed orders to kill from authority.

Question 38

What studies support the idea of gradual commitment?

Answer 38

• -Milgram
• -Lifton (1986) studies Nazi doctors working at Auschwitz and found that their commitment was also gradual, beginning with sterilisations of people considered mentally defective, and then obeying more and more extreme orders, terminating in carrying out medical experiments where the subjects died.

Question 39

Plan the essay ‘Outline and evaluate explanations of why people obey (12 marks)

Answer 39

Use BLAG
A01-shift from autonomous state to an agentic state, Milgram
A02-, Hofling, Mandel

A01-Legit authority, Milgram
A02-, Bickman, Hofling

A01-Buffer
A02-Mandel

A01-gradual commitment
A02-Lifton

Question 40

Outline what research has shown about the effects of locus of control on independent behaviour

Answer 40

Atgis (1998) who carried out a meta-analysis of studies which considered the relationship between locus of control and conformity. He found that those who scored higher on external locus of control were more easily persuaded and likely to conform than those with a low score.

However: Williams and Warchal (1981) studied 30 University students who were given a range of conformity tasks based on Asch’s experimental paradigm. Each student was also tested using Rotter’s locus of control scale. Williams found that those that conformed did not score differently on the locus of control scale BUT they did get a low score on an assertiveness scale. This implies that assertion may be more important than locus of control to conformity behaviour.

Therefore the relationship between locus of control and independent behaviour is not clear.

Question 41

What did Linz and Semykina find out about internal loci of control

Answer 41

A study by Linz and Semykina found no relationship between locus of control and earnings for males, but found that among females, internal earned significantly more than externals.

Question 42

Research has found that the status or familiarity of the group members affects whether or not we comform. Outline research that supports this.

Answer 42

McKelvey and Kerr carried out an experiment similar to Asch’s and found there was significantly less evidence of conformity among groups of friends compared to groups of strangers. Because friends know and accept each others, there may less normative pressure in some situations and therefore they feel more confident about resisting any pressures to conform.

Question 43

Explain what is meant by ‘social change’

Answer 43

This is when society or a significant section of society adopt a new way of thinking or acting, which then becomes a norm.

Question 44

Describe how social influence research has helped us to understand social change (6marks)

Answer 44

• -minority influence, the suffragettes, consistency, augmentation principle, snowball.
• -welcome new members, make people internalise your views with knowledge

Question 45

What is the augmentation principle?

Answer 45

in attribution theory, the principle that if someone performs an action when there are known constraints, his or her motive for acting must be stronger than any of the inhibitory motives or constraints. Compare with the discounting principle
E.g. the suffragettes had to suffer a great deal of antagonism from the majority, but they persisted, so people began to take them seriously.

People who suffer for their views must really believe in them.

Question 46

6 marks Analysis of unfamiliar situation and application of knowledge of
the role of minority influence to bring about social change

Answer 46

For a minority to be successful in bringing about social change, it needs to be consistent, flexible and non-dogmatic. It helps if the members of the minority have an internal locus of control and can show that they have the skills with which to challenge the beliefs and attitudes of the majority. So the advice to the environmental group would be to remain consistent in their views when talking to members of the majority. Moscovici’s research
demonstrated that consistency was an effective strategy. It would also help if the environmental group could demonstrate that they were not acting out of self-interest, but because they believe that using public transport or bicycles is the best policy. They are not going to gain anything for themselves if people start following their behaviours. If they can also show that they have made personal sacrifices, such as having given up using their own cars, then they would be much more likely to have an effect on the majority.

For full marks, there must be explicit engagement with the stem.