Social support

Question 1

Outline social support in terms of resisting conformity

Answer 1

Social support is seeing other individuals resisting the pressure to conform to direct and/or indirect influence from authority figures.
- This helps to increase an individual’s confidence in resisting social influence as breaking the unanimity of a majority (an important aspect of social supoort) poses the notion of other valid/legitimate ways of thinking or behaving.

Question 2

Asch’s research support

Answer 2

He tested unanimity and found that conformity levels dropped to 5.5% from 33% when a confederate provided a correct answer (appearing to resist the majoirity) just before the participants turn to answer.
- This may be because another person opposing the majority gives the participant the social support they need to dissent.

Question 3

Allen and Levine (1969)

Answer 3

• Demonstrated the effect of social support by altering the response position of which a correct answer is given by a person providing social support makes any difference when resisting the majority.
• They found that support was significantly more effective in position 1 (the condition wherein one confederate correctly answers first and the others incorrectly answered after) in comparison to position 4. This condition involved a confederate answering correctly fourth.
  It was suggested that a correct first answer solidifies the participant’s initial judgement and allows them to make a commitment to this judgement despite exposure to majoirity disagreement.

Question 4

Research support - resisting obeidence

Answer 4

Gamson et al (1982) found higher levels of resistance in their study than Milgram. This was probably because they were in groups. They had to produce evidence to help an oil company run a ‘smear campaign’, and found that 29 out of 33 groups of participants (88%) rebelled, showing that peer support is linked to greater resistance.