start of social influence Flashcards
What is compliance?
A superficial and temporary form of conformity where we publicly agree but privately disagree. Only lasts as long as the group is watching us.
What is identification?
A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way as the group because we value it and want to be a part of it. We don’t necessarily agree with everything it stands for.
What are 2 differences between internalisation and compliance?
Public acceptance and private rejection. Public and private acceptance.
Explain what is meant by normative and informational social influence.
Both explanations for conformity.
NSI - Conforming in order to be liked / to fit in → usually leads to compliance.
ISI - conforming in order to be right - conformity occurs when situation is novel; the correct course of action is unclear; an expert is present → most likely to lead to internalisation.
Lucas et al. (2006) used mathematical problems to provide research support for informational social influence. Describe their study and their findings. How does this support ISI?
Participants had to give answers to easy and difficult maths questions
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Increased conformity for the difficult questions → especially for people who rated their ability as poor.
Shows that people conform when they do not know the answer. We look to others and assume they are right → predicted by ISI.
Research often assumes that either NSI or ISI is responsible for conforming behaviour. However, it has been claimed that both could play a role. Explain this.
Assumption is that behaviour is due to either NSI or ISI - however could be both.
In Asch’s research conformity dropped when another dissenter was introduced → reduction in NSI (social support) or in ISI (more information).
The respective roles of NSi and ISI are difficult to disentangle, which casts doubt on whether NSI and ISI are in fact individual processes.
What support for NSI was provided by Asch’s study (1951)?
Participants went along with a wrong answer because other people did.
When asked they said they feared disapproval by the others.
Supports: participants conformed in order to be accepted and gain social approval.
What has research shown about the role of individual differences in conformity?
Some people feel the need to be liked more than other → going to be more affected by NSI.
nAffillators have a greater need for affiliation - relationships with others.
McGhee & Teevan (1967) nAffiliators conform more.
Conformity does not apply universally.
In relation to Asch’s research, explain what is meant by the terms unanimity and task difficulty.
Unanimity: The extent to which all members of a group agree. Asch: The majority was unanimous when all confederates chose the same comparison line → produced the greatest levels of conformity.
Task difficulty: Asch’s study becomes more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer.
Asch: Conformity increases with task difficulty, as participants assume the majority is right.
Describe Asch’s study of conformity. Include details of what he did and what he found in your answer.
Showed participant 2 white cards - one had three lines of different length and one had a standard line.
Participants had to match the two lines of the same length.
Each participant was tested with a group of confederates, who after the first few trials started given wrong answer. All confederates gave the same wrong answer.
Overall, the participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Every participant conformed at least once, meaning that 75% conformed once.
When asked why they conformed, they said “to avoid rejection”. → NSI
“Asch’s study is a child of it’s time” - Explain what is meant by this.
When Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s study in 1980, only one student conformed out of 396.
The 1950s (the time when Asch’s study was conducted) was a particularly conformist time in America - it made sense to conform to established norms.
This means that people may have conformed because it was the norm to do so → We now live in a less conformist age, meaning the results would be different i.e. the study is a child of it’s time.
Asch’s study has been criticised for being an artificial task and situation. What does this mean and why is this a limitation?
Participants knew they were in a study and may have just gone along with the situation →
Demand characteristics.
The task was fairly trivial - not conforming would have had no negative impact - and not resembling any everyday task.
Limitation because the tasks cannot be generalised to everyday situations.
Explain the ethical issues with Asch’s research. Do you believe the benefits of the study outweighed the cost? Explain your answer.
Deception - they thought the other people were part of the study.
Benefits outweigh the costs - gives us information about conformity in society and shows us the destructive possibilities of conformity and how these can be combated.
The ethical issues were fairly unproblematic (mild embarrassment) and was dealt with by a debrief form.
Explain why Asch’s findings have limited application in the real world.
Only men were tested by Asch - research suggests that women may be more conformist because they are more concerned with social relationships.
The men were all from the USA - an individualist culture. In individualist cultures, people are largely concerned with themselves.
In conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (people are more concerned with social groups), conformity rates were higher → such cultures are more concerned with group needs.
Conformity rates could in fact be much higher than Asch suggested.
His results may only apply to western men, as he did not take gender and cultural differences into account.
