topic 1: social influence Flashcards

Question

what research was carried out into authority figure as a factor affecting obedience

Answer 1

Bickman 1974 New York field experiment had 3 confederates with 3 different fits; milkman/jacket and tie/security guard the confederate stood in the street and ordered people to pick up litter and give him parking meter money - people were 2x more likely to listen to the confederate dressed as a security guard than the other 2

Answer 2

-- low validity they may not be measuring what they think, p's could question why theyre left with v expensive equipment + why the researcher is not there for their on experiment may have shown less obedience because they thought the experimenter wasn't as responsible bc of less authority rather than proximity -- harm to participants touch proximity variation asked teacher to force learners hand onto electro shock plate knowing that you are capable of doing this could be mentally damaging But, you could see Mr Wallace and knew he was alive and somewhat okay, so it could be argued that this is less harm than the og. + high control levels Milgram was able to systematically change a variable at a time and keep all others the same eg. proximity and setting he was able because of clear standardised procedures, making it v scientific and clear as to what situational factors are influencing -- overestimates the power of environmental factors some still obeyed, so the environment is not the only influential factor, there must also be some social influence eg. locus of control / authoritarian personality

Answer 3

Milgram 1. person is in an autonomous state (making their own decisions) 2. you get an Order from an authority figure 3. this causes an agent shift because the authority figure has greater power due to their social hierarchy position and you feel like you have to obey when you are ordered -- when someone tries to blame you for something when you're in the agent state, you take no responsibility because you had no choice and were just following orders

Answer 4

authority that has been agreed by society; society has agreed that power is carried in these positions and it is accepted by the majority eg. police, teachers, doctors people are more likely to obey them as we have learnt that they are morally right and legitimate through socialisation

Answer 5

destructive authority - when power is used for destructive purposes destructive obedience - when obedience results in harming others

Answer 6

a Dr Smith called nurses at a hospital, telling them to give a patient drugs here's why they shouldn't have obeyed: 1. nurses can't take over the phone orders 2. the drug was unfamiliar 3. he was asking to administer twice the prescription 21 of 22 nurses obeyed - this led to a lot of reform in hospitals -- this theory is limited bc it ignores the power of situational variables like proximity and location which have proven to be v powerful

Answer 7

Blass 2001 showed students Milgram's study and asked who they felt was responsible the majority said the experimenter because of legitimacy of authority and him being more knowledgable

Answer 8

Theodor Adorno developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale (fascist scale) to test whether someone had an authoritarian personality - he studied unconscious attitudes of antisemitism sample: more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans procedure: he carried out interviews to find out about political views and early life experiences findings: he mainly found that people that were harshly, physically punished as a child were antisemitic often because they had bad experiences with a parent eg. dad beats child because of his mean, jewish, boss, the child uses the boss as a scapegoat and puts the hostility their feeling towards them. when they grow up they forget what dad did and just hate the scapegoat conclusion: extreme obedience and racial prejudice lay in early childhood experiences, when personality is form authoritarian personalities = extremely obedient

Answer 9

extreme respect for authority, status and hierarchies; despises those they consider to be 'weak' has conventional attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race etc. is rigid in their beliefs likely the result of harsh parenting with lots of discipline and expectation of 'perfect' behaviour; child is shown love if they act exactly as parents want them to

Answer 10

+Elms & Milgram interviewed a small sample of Milgram's original participants who had fully obeyed and found that when participants completed the F-Scale they scored significantly higher than those participants who had disobeyed There is real-world evidence for the authoritarian personality as seen in the behaviour of — can’t explain obedience of large groups of people eg. germans would have all had different personalities so this can’t explain why they obeyed the nazis — the F-scale is very politically biased and people argue that it is very right-wing and ignores the possibility of left wing authoritarianism — greenstein said it’s methodologically flawed and it suffers from acquiescence bias bc all the questions are worded in the same direction leading q’s and a high score can be achieved by simply putting agree for everything, this invalidates the F-scale

Answer 11

when someone shares your view you have an ally, it increases confidence it creates a smaller group within a large group behaviour stands out less the ally models the behaviour we are taught to be correct; they stand up for their views bc they disagree Asch - if a non-conforming peer reconforms, so does the participant

Answer 12

+ when Asch did a variation with a dissenter that agreed with the naive participant, only 5% conformed, 95% resisted + hofling nurse study; 21/22 followed request when alone but only 1/18 followed when having social support from other nurses -- social support is over simplistic and focuses too much on surroundings vs person -- reliance on self reports p's are asked how much they think they were influenced by their peer usually will say they weren't influenced, but stats say that they were

Answer 13

when the minority influences the beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of the majority; this leads to internalisation/conversion

Answer 14

there are 3, they were found by Moscovici 1. consistency: over time and between values of members of one group inconsistency can suggest doubt and consistency draws attention, causing people to rethink their own views 2. commitment: willingness to make sacrifices, shows that you aren’t acting out of self interest can draw attention with dramatic sacrifices (eg. throw in front of horse) 3. flexibility: willing to compromise don’t have to sacrifice the dreams but maybe have one small win at a time too much flexibility can make you look inconsistent flexibility can make it seem like your working with the majority rather than against over time people can convert via snowball effect

Answer 15

it measures an individuals sense of personal control over events in their life Internal - personal control over events External - up to other people/chance/fate it is a continuous scale Internal - can resist pressure of conform, more self confident, achievement orientated and have less need for approval Milgram found a high internal locus of control in p’s that disobeyed in the first 4 studies

Answer 16

Moscovici et al. method: lab experiment procedure: 6 female p's, 2 of them are confederates describe the colour of 36 slides (they're all blue) consistent condition - confeds say green to all slides inconsistent condition - say green to 60%, blue for rest results: control - none, shows no ambiguity with slides consistent condition: 8% moved to minority inconsistent condition: 1.25% moved to minority

Answer 17

-- studying it in lab conditions has low EV moscovici: saying blue/green is too trivial and has no consequence confederates consistently said blue was green and people conformed 8.5% of the time when inconsistent: 1.25% -- over simplistic theory, reduces the idea to solely group size and ignores important variables like power/status/commitment + Wood et al. supports importance of consistency, did a meta-analysis of approx. 100 studies about imp. of consistency and found that consistent minorities were the most influential; suggesting it's a major factor + real life examples of minorities changing views over time (MLK, Suffragettes) looking at underlying similarities allows researchers to identify valuable variables for success (eg. consistency / commitment / flexibility) can help people now fighting for env. rights etc.

Answer 18

changes in attitudes, behaviour, values and/or laws which take place on a large scale and affect society

Answer 19

1. labelling --> people can be given a label that they don't lose, everything they do is linked to the label 2. stigmatisation

Answer 20

when members of the previous majority view forget and diminish the fights that occurred to reach the equality there is now

Answer 21

+ past evidence of successful social change researchers can identify imp. variables for minorities to bring abt change (commitment/consistency/flexibility) can be used my minorities today that are trying to make change (eg. environment ppl) — Social change isn't simple, many are settled in their views and unwilling to change. some suggest that these social barriers are mostly due to stereotypes eg. many still hide that they recycle in fear of being labelled ‘weird’ or a ‘tree-hugger’. so minority influence and social influence aren't always fully effective because they can't tackle these kinds of issues. — social change is v slow changing smoking and drunk driving attitudes took decades this makes it very difficult to study/use to deliberately bring about change, extraneous variables are also likely to occur over long time periods (either beneficial or not to minority) + evidence of NSI causing change Nolan (2008) told residents that most residents were trying to reduce energy use and found that this reduced energy use more than when residents were just asked to save energy So NSI can lead to change and this has useful economic implications because it has reduced energy use however desensitization did occur

Answer 22

+ another researcher repeated milgrams baseline experiment and found that 37% of participants with a high internal LoC didn’t continue to the highest shock vs only 24% with a high external LoC didn’t continue to highest — Rutter suggests that LoC is only influential in new situations if you have previously obeyed/confirmed to a situation it’s likely they’ll do the same again, regardless of their LoC — data analysis from the last 40 years found that there’s been an increase in externals but also an increase in obedience

Answer 23

SD isn’t easily distorted by a single extreme score it takes account the distance of all scores form the mean it doesn’t just show the distance between the highest and lowest scores

Answer 24

a form of social influence where a direct order is followed by an individual, the person issuing the order usually has authority and power to punish