Topic 1 - Social influence Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a person’s behaviour or opinion as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
What 3 types of conformity did Kelman propose?
Internalisation, Identification, Compliance.
What is internalisation?
Making the beliefs, values, attitude and behaviour of the group your own
(the strongest type of conformity, and often occurs as a result of informational social
influence).
What is Identification?
Temporary/short term change of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence of a group (middle level).
What is compliance?
This means to follow other people’s ideas/to go along with the group to gain their approval or avoid disapproval. You publically agree but privately disagree (lowest/weakest level of conformity).
What is ISI?
Informational Social Influence - When someone conforms because they want to be right,
so they look to others by copying or obeying them, to have the right answer in a situation;
when a person is uncertain or unsure, they would look to others for information.
Give evidence for ISI.
Fein et al. asked participants to vote for a US presidential candidate after they saw
others voting for somebody else. Most of the participants changed their mind because they
wanted to be ‘correct’, thus demonstrating the impact of informational social influence as a
mechanism for conformity.
What is NSI?
When someone conforms because they want to be liked and be part of a group; when a person’s need to be accepted or have approval from a group drives compliance. It often occurs when a person wants to avoid the embarrassing situation of disagreeing with the majority.
Give evidence supporting the link between NSI and bullying.
Garandeau and Cillissen found that a boy can be manipulated by a bully into victimising another child
because the bully provides a common goal for the boy’s group of friends, the goal is to victimise the other child, so the boy would most likely also victimise the child to avoid disapproval from his friends.
What was the aim of Asch’s line experiment?
To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could influence a person to conform when the correct answer is unambiguous.
Outline Asch’s line experiment.
123 American male undergraduate students.
Selected through volunteer sampling via an advert in a local newspaper.
Each participant was tested individually among a group of 7-8 confederates.
Each participant took part in 18 trials of identifying the line length.
On 12 ‘critical trials’ the confederates all gave the same wrong answer.
The participant is referred to as ‘naïve’ as they are unaware of the confederates’ position.
Outline the findings and results of Asch’s line study.
25% did not conform at all.
75% conformed at least once during the trials.
Follow up interviews – most common reason for conformity was participants fear of ‘looking peculiar’.
The Asch Effect – conformity occurring in unambiguous situations.
Outline supporting evidence for Asch’s line study.
Lucas et al (2006) asked their participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems. participants were given answers from three other students (not actually real). The participants conformed more often when the problems were harder. Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
However, Lucas et al found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. participants who had more confidence in their maths abilities conformed less. Which suggests that an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables.
Give a strength of Asch’s line study.
Lab experiment - good control of variables, mining effects of extraneous variables.
Give two weakness’s of Asch’s line study.
Artificial situation - low ecological validity.
Ethical issues - deception.
What did Asch find out about group size?
Group size - asch conducted his conformity experiment with different numbers of confederates as the majority. With only two confederates the real participant conformed only on 14% of the critical trials. With three confederate conformity rose to 32%. There was little change to conformity rate after this therefore very small majority are easier to resist in large ones but influence doesn’t keep increasing with the size of the majority.
What did Ash find out about unanimity and social support?
Ash wanted to test the effect of having a supporter in the group so rather than having the Confederate falling forming a unanimous majority, one of the Confederate is agreed with the participant. Having a fellow disinter broke the unanimity of the group which made it easier for the participant to resist the pressure to conform and therefore conformity rate fell to 5.5%.
What did Asch find out about task difficulty?
When the task was made more difficult by making the lines more similar conformity levels increased because people are less confident that their answer is correct when Ash debrief to his participants he found a common factor of confidence in the people who had not conformed as they were able to resist more group pressure.
What did Perrin and Spencer following Asch do?
They replicated Ashes study with participants who were engineering students and conformity levels are much lower. This could be due to the engineers had confidence in their skills and making accurate observations.
What did Zimbardo aim to find out in his prison experiment?
Zimbardo and his colleagues (1973) were interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e., dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment.
What are social roles?
The parts people play as members of social groups, and the expectations that come with this. E.g. a parent is expected to be caring, nurturing and look after the children.
Outline Zimbardo’s experiment.
A mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford university. Male volunteers were psychologically and physically screened and the most stable 24 were randomly assigned a role – prisoner or guard. The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home. On arrest they were deloused, given a uniform and assigned an ID number. The guards referred to the prisoners by only their ID numbers. Prisoners’ rights – 3 meals a day, 3 supervised toilet trips and 2 visits a week. The guard were given uniforms, clubs, whistles and wore reflective sunglasses. Zimbardo took the role of prison superintendent. The study was planned to last 2 weeks. The guards grew increasingly abusive towards the prisoners over the first 5 days. The woke prisoners in the night and forced them to clean toilets with their bare hands and other degrading activities. Some guards were so enthusiastic in their roles that the volunteered to do extra hours without pay. The participants appeared to front at times that they were part of an experiment and were meant to be acting. Even when they were unaware, they were being watched, they still conformed to their role. One participant asked for ‘parole’ rather than ‘the right to withdraw’ when they had enough. Five prisoners had to be released early because of their extreme reactions (crying, rage and acute anxiety) – symptoms started to show after just 2 days. The study was finally terminated after 6 days after the intervention of Christina Maslach (post grad student) who reminded the researchers that this study and they couldn’t justify and the abuse/harm being caused.
What were the findings and conclusion from asch’s experiment?
Findings: The study demonstrated that both guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles.
Conclusion: The guards became increasingly sadistic and the prisoners became increasingly passive and accepting of their situation.
Give weaknesses of Zimbardo’s experiment.
Observer bias - Zimbardo playing a dual role.
Ethical issues - psychological harm, deception.
Give strengths of Zimbardo’s experiment.
Controlled observation.
