Week 5 - Social Influence Flashcards
What is social influence?
The process whereby people directly or indirectly influence the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others (Allport)
Can include obvious attempts - persuasion, making requests, exerting authority
Can include subtle processes
- Conformity to implied norms of society
What are the types of social influence?
- Compliance/Obedience
- Change that goes AGAINST one’s own beliefs (behavioural change is NOT accompanied by private attitude change) - Conformity
- Change that restructures one’s underlying beliefs (public behavioural change IS accompanied by private attitude change) - Minority Influence
- Where numerical/power minorities change the attitudes of the majority
Study: Historical Social Influence - Milgram
Background: Adolf Eichmann (key organiser of the Holocaust)
- 40 male participants assigned to “teacher” role, and asked to read word pairs to confederate “learner” in another room
Shock intensity increased with each mistake 15-40V
Found: 65% of the participants shocked to the maximum level (despite it being predicted that most would refuse)
Study Extension: Varying the Procedure of Milgram
Immediacy of victim: if victim was visible the % declined
Immediacy of authority figure: if experimenter delivered instructions by phone, % dropped
Legitimacy of authority: in a rundown office (vs. a lab setting) % dropped
Social Influences: if other compliant teachers were present % increased, if were present and refusing then % decreased
Rethinking Milgram: What were the issues with this study? What can it help us understand?
Understanding
- Holocaust: camp guards knew they were causing harm motivated by anti-Semitism
- Alternative interpretation: importance of identification with the scientific process - may be more likely to believe as an important scientific endeavour, they should continue regardless of harm
Issues:
- Ethics: one participant had a heart attack
- Methodological and data issues: reported that some supervisors went way off script, some participants were aware of the purpose of the study
Study: The Autokinetic Effect - Sherif (1935) (Conformity)
Asked participants to estimate how far a light had moved across a wall
- Asked to perform task alone, then in groups of 2/3, then alone again
- Perception was shifted
- People need to be certain and confident in their actions (this situation was ambiguous)
- People looked to others to help define reality (conformed to the answers of the group once alone again)
Study: Asch (1955) Conformity to an incorrect majority
Participants were asked which line ABC was the same length as X
- Confederates were instructed by Asch to give obviously wrong answer
- 75% of participants at least one time gave the answer completely wrong (following the confederates)
Cannot be explained by ambiguity - some said they did see the lines as the group did, some said they did not believe the lines were the same, but wanted to fit in with the group majority
SOCIAL PRESSURES
What is unanimity? What is anonymity?
Unanimity - when another confederate picked the correct line, conformity reduced DRAMATICALLY
Anonymity - when respondents gave their answers in private, conformity reduced
What is the early dual-process theory of social influence?
There is a distinction between two types of influence:
NORMATIVE influence: influence to gain approval and avoid rejection
- people want to be liked (eg. Asch)
INFORMATIVE influence: influence to achieve accurate perceptions
- people want to be right (eg. Sherif)
Study: Deutsch & Gerard (1955) - Stimuli present/absent
Participants gave responses to the original Asch (line) paradigm face-to-face, anonymously, or in the presence of a group where the goal is to be ACCURATE
- With the original stimuli present or absent
FOUND THAT: When the group goal is to be accurate - highest number of socially influenced errors (highest when stimuli absent) - lowest number of socially influenced errors when anonymous
What are the limitations of dual-process theory?
The problem of ‘residual conformity’ the people who aren’t in the ‘right (informative)’ or ‘liked (normative)’ conditions still conform
–> Ignores other forms of relationship between individuals and sources of influence, and the importance of group belonging
A single process of influence: What is self-categorisation theory
Argues that groups are part of the self - not just external influences
Groups provide people with social identity - a sense of who they are and what that means
The influence of self-defining social groups is internal and both informational and normative at the same time
The values of our group tells us what is right and wrong –> become internal standards and guide thought and action
What is referent informational influence?
Social influence is most likely when the source and target share a salient group membership
–> ingroup sources create influence without the need for surveillance (eg. conformity)
–> outgroup sources can be effective with power (eg. obedience)
do we belong to the same group –> what do people like me do in this situation –> this must be the right thing to do –> I’m going to do this right thing (group normative behaviour)
Study: Platow et al. (2005) - Does laughter depend on a shared social identity?
Asked participants to listen to a particularly funny recording - and manipulated whether participants believed the audience was comprised of in-group or out-group members
–> Found: when audience is perceived to be in-group, more time is spent laughing (and vice versa)
What is minority influence?
What a smaller number/single voice influences a large group
