Week 5 - Social influence - Majority influence

Question 1

What do we mean by social influence?

Answer 1

• Other people make deliberate attempts to persuade us
• But we are susceptible to social influence even when others are not necessarily trying to influence us

Question 2

What is the definition of majority influence?

Answer 2

‘Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a majority or the majority of ones group’ - Hewstone Stroebe & Jonas (2015)

Question 3

What is the definition of minority influence?

Answer 3

‘Situation in which either an individual or a group in a numerical minority can influence the majority’ - Hewstone Stroebe & Jonas (2015)

Question 4

What did Solomon Asch study?

Answer 4

Conformity

Question 5

What are social norms?

Answer 5

‘Belief systems about how (not) to behave, that guide behavior, but without the force of laws, and reflect group members shared expectations about typical or desirable activities’ - Hewstone Stroebe & Jonas (2015)

Question 6

When did Sheriff believe we observed social norms?

Answer 6

When we we are unsure on how to behave

Question 7

How did Sherif (1939) study social influence?

Answer 7

Uses ambiguous stimuli

Question 8

How did Ash study social influence ?

Answer 8

Line task - asked participants to match a reference line with lines a/b/c, and see how participants react when the majority of participants in a room give incorrect answers

Question 9

Explain the procedure of Aschs experiment

Answer 9

• 18 trails
• Differing number of confederates
• Naive participant was second to last one to call out
• Correct responses on 6/18 trials (1/3rd of trials)
• Confederates made errors on 12/18 trials (2/3rd of trials) starting trial 3
• Unanimous majority

Question 10

What were the results from Ashs study in relation to conformity?

Answer 10

• 37% of responses were incorrect
• 75% of participants made at least one effort (compared to 0% when doing task alone
• 5% of participants yielded all the time (conformed all the time

Question 11

What were the results from Ash study in relation to independence?

Answer 11

• 63% of responses were correct
• 95% of participants have correct responses at least one
• 25% of participants never yielded
• 65% of participants gave correct answers most or all the time

Question 12

What was Aschs take on his results?

Answer 12

‘Despite this large effect, the preponderance of judgments was independent, evidence that under the present conditions, the force of the perceived data far exceeded that of the majority’

Question 13

What are the 3 reasons why we conform?

Answer 13

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Culture

Question 14

How does group size affect conformity?

Answer 14

The bigger the group size the higher the likeliness to conform, only up to a certain point

Question 15

How does unanimity affect group size?

Answer 15

Asch found when there was one or more confederates giving the correct answers, there is a massive drop in rate of unanimity

Question 16

What variation did Asch carry out in his study to see if this effected conformity?

Answer 16

Confederate deviates but wrong answer, this decreases conformity, regardless of accuracy, decreases conformity

Question 17

How does culture effect conformity?

Answer 17

Aschs study has been repeated across different cultures, it has been found that the effect is replicated across cultures, but she the degree of conformity differs depending on some cultural characteristics
- Collectivist show greater conformity compared to individualistic cultures

Question 18

How do participants justify conforming?

Answer 18

Interviews afer Aschs study found that:
- Confident (the others are wrong)
- Tension and doubt (feeling of discomfort and feeling incorrect but obligation to respond truthfully)

Question 19

How do participants justify conforming to the majority?

Answer 19

• Distortion of perception
• Distortion of judgment
• Distortion of action

Question 20

What is distortion of perception?

Answer 20

Conforming without awareness, and perceiving things incorrectly, these participants quite rare

Question 21

What is distortion of judgement?

Answer 21

The participant is aware that there is a clash between how they perceive things and how others perceive things, but they are not confident about their answers

Question 22

What is distortion of action?

Answer 22

Participant is aware they see something different from others, they don’t think they are wrong but they want to fit in

Question 23

What are the three theoretical explanations why we conform?

Answer 23

• Informational social influence
• Normative social influence
• Referent informational influence

Question 24

What is the informational social influence explanation?

Answer 24

We conform to gain information about the reality of the world - influenced by the majority in order to gain information about the world

Question 25

What is the normative social influence explanation?

Answer 25

We look at the majority to learn about what the norm is and what is acceptable social behavior so we gain social approval, so we gain their favour

Question 26

What is the evidence for informational social influence?

Answer 26

• Sherif 1936 study - ambiguous stimuli - shows we look to others when presented with ambiguous stimuli
• Meta-analysis on Asch- like experiments found that conformity was significantly higher the more ambiguous the stimulus
• The more we are unsure on what we’re seeing the more likely we are to conform to the majority

Question 27

What is the normative social influence explanation?

Answer 27

Fitting in to avoid social empressement

Question 28

What evidence is there for the normative social influence?

Answer 28

• Asch variation on the original experiment (when naive participants write down answers instead of saying out loud, conformity rates dropped from 37% to 12.5%)
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) experiment: conformity is higher in the high uncernticy condition (more amboious more likely to conform) higher conformity in face-to-face condition compared to private and anonymous condition, shows there is a fear of not fitting in - people do know the answers, they change their view to fit in, face-to-face group showed that partipcnats rely more on the group when the goal is to be accurate (both information and normative social influence can help explain why we cofrom to the majority)

Question 29

What is the Referent informational influence explanation?

Answer 29

Do we want to follow the group or not? are they similar to us - more likely to conform
We seek to maximize our simaliryt with peop;e that are part of our group and seek to maximize our differences from people that we consider to be out-group members

Question 30

Whats the evidence for the Referent informational influence explanation?

Answer 30

• Abrams et al (1990), partipcants seek to become similar to the ingroup when they have to give their answers publicly, when they are faced with out group members they conform less when they have to give answers in public than when they have to give their answers in private - deciding to conform or not is influenced by whether others are in in-group or the out-group
• Meta-analysis by Bond & Smith (1996) : lower conformity when the majority consist of out group members