week 6

Question 1

Social influence definitions

Answer 1

Hogg & Vaughan (2005, p. 244): ‘Process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real or implied presence of other people.’
Hewstone & Martin (2015, p. 237): ‘change of attitudes, beliefs, opinions, values, and behaviour, as a result of being exposed to other individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, opinions, values and behaviour.’

Question 2

Social norms

Answer 2

Reduce uncertainty about how to behave
Coordinate individual behaviour
Help with distribution of outcome
Note, they are not necessarily static, but potentially dynamic
Evaluative- violating norms leads to negative responses
Descriptive and injunctive
Communicated implicitly, explicitly and through inference

Question 3

Sherif (1936)

Answer 3

Socially facilitated influence
Autokinetic effect: optical illusion, pitch black room-> point of light 5 meters away
Light point appears to move

Participants took part individually and as part of groups
Participants had to give an oral estimate of how much they thought the light had moved
Half the participants took part individually and then came together in groups where everyone called out their estimate.
The other half of participants took part as groups and then individually.

Question 4

Types of social influence

Answer 4

Compliance
Conformity
Obedience

Question 5

Compliance

Answer 5

Public change in behaviour
No private change in attitudes
Research has focussed on factors affecting compliance

Question 6

Compliance techniques

Answer 6

Foot-in-the-door
Small request to big request

Why does foot-in-the-door work?  We infer who we are from what we do: If we are helpful on the first occasion, we must be a helpful person, and so we should be helpful on the second occasion

Door-in-the-face
Big request first-> unlikely to be successful
Follow it with more reasonable request-> greater likelihood of compliance that if 2nd request presented in isolation

Question 7

Door-in-the-face VS Foot-in-the-door

Answer 7

Students asked for help from lecturers
C1 - DIF - Meet for 2 hours a week
C2 - FID – Meet for 15-20 minutes
C3 - Control – No initial request
Follow-up = Moderate request:
1 off 2 hour session

Door in foot was the best
and foot in door was worse

Question 8

Confrmity

Answer 8

Compliance research focuses on how we respond to individual attempts at social influence
Influence in groups
Conformity
More indirect form of influence
Behaviour guided by group norms
Affects attitudes as well as behaviour
Informational vs normative influence

Question 9

Sherif (1936)

Answer 9

When group judgements are made first, the consensus carries over into subsequent individual judgement

Question 10

Informational influence

Answer 10

Deutsch and Gerard (1955)
Normative influence= desire to be liked
Informational influence= desire to be right

Question 11

Asch (1952)

Answer 11

Problem with Sherif’s study: no clear right answer
People might conform to group norms in ambiguous situations, but what about when there is an obvious & objective criteria on which to base one’s judgement?
Ash’s solution: Line-length judgement experiment

Participant in a group of 7-9
All other group members were confederates who had been instructed to give the wrong answer
50% of participants conformed to the group majority and gave the wrong answer in at least one trial.
Without group (control condition), <1% gave wrong answer

Question 12

Why conformity

Answer 12

Asch asked his participants why they had conformed
Confusion
Group pressure
Fear of disapproval
Feelings of anxiety/loneliness
Group may have been right
Didn’t want to stand out
We don’t like to ‘buck the trend’, even when we’ve got grounds to do so

Question 13

Normative influence

Answer 13

Social influence that occurs because of pressure to fit in with a group or more broadly with what we perceive to be expectations about what we should do
The most common response over all trials in the Asch experiments was actually resistance

Question 14

Minority influence

Answer 14

Moscovici (1976): how do minorities influence majorities?
Minorities require a particular behavioural style to overcome majority rejection: consistency
When minorities are persistent, they can succeed in influencing a majority

Moscovici et al. (1969)
6 Participants presented with a series of slides unambiguously blue and differed only in light intensity.
Participants had to say the colour of the slide
In one condition there were two confederates who answered green on every trial.
Incorrect guesses rose from 0.25% to 8.42%

Question 15

Conversion Theory

Answer 15

Minority influence-> validation-> conversion: indirect, delayed, durable
Majority influence-> comparison-> compliance, direct, immediate, temporary

Question 16

Consistency and cnfidence

Answer 16

Personal injury claim given to 5 subjects (1 confederate)

Before discussion – compensation of $12,000 to $20,000 deemed fair

Discussion – 40 minutes to discuss the case
Conditions:
Chosen
Chosen head
Chosen side
Assigned

During discussion – confederate consistently presents 6 arguments for compensation of only $3000

Finding: Only when the confederate chose the head seat were they influential

Question 17

Milgram: Obedience

Answer 17

Asch’s results are striking, but they are obtained using an essentially inconsequential situation?

What about when we’re being ordered to do something we believe is wrong?

Obedience

Question 18

Interaction and argumentation in the obedience experiments

Answer 18

Gibson (2013): Rhetorical and discursive psychology can be used to shed light on what actually went on in Milgram’s experiments.

Hollander (2015): Fine-grained conversation analysis of how participants resisted the experimenter.

New findings…

Question 19

Gibson rhetorical analysis

Answer 19

Obedience without orders: Expanding social psychology’s conception of ‘obedience’
Analyses transcripts from the Milgram studies to show:
Obedience not always enforced by an authority figure
Obedience not always enforced through explicit orders – many implicit demands of the system as a whole that should be considered
Many instances of resistance and defiance by participants that have gone unnoticed

Question 20

Replicating Milgram

Answer 20

it used to be thought that it would be impossible to replicate Milgram’s experiments
Burger (2009) replicating Milgram

Question 21

Obedience to authority

Answer 21

Milgram maintained obedience not to do with authority personality or style, rather their authority was seen as legitimate in the institutional setting.
HOWEVER, the perceived expertise of the experimenter (who had done many trials) may have contributed to the participants instructions

Question 22

Incremental nature of the task

Answer 22

Participants started with the lowest voltage switch (15v) with no effect on the learner.

Question 23

Limited sources of information

Answer 23

In Milgram’s study, participants find themselves in a difficult position
They would search for information on how to act, but there is only the experimenter, who seems calm
In another variation of his study (1974), Milgram used two experimenters where one expressed concern about the study. Obedience disappeared

Question 24

Responsibility

Answer 24

In Milgram’s study the experimenter assumed responsibility for the actions of the participants
Nonetheless in another version of the study, where participants watched a confederate administer shocks while they performed a subsidiary act, only 3 out of 40 refused to take part.
Would people still obey today?
Burger’s modelled refusal condition:
a confederate starts reading word pairs and administering “shocks”
At 75 volts they refuse “I don’t think I can do this” and the participant is asked to take over the experiment while the confederate sits and watches

Question 25

Ethics

Answer 25

Screening process : scales and specific questions concerning past mental illness, trauma, etc., followed by interview with clinical psych.
Participants informed 3 times that they could withdraw at any point and retain their $50 payment
Sample shock only 15v (rather than 45v in Milgram)
Informed immediately following the study that the Learner wasn’t being shocked
Experimenter role played by a clinical psych. who was to end the study if participants displayed ‘excessive stress’ (Burger, 2009, p. 2)
Study ended at 150v

Question 26

Key methodological innovation

Answer 26

In Milgram’s condition 5 (‘new baseline’ condition), 79% of participants who continued past 150v (learner’s first demand to be released) continued to the end.

Burger therefore suggests that by stopping at 150v we can get a decent idea of how likely people are to go on

Question 27

Main conclusions

Answer 27

No evidence of a decline or increase, no gender differences
Disobedient model didn’t make it easier to disobey

Question 28

Problems?

Answer 28

Depends on the assumption that the pattern after 150v remains unchanged (Twenge, 2009)

Burger claims that his results suggest cultural shifts in attitudes to authority have little effect on rates of obedience

Screening out of over 50% of initial participants (for ethical reasons) raises issues (Miller, 2009)

Burger’s ‘modelled refusal’ condition not comparable with Milgram’s group condition (Miller, 2009)

Question 29

More recent experimental work on obedience

Answer 29

Other experimental paradigms have focussed on non-destructive obedience

Question 30

‘The Game of Death’

Answer 30

TV host as modern-day authority figure

81% obedience in conditions based on Milgram’s ‘voice-feedback’ condition.

BUT, learner doesn’t demand to be released until 380 volts

Question 31

Virtual reality and obedience (Slater et al., 2006)

Answer 31

Participants knew it was not real

Questionnaires and physiological measures (heart rate; skin conductance) used to measure participant responses to being in the situation

17/23 participants administered all the shocks