Social Psychology

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure

Question 2

What are the types of conformity and what do they consist of?

Answer 2

Compliance: publicly conforming to behaviour while privately maintaining his own views. Can results from NSI.
Internalisation: True change of views both publicly and privately. Not dependant on group.
Identification: adopting views of a group publicly and privately, because one values membership of group. Depends on group presence

Question 3

What are Normative and Information social influence?

Answer 3

Normal social influence: The desire to be liked

Information social influence: The desire to be right

Question 4

What are Independence and Anti-conformity?

Answer 4

Independence: people who are unresponsive to the norms of a group.
Anti-conformity: people who consistently oppose the norms of the group. Is a type of conformity as it is still determined by the norms of a group

Question 5

What are the three variations of the Asch experiment?

Answer 5

Unanimity: less conformity when one of the confederates didn’t conform
Task difficulty: more difficulty= more conformity
Size of majority: 1 confederate = no conformity
2 confederates= 12.8% on critical trials
3 confederates= 32% on critical trials

Question 6

Details on Asch’s study:
Participants
Details of experiment
Results

Answer 6

123 male undergraduates
8-10 participants sat around table, most being confederates to experiment and did line study. For 12 questions, confederates gave wrong answers deliberately.
On critical trials, 36.8% of responses were incorrect, 25% never confirmed so 75% conformed at least once.

Question 7

Details of Zimbardo’s prison experiment
Participants
Details
Results

Answer 7

21 male undergraduates
Prisoners arrested at home, taken to prison with 11 guards, given certain rights and strict schedule
Resulted in guards becoming tyrannical, prisoners being depressed as 5 prisoners had to be released early due to extreme depression. Experiment had to be ended after two days.

Question 8

Two explanations of behaviour

Answer 8

Dispositional: presumes people will act according to their personality regardless of situation
Situational: presumes people will act in a way they think is required by their social role

Question 9

Definition of obedience

Answer 9

Changing your behaviour as a result of an authority figure

Question 10

Details of Milgram’s obedience experiment
Participants
Details
Results

Answer 10

40 males aged 20-50
Participant would be introduced to confederate, who would be the student in the experiment (with participant as teacher). Teacher had to give electric shocks every time the learner got a question wrong. If the teacher asked to stop, they were given four prompts, after which the experiment would be stopped.
Milgram found that 65% of participants went all the way to max voltage of 450v.

Question 11

Positives and negatives of Zimbardo’s prison experiment

Answer 11

Positives: -links to real life example with same factors (Abu Ghraib)
- prisoners screened for it were the most healthy psychologically and physically, which accurately shows impact on normal everyday people
Negatives: - seen as unethical (didn’t fully protect participants, wasn’t a clear right to withdraw)
-only tested male undergraduates, so results could be different for girls or different age groups, reducing it’s generalisability

Question 12

Positives and negatives of Asch’s line study

Answer 12

Positives: - shows influence of informational and normative social influence very accurately
- test was easily replicable
- natural results from participants as they’ve been deceived
Negatives: - all participants were of same background/gender so results can’t be generalised to whole population.
- participants could be giving demand characteristics (when the participants work out what’s going on and give the answers people want to hear), which affects the validity of the test

Question 13

Positives and negatives of Milgram’s obedience test

Answer 13

Positives: - good external validity as it was argued by Milgram that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life. Suggests that it can be generalised to the whole population
- test supported by Hofling, who did a similar experiment with nurses and a senior doctor
Negatives: - wasn’t ethically correct. Participants deceived by Milgram due to rigged designation of roles. Participants also believed that shocks they were giving were real.

Question 14

Variations of Milgram’s obedience test

Answer 14

• Obedience is affected by location (eg. Milgram conducted the test in a run down office and found there was less obedience)
• Obedience is affected by proximity to both learner and experimenter (the further away both of them were, the lower the obedience was)
• Obedience is affected by uniform (eg. If the experimenter wore informal clothes, there was less obedience among participants)

Question 15

Definition of Agentic state and binding factors

Answer 15

When we blame the person giving the order for any negative consequences of our actions, becoming an “agent” of theirs.
Binding factors are aspects of the situation which allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the moral strain they are feeling.

Question 16

Define legitimacy of authority

Answer 16

We are more likely to obey people who we see to have more power than us. Society is hierarchical and we have to accept that some people have power over us and we should hand over control of our behaviour to them. Justified by the individual’s position of power within the hierarchy

Question 17

Strengths of legitimacy of authority

Answer 17

• Useful account of cultural differences in obedience, shows in some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legit and vice versa
• Blass and Schmitt showed milgram’s experiment to a group of students, who blamed the experimenter for harm to participant. Indicated responsibility was due to legitimacy of authority and expert authority.

Question 18

Weaknesses of legitimacy of authority

Answer 18

• Agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings (eg. Doesn’t explain why people didn’t conform). Supported by Hunter et al’s study
• There is research to show that behaviour of Nazi’s cannot be explained in terms of authority. Mandel (1998) found incident where officers obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a town, despite not having urgent orders to do so

Question 19

What did Adorno believe about obedience?

Answer 19

Believed that high level of obedience was a psychological disorder , tried to locate causes of it in personality of individual (1950, used F-scale on 2000 middle class white americans, which was used to measure tendency toward facism, one characteristic of which is authoritarianism)

Question 20

Authoritarian characteristics identified by Adorno

Answer 20

1) extreme respect for authority
2) show contempt for people they perceive as inferior socially
3) Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race, gender
4) View society as “going to the dogs”, believe strong powerful leader is needed to enforce traditional values
5) Believe in traditional values such as love for country, family,religion
6) Inflexible in their outlook, no “grey areas”, everything is either right or wrong

Question 21

Aspects of parenting that Adorno believed led to Authoritarian personality

Answer 21

• strict discipline
• Impossibly high standards
• Severe criticism of perceived failings
• Conditional love: depends on child’s behaviour
• expectation of absolute loyalty

Question 22

Define an internal and external Locus of control

Answer 22

Internal locus = a person who believes their behaviour is caused by their own personal efforts.
External locus = a person who believes their behaviour is controlled by luck or fate.

Question 23

Strengths of Locus of control

Answer 23

• Allen and Levine (1971) found conformity decreased in an Asch’s style study, supports view that resistance is not just motivated by following someone else but freedom.
• Gamson et al (1982) found higher levels of resistance in their study, with 29 of 33 participants rebelling.

Question 24

Weaknesses of Locus of control

Answer 24

• Rotter (1982) pointed out that Locus of control only comes into play in novel situations, has very little influence over our behaviour in familiar situations.
• Twinge’s research provides contradictory evidence.

Question 25

How did Holland’s study (1967) work and support Locus of control as a way of resisting social influence?

Answer 25

Repeated Milgram’s base study but measured wether participants had an internal or external locus of control beforehand.
37% of internals didn’t continue to highest shock level, whereas only 23% of external participants didn’t. Shows internals have a higher resistance to authority.

Question 26

What is social support and how can it help people resist conformity and obedience?

Answer 26

Social support is the presence and support of other people in a scenario. The larger the amount of social support, the more conformity and obedience was resisted.

Question 27

What is minority influence?

Answer 27

Refers to situations where one person or a small group of people influences the beliefs or behaviours of a majority.

Question 28

Processes involved in minority influence

Answer 28

• Commitment: when minorities engage in extreme actions which are at risk to them, majority groups pay more attention.
• Flexibility: If minorities can adapt their point of view and accept reasonable counter arguments, they are more successful.
• Consistency: sticking to an argument (synchronic and diachronic)

Question 29

What is synchronic and diachronic consistency?

Answer 29

Synchronic consistency: agreement between people in the minority group (“they’re all saying the same thing”)
Diachronic consistency: agreement over time (“they’ve been saying the same thing for a while now”)

Question 30

What is the augmentation principle?

Answer 30

The idea that when minorities engage in extreme activities which are at risk to the majority group, members pay more attention.

Question 31

How did Moscovici demonstrate the effects of minority influence and what process is involved in this experiment?

Answer 31

Had 6 people (with 2 confederates) view 36 blue/green slides and say what colour they were. In one group, confederates consistently said the slides were green on 2/3 of the trials. In another group, the confederates were extremely inconsistent with their answers. Was found that in consistent trial, 36% of participants gave the same answer as the minority at least once, whereas on the second trial, it only happed to 1.25% of participants. Shows that minority influence is affected by consistency.

Question 32

How did Nemeth discover the effects of minority influence and what factor of this did he discover?

Answer 32

Nemeth’s study consisted of two groups of participants (with a small number of confederates, who were the minorities) being told to determine how much a person involved in a ski lift accident should be compensated. In one group, a minority picked an amount and firmly stood by it, whereas in a second group, a minority picked a price but were willing to negotiate or compromise their price. It was found that the majority were more likely to agree with the minority if they were more flexible/negotiable in their answers.

Question 34

Evidence for minority influence research

Answer 34

• Moscovichi’s study shows that consistency is a key factor in affecting minority influence
• Martin et al’s study (2003) shows that change to minority position does involve deeper processing of ideas.
• A variation of Moscovichi’s study shows that internalisation does affect minority influence, as members of a majority may agree internally but be afraid to agree publicly.

Question 35

Evidence against minority influence

Answer 35

• Tasks involved in studying minority influence are artificial, research is therefore lacking in external validity as it is vastly different from how minorities would influence majorities in real life.
• Limited real world application, as real life social situations are much more complicated than the studies they’re based on.

Question 36

What are the steps involved in the process of social change?

Answer 36

1) Drawing attention
2) Consistency
3) Deeper processing
4) Augmentation principle
5) Snowball effect
6) Social cryptomnesia