paper 1- social influence

Question 1

Conformity

Answer 1

Type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit within a group.

Question 2

Types of conformity

Answer 2

Compliance,identification,internalization

Question 3

Compliance

Answer 3

Refers to going along with the group.
A person may agree in public with a group of people, but I’m person privately disagrees with the groups viewpoint or behavior.
Temporary change, only presence of the group.
E.g a person may follow a dress code at work even if they personally disagrees with it, just to avoid potential social discomfort or punishment.

Question 4

Identification

Answer 4

Refers to sometimes we conform to the opinion and behaviors of a group because there is something about the group we value even if we may disagree privately- there’s something in the group we value.
The conformity is driven by a desire to be associated with the group.

E.g a teenager adopts the fashion style of a popular celebrity to fit in and be accepted by a popular peer group.

Question 5

Internalization

Answer 5

Publicly changing behavior to fit in within the group while also agreeing with them privately.
The person genuinely accepts the groups norm, this change is usually permanent or long lasting.

E.g after learning about the environment impact of certain products, an individual chooses to adopt a more suitable lifestyle genuinely, integrating thee values into their own beliefs system.

Question 6

Explanation of conformity

Answer 6

Normative influence, informational influence

Question 7

Normative influence (about norms)

Answer 7

The desire to be liked- when we conform to fit in with the group because we don’t want to appear foolish or be left out. For example, a personal may feel pressured to smoke because the rest of their friends are.

Normative influence can lead to compliance, this shows the behavior/opinions is temporary.
Being a emotional rather than a cognitive process as people prefer to gain social approval than be rejected.

Might be more pronounced in stressful situations (than non stressful) where people have a greater need for social support.

For a study on normative influence refer to Asch’s line study.

Question 8

Asch’s line study

Answer 8

Asch(1951) conducted a laboratory experiment where he wanted to investigate whether people would conform in situations where an answer was obvious and see if social pressure from majority could affect a person to conform.

Asch study consisted of 50 male students, who believed they were taking a vision test. There was 5-7 participants per group. In each group there was only one real participant, the remaining 6 were confederates.
Asch used a judgement task( standard line) which each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. The confederates were to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials.

The real participants conformed on 32% of the critical trails where confederates gave the wrong answers. 74% for he participates conformed at least once on the critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.

Question 9

Informational influence

Answer 9

The desire to be right.
When we conform because we are unsure of the situation or lack of knowledge, so we look to others who we believe may have

Question 10

Evaluation for Asch study

Answer 10

• the study lacks ecological validity
  ↳ as it was based on people’s perceptions of lines, this does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity- unable to generalize the results of Aschs study of other real life situation.
• biased sample of 50 males students.
  ↳ unable to generalize the results to other populations - unable to to conclude if female students would have confirmed in a similar way to make students and therefore lack’s population validity and further research to determine whether male and female conform differently.
• ethically questionable
  ↳ Asch broke serval ethical guidance lines, including: deception and protection from harm.
  Asch deliberately deceived his participants by saying they were taking part in a vision test and not a experiment on conformity. However, it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Asch experiment is required deception in order to receive valid results. If participants are aware of the true aim, they would have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently.

+ carried out in a lab settings and carefully controlled
↳ meaning good control over extraneous variables, therefore any change in results was due to the change in independence variable and it’s effect on the dependent variable

Question 11

Jenness’s beans jar experiment

Answer 11

Jennesss carried out a study into CONFORMITY in this experiment participants were asked to ESTIMATE how many beans they thought where in the jar.
Each participant had to have an INDIVIDUAL estimate, and then do the same as a GROUP.
He found that when the task was carried out in a SOCIAL GROUP , the participants would report estimate of roughly the SAME value (eventhough they had previously reported quite differently estimates as INDIVIDUALS).
The study was successful showing majority influence, thus providing that individual’s behaviour and beliefs can be influenced by a group.
Additionally, this is likely to be an example of INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE (desire to be right) as participants would be uncertain about the actual number of beans in the jar.

Question 12

Conformity- variations of Asch(1951)

Answer 12

Group size
Unanimity
Difficulty in task
Answer in private

Question 13

Group size

Answer 13

Asch altered the number of confederates in his study to see how this affected conformity. The bigger the majority group ( number of confederates) the more people conformed, but only til a certain point.

With one person (I.E confederate) in the group conformity was 3% with two other it increased to 13% and three more it was 32% (1/3). However, conformity did not increase much after the group size about 4/5 because conformity does not seem to increase in group larger than considered the optimal ( best) group size.

Question 14

Group unanimity

Answer 14

A Person is more likely to conform when all members of the group agrees and given the same answer. When the other person in the group have a different answer from the others, and the group answer was not animous, conformity dropped.

Asch found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity by 80% ( individual expression)

Question 15

difficultly of task

Answer 15

When the ( comparison) lines ( E.g A,B,C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased. When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation.

The more difficult the task, the greater conformity.

Question 16

Answer in private

Answer 16

When participants called answer in private ( so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity decreases.
This is because there are fewer group pressure and normative influence( desire to be liked) is not as powerful as there is no fear of rejection from the group.

Question 17

Conformity to social roles

Answer 17

social roles refer to the set of behaviors, expectations, and responsibilities that individuals adopt within a specific social context.
there is a considerable pressure to conform to the expectations of social roles. conformity to a social role is called IDENTIFICATION.

Question 18

ZIMBARDO’S REASEARCH

Answer 18

There has been many prison riots in America and Zimbardo wanted to know why prison guards behave brutally.
Was it because they have sadistic (brutal) personalities or was it their social roles ( as a prison guard) that created such behaviour?

Question 19

ZIMBARDO’S- THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

Answer 19

Zimbardo wanted to investigate how easily people would conform to assigned social roles of guards and prisoners in role playing exercise that stimulated prison life.

Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford university building into a MOCK PRISON. They advertise for students to play roles of prisoners and guards for 2 weeks.
21 MALE STUDENT VOLUNTEERS who were tested and found to be ‘emotional stable’ were selected as participants.
Participants were RANDOMLY assigned to either prisoner or guard.
Prisoners and guards were encouraged to conform to their social roles both through instructions and uniforms they were.

Question 20

UNIFORM (zimbardo)

Answer 20

Prisoners were given a lose smock to wear and a cap to cover their hair and were identified by an assigned numbers only (dehumanising).
Guards were given their own khaki uniform, wooden club, handcuffs and mirror shades to make eye contact at with prisoners difficult.
BOTH uniforms were created a loss of the individuals personal identity ( de-individuation), meaning they would more likely to conform to their perceived social role.

Question 21

FINDINGS - related to social roles (Zimbardo)

Answer 21

Both prisoners and guards settled into their roles very quickly.
Within hours of beginning the experiment some guards began to harass prisoners and treat them harshly.
Within two days, the prisoners rebelled; they ripped their uniform,shouted and sore at the guards.
The guards used fire extinguishers to retaliate, using ‘divide-and the rule’ tactic, playing prisoners off against each other and Completing head counts, sometimes at night.
Prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behaviour e.g they became quiet,they snitched to the guards about other prisoners; they took prison rules seriously; they increasingly became obedient.
As the prisoners became more submissive( ready to conform), the guards become more aggressive and confident, taking on their social roles easily.
Prisoners become depressed and anxious. Guards demanded ever GREATER obedience from their prisoners. The prisoners were dependant on the guards for everything so tried to find ways to please the guards such as telling tales on fellow prisoners.

Question 22

Evaluation of Zimbardo study

Answer 22

+ a major practical application is that the study means practices were changed in US prisons to protect the vulnerable and make prisoners more safer and from all of this was due to the study.

• DEMAND CHARACTERISTICS could explain the findings of the study. Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting. Because the guards and prisoners were playing a role their behaviour may not be influence by the same factors which affect behaviour in real life. This means, the study’s findings cannot be reasonably generalised to real life, such as a prison setting.
• right to withdraw as difficult as Zimbardo was the manager/ team leader of the study. which made it hard for at least one prisoner to withdraw from the study.
• Zimbardo has been criticized for breaking many ethical guidelines in particular, PROTECTION FROM HARM. five of the prisoners left the experiment early because of their adverse reactions to the physical to the physical and mental torments. Furthermore, some of the guards reported the feeling of anxiety and guilt as a result of their actions during the Stanford University and debriefed his participants afterwards, he acknowledged that the study should have stopped earlier.
  Psychological harm could’ve been long lasting.
• a