resistance to social influence

Question 1

social support - resisting conformity

Answer 1

• pressure to conform minimised if other people present are also not conforming
• the fact that someone else is not following the majority is social support, enables naive participant to follow their own conscience, confederate acts as a model of independent behaviour
• link to asch - confederate who isn’t conforming may not be giving the right answer

Question 2

social support - resisting obedience

Answer 2

• pressure to obey minimised if other people present are disobedient
• in one of milgram’s variations, obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the participant was joined by a disobedient confederate
• participants may not follow this behaviour, but the confederate acts as a model of dissent and frees participants to act from their own conscience
• disobedient figure challenges legitimacy of authority figure, making it easier for others to disobey

Question 3

evaluation for social support - Allen and Levine study

Answer 3

• shows that social support helps with resistance
• Asch-type task, dissenter was apparently someone with good eyesight, 64% of participants refused to conform
• when there was no dissenter, only 3% of participants resisted
• however, when dissenter wore thick glasses, resistance was only 36%
• supports idea of social support as resistance increased
• weren’t as confident in person with glasses, doesn’t give same level of support as someone who’s eyesight does seem good
• supporting individual needs to be perceived to be credible

Question 4

internal LOC

Answer 4

• things that happen are largely controlled by themselves
• more likely to resist social pressure
• higer confidence
• personally motivated

Question 5

external LOC

Answer 5

• things that happen are out of their control
• often place responsibility upon other people
  less likely to be personally motivated

Question 6

locus of control - the LOC continuum

Answer 6

• people aren’t just either internal or external
• LOC is a scale, individuals vary in their position on it
• low internal and low external lie in between
• people change between the two depending on the situation
• this makes it very difficult to measure whether someone is internal or external

Question 7

how would you measure LOC?

Answer 7

• scale like the f-scale, qualitative questions etc

Question 8

link between resistance and LOC

Answer 8

• people with high internal LOC are more able to resist pressures to conform or obey
• if a person takes personal responsibility for actions (internals), they can base decisions on their own beliefs rather than the influence of others
• people with a high internal LOC also tend to be more self confident and have higher intelligence, leading to greater resistance to social influence
• also characteristics for leaders, who have much less need for social approval

Question 9

evaluation for LOC - Holland’s repeat of Milgram’s study

Answer 9

• supports link between LOC and resistance to obedience
• repeated study and measured whether participants were internals or externals
• 37% of internals didn’t continue to highest shock level, only 23% of externals didn’t continue
• internals showed greater resistance to authority
• increases validity of LOC as an explanation

Question 10

evaluation for LOC - Twenge’s research

Answer 10

• challenges link between LOC and resistance
• analysed data from american LOC studies overtime
• data showed that overtime, people became more resistant to obedience but also more external
• if resistance is linked to LOC, we would expect people to become more internal
• reduces validity of LOC as an explanation