Resisting social influence Flashcards
(5 cards)
What are the explanations of resistance?
Social support and locus of control
Explain social support in terms of resisting social influence
One way people can resist social influence is if they have an ally that also supports their belief and point of view because:
- it builds their confidence and allows them to be independent.
- it allows them to resist NSI because when they are supported they no longer have the fear of being ridiculed
- however this is a short-term effect because if the ally returns back to conformity, so does the naive participant.
Evaluate social support
Research support: Asch did a variation where one of the confederates gave the correct answer throughout, conformity dropped to 5%
Research support: Milgram did a variation where the real participant was paired with 2 confederates who also played the role of a teacher and they withdrew from the experiment early. Participants who went up till the full 450 volts dropped from 65% to 10%, supports that they were less likely to obey authority figure
Explain locus of control in terms of resisting social influence
Rotter proposed the idea of locus of control which is the extent to which people believe they have control over their own lives
- Internal locus of control: What happens in their life is largely a result of their own behaviour and they have control over their life. These people are more independent and find it easier to resist the pressure to conform/obey
- External locus of control: What happens in their life is largely a result of external factors and they do not have any control over their life. These people are less independent and are more likely to conform/obey
Evaluate locus of control
Research support: Spector used Rotters locus of control scaled to determine if locus of control was associated with conformity. He found that from 157 students, those with a high internal locus of control were less likely to conform than those with a high external locus of control, but only in situations of NSI. This means NSI is more powerful than ISI when it comes to locus of control.
It has a nomothetic approach, tries to establish general laws of behaviour by relating to characteristics displayed on a scale.
