social influence

Question 1

what is conformity?

Answer 1

when an individual changes their behaviour or beliefs to fit in with a group, due to group pressure.

Question 2

definition and features of internalisation?

Answer 2

-when an individuals changes their public and private views or behaviour to match a group, have genuinely changed the persons mind.

Question 3

definition and features of identification?

Answer 3

-when an individual changes their public views to match those of a group because they will value the group and wish to be part of it. there may be a difference between the individual’s public and private views. the change is likely to last as long as the individual is with the group.

Question 4

definition and features of compliance?

Answer 4

-when an individual changes their public, but not private behaviour or views to match those of a group and is a short term change

Question 5

Deutsch and Gerard 1955

Answer 5

-felt that the best way to understand conformity was by understanding why people commit crimes and so then suggested the dual model process of normative and infomational

Question 6

what is normative influence?

Answer 6

-is about fitting in and being accepted by other people, is the desire to be liked.

Question 7

what is informational social influence?

Answer 7

-believing that others know better than you or have more information, is the desire to be right.

Question 8

Asch 1956

Answer 8

-asked 123 student volunteers to take part in a vision test, with one volunteer being in a room with confederates as he wanted to see how the lone participant would react to the others behaviour.
-groups of 7-9 were presented with a group of lines and and had to verbally state which line was closest in length to another and confederates were instructed to give the wrong answer on 12 out of 18.
-when the partcipants said the wrong answer, participants went along with it 36.8% of the time. 75% conformed atleast once 5% everytime and 25% never.
-normative influence.

Question 9

sherif 1936

Answer 9

-carried out a lab experiment with a repeated designs measure to investigate how people use the behaviours of others when they aren’t sure what to do.
-used an auto-kinetic effect to test this, participants were asked to estimate how far the light moved and in what direction there was no right answer.
-first condition participants were tested alone and asked for the estimate of distance and direction. in the second in groups of three and had more of a common estimate. in the third condition participants guessed a lot closer to the common group estimate.
-therefore they internalised their answers.

Question 10

evaluation of Sherif internalisation?

Answer 10

-strengths: variables were strictly controlled, third variable shouldn’t have influenced and we should be able to establish cause and effect.
method was replicable, repeated measures meant participant variables were kept consistent.
-weaknesses- deception, participants believed the stationary light was moving. narrow sample only males and reduces the generalisability. artificial situations, low ecological validity.

Question 11

Zimbardo 1971

Answer 11

-investigated identification and wanted to see if people would conform to roles given to them.
- using a lab experiment zimbardo converted a basement of the stanford university into a mock prison and 24 male college students paid £15 a day and randomly assigned to either guard or prisoner.
-prisoners were arrested at their own homes without warning, guards were given a khaki uniform, dark glasses whistles etc.
-prisoners were deindividuated- stripped naked, deloused and referred to only by their number.
-within a short time both adapted to their roles, some guards acted in brutal and sadistic way and prisoners began to take the rules seriously aswell.
-one prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of crying and three others also had to leave.
- on the sixth day it was shut down due to worries of psychological damage and people conform to roles given to them

Question 12

evaluation of Zimbardos study?

Answer 12

-strengths: all participants agreed to take part the study stopped after 6 days.
-weaknesses: not all guards behaved the same way, all guards were male, guards could have been following the superintendent, no automatic right to withdraw, prisoners extremely distressed, demand characteristics and lacks validity.

Question 13

psychological definition of obedience to authority?

Answer 13

• a type of social influence that involves an individual following a direct order usually from an authority figure and usually in order to avoid a punishment.

Question 14

why did Milgram conduct his study?

Answer 14

he wanted to know why the germans acted the way they did in concentration camps in WW2

Question 15

Milgram 1963

Answer 15

-Yale uni 40 male participants between 20 and 50 rigged so they were always the teacher and the learner a confederate.
-participant was seated in an adjacent room to the confederate and the confederate was asked to memorise word pairs and gave mostly wrong answers and the participant had to give shocks which they thought were real, they made noises after being shocked and stopped after the 300v shock
-all 40 participants continued to 300v and 65% continued to 450v
-shows that obedience can be evoked in people purely by the situation

Question 16

hofling 1966

Answer 16

-hoflings arranged with hospitals to ring a nurse and pretend to be an unknown doctor, and asked them to give a 20mg dosage of Astroten to a patient, which exceeded the 10mg maximum dosage on the bottle and said that he was stuck in a traffic jam.
-nurses broke some rules in the hospital: should not take orders over the phone, shouldnt take orders from an unknown doctor, drug was not on the ward list and it was twice the max dose.
-21 out of 22 nurses obeyed his orders.

Question 17

Rank and Jacobson 1977

Answer 17

-criticised the realism of Hoflings study as although it was in a real life situation there were a number of threats to the ecological validity: use of an unknown drug, order coming from a unknown doctor and nurses were alone.
-so they replicated this but instead with a known doctor, and a familiar drug, valium and nurses were able to consult other nurses, only 2 out of 18 obeyed.

Question 18

what is agentic theory?

Answer 18

-when you act for someone else as an agent and don’t feel responsible for your actions, people start in an autonomous way feeling responsible for their own actions and then move into a state where they are obedient, this is known as an agentic shift.

Question 19

what situational variables are there which affect obedience?

Answer 19

-proximity
-uniform
-location

Question 20

what effect does proximity have on obedience?

Answer 20

-milgram had the learner in the same room as the teacher obedience levels fell to 40% so tends to lower the obedience.

Question 21

what effect does uniform have on obedience?

Answer 21

-raises obedience.
-Bickman 1974- conducted an experiment on the streets of new york. had three male experimenters dress either in a uniform or a civilian.
-they made requests of 153 passers by, and they were more likely to obey the guard. 33% for the milkman and 89% for the guard.

Question 22

what effect does location have on obedience?

Answer 22

-milgram carried out further variations of his experiment and changed the location from yale to a rundown office in connecticut. obedience dropped to 48% of participants

Question 23

how does the presence of allies effect obedience?

Answer 23

-helps us to develop our resistance strategies.
- in Milgram’s experiment when the teacher was paired with 2 confederates obedience levels dropped to 10%

Question 24

how does locus of control affect obedience?

Answer 24

-put forward by Julian Rotter in 1966 and is a persons perception of the personal control they have over their behaviour.
-internals believe they have a great deal of control and are more likely to take responsibility for their behaviour whereas externals put things down to luck or fate.

Question 25

Oliner and Oliner 1988

Answer 25

-study on people who had defied orders and rescued jews from the Holocaust compared 406 people who rescued jews and 126 who had not. they found the rescuers had higher levels of internal locus of control

Question 26

Moscovici 1969

Answer 26

-to support the view that a minority are most likely to influence a majority if they are consistent in their views.
-female participants told they would be taking part in a colour perception test.
-were placed in a group of 4 and two confederates, were shown 36 slides of different blues and greens.
-there were two conditions, in the first one the confederates were consistent and answered green for every slide and in the second the confederates were inconsistent answering green for the first 24 times and blue 12 times.
-in the first condition the participants agreed on 8.5% of trials and 32% at least once on the second was reduced to 1.25%
-concluded that a minority has the ability to influence a majority and create social change

Question 27

Clark 1994

Answer 27

12 Angry Men
-used the jury settings from 12 angry men to investigate internalisation and to consider whether responses might be the same in an experimental condition.
-clark gave the women 4 page booklet containing evidence suggesting the defendant was guilty and then varied whether or not they received the counter argument.
-the participants were more likely to accept minority decision when they were consistent and persuasive.

Question 28

Latane and wolf 1981

Answer 28

-social impact theory
explains different kinds of social influence through 3 key factors
-strength of message, achieved by either strength of numbers or consistency.
-status and knowledge, one person with expert knowledge may have similar influence to a majority of non experts.
-immediacy, the closer you are to the influencer the greater the impact of message. for example we are more likely influenced by a friend than a stranger and more so face to face

Question 29

Moscovici and Nemeth 1974

Answer 29

-social influence is more effective if:
-consistent: beliefs must appear strong and consistent over time, if not the majority will not pay attention.
-flexible- unreasonable consistency has a negative effect on influence, however risk being seen as inconsistent if they are too flexible on views.
-commitment- if a member of the group desserts, this damages their consistency and unity.
-relevance- the message must be relevant to social trends in order to make a convincing argument for people to yield to minority.

Question 30

what two things effect social change?

Answer 30

-snowball effect: as some individuals adopt the minority view they start to influence a greater number of people , the change gains momentum snowballs and influences more people can lead to social cryptoanmenisa.
-crypto amnesia: by the time the minority view has become the majority the people have forgotten it ever was a majority view. a major attitude change has taken place.