Social Influence 👥

Question 1

Conformity: Types and Explanations

Answer 1

compliance = going along with others to gain social approval

internalisation = going along with others because you’ve adopted their view as your own

identification = going along with others out of desire to be like them

Question 2

Conformity: Asch’s study

Answer 2

asked 123 male participants to take part in a study where they had to identify which comparison line matched the standard line. Confederates told the wrong answer to see if the participant would conform. 75% conformed once. 36.8% conformed.
Critical trials 12/16 trials which the confederates were all in agreement.
Reasons:
Deception of perception= actually see the wrong things
Deception of judgement= don’t trust themselves
Deception of action= don’t want to be the odd one out

Unanimity, group size and task difficulty

Question 3

Evaluations of Asch’s Research

Answer 3

weakness - its a child of its time, Perrin and Spencer replicated task with science and engineering students and only 1/396 trials conformed.

weakness - Neto said that females could conform more, Asch’s task had limited application and lack of population validity, smith and bond

weakness - ethical issues, deception

weakness - artificial stimuli, demand characteristics

Question 4

Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo’s study

Answer 4

24 male participants volunteered and randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard, experiment lasted 6/14 days and 5 participants were released early due to mental stress.

Question 5

Evaluations of Zimbardo’s Research

Answer 5

weakness - Reicher and Haslam replicated with 15 men, opposite results occurred.

weakness - individual differences may be the cause

weakness - ethical issues

strength - real world application, explanation for prison brutality

Question 6

Obedience: Milgram’s study

Answer 6

40 male volunteers in Yale University. participant = teacher, confederates = learner and experimenter. Teachers had to give learners fake electric shocks going from 15v to 450v, they were pressured by the experimenter to continue. 65% went all the way, 100% went to 300v, 84% were glad they did it.

Question 7

Evaluations of Milgrams study

Answer 7

strength - Hofling et al replicated with nurses and 21/22 nurses obeyed destructive authority

weakness - ethical issues, deception, protection from harm

weakness - Orne and Holland claim participants didn’t believe the shocks as the experimenter remained to cool and distant.

Question 8

Obedience: Situational Variables

Answer 8

proximity - learner and teacher in the same room = 40%

• touch proximity = 30%
• remote instruction = 20.5%

uniform = 20%

location = 47.5%

Question 9

evaluations of situational variables

Answer 9

strength - Bickman’s experiment with the guard, milkman and civilian. people were twice as likely to obey to the guard than the civilian. uniform.

strength - cross cultural replications, Meeus and raaijmakers
replicated with dutch participants and found similar results. However smith and bond says it lacks cultural variation due to replications being based on a western bias

weakness - low internal validity, Orne and Holland said that the uniform switch seemed fake.

Question 10

Obedience: Situational Explanations

Answer 10

agentic state = not your responsibility

autonomous state = your responsibility

agentic shift = autonomous - agentic state

binding factors = shifting responsibility or denying damage

legitimacy of authority = my lai massacre

Question 11

Obedience: Dispositional explanations

Answer 11

Adorno’s research on authoritarian personality using the

F-scale. This personality is said to be the result of harsh parenting.

Question 12

Evaluations of dispositional explanations

Answer 12

strength - Milgram and Elms got 20 participants to complete the f-scale, those who scored lower didn’t go as far in Milgram’s experiment.
weakness - Greenstein claimed the f-scale was a comedy of methodological errors as all questions were very similar
weakness - Christina and Jahoda claimed that it was right wing biased and left wing people can also have authoritarian personality

Question 13

Resistance to social influence

Answer 13

social support - dissenter in Asch’s research saying the correct answer (36.8% - 5.5%), dissenter saying wrong but different answer (36.8% - 9%)
locus of control - Rotter, internal or external

Question 14

Evaluations of resistance to social influence

Answer 14

strength - Holland repeated Milgram’s experiment and measured whether participants were inter or external, 37% of internals didn’t continue, 23% of externals didn’t continue.

weakness - Twenge et al did a meta analysis on similar LOC studies over 40 years and found that people became more resistant but more external.

Question 15

Minority influence

Answer 15

Consistency, Commitment, Flexibility

Moscovici et al had 36 groups of 6 females ( 2 confederates and 4 participants) and showed them 36 blue slides of varying shades, asked them all to state the colours.

1. confederates said they were all green
2. confederates said 2/3 were green
3. control group
4. 8.42% conformed
5. 1.25% conformed
6. 0.25% conformed

Question 16

Evaluations of minority influence

Answer 16

strength - Wood et al did a meta analysis of 100 similar studies and found that consistent minorities were the most effective.

strength - Martin et al showed a message and measured participants agreement, he then showed one group a minority group agreeing and the other a majority group agreeing. He then showed a conflicting view and measured their agreement. 1st group were less likely to change their opinion.

weakness - artificial tasks that lack meaning.

Question 17

Social change

Answer 17

deeper processing

augmentation principle - risks

consistency

drawing attention to the issue

snowball effect

social cryptonesia - memory change without realising

“most of us don’t drink and drive” campaign

8% decrease of those who believed the average Montanan their age drove after drinking in the previous month.

17% increase in the percentage passing a law to lower the BAC legal limit.

Question 18

Evaluations of social change

Answer 18

strength - Nolan et al put messages on doors every week stating that “most residents use less energy”. as a control group he put other messages just saying “use less energy”. significantly less energy use from group one.

weakness - Dejong et al used NSI to lower teen alcohol use but it didn’t work.

weakness - Foxcraft et al did a meta analysis of 70 studies on NSI and it had no effect.

Question 19

Validity

Answer 19

Temporal- can’t be applied to other times

Ecological- doesn’t reflect real life

Population- only about one group in population

External- generalisability to other real life applications

Internal- findings are completely cause by the reason studied not other factors