Social Influence

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

• when an individual changes their behaviour or beliefs to fit in those of a group, due to real or imagined group pressure

Question 2

What is social influence?

Answer 2

• the scientific study of the ways in which people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are affected by other people

Question 3

What are the three types of conformity? deep-shallow

Answer 3

• internalisation
• identification
• compliance

Question 4

What’s internalisation?

Answer 4

• where a person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and accepted the views of the group
• informational social influence

Question 5

What’s identification?

Answer 5

• when an individual conforms to a particular group because they want to fit in with the established behaviours of the chosen group, person or role
• normative social influence

Question 6

What’s compliance?

Answer 6

• conforming publicly but continuing privately to disagree
• normative social influence

Question 7

What is normative social influence?

Answer 7

• conforming to be accepted and to feel they belong to the group

Question 8

What is informational social influence?

Answer 8

• conforming because they believe someone else is right
• or to gain knowledge

Question 9

What theory is normative and informational social influence known as? Who had this theory?

Answer 9

• the two-process theory
• Deutsch and Gerard

Question 10

What’s a confederate?

Answer 10

• an actor involved in a psychological experiment who appears to be a fellow participant

Question 11

What was the aim of aschs experiment?

Answer 11

• to see if a person conformed to the majority view even to an obvious wrong answer

Question 12

What were Aschs main findings?

Answer 12

-75% conformed at least once
- 5% conformed every time
- overall conformity rate in critical trails was 32%

Question 13

Asch was also interested in the conditions that may change conformity rates. How did he investigate these?

Answer 13

• by carrying out some variations of his original procedure

Question 14

Give 3 factors Asch changed.

Answer 14

• group size
• presence of a dissenter
• task difficulty

Question 15

What did Asch find out about group size?

Answer 15

• 3 was the optimal group size for conformity to occur
• he found little changed when the group size reached 4-5
• one confederate = 3%
• two confederates = 13%
• three or more 32%

Question 16

How did presence of a dissenter affect conformity?

Answer 16

• reduced conformity by 25%

Question 17

How did task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 17

• conformity increased because people where uncertain and looked to others for confirmation

Question 18

When the experiment was done 25 years later with engineering students, how did it differ?

Answer 18

• only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials

Question 19

Why did Zimbardo carry out his experiment?

Answer 19

• there has been prison riots over america and he wanted to know why prison guards behave brutally

Question 20

21 volunteers who were tested emotionally stable where selected. How did they decide who was the guard and the prisoner?

Answer 20

• each were randomly assigned guard or prisoner

Question 21

How were all participants encouraged to conform to social rules?

Answer 21

• through uniform
• behavioural instructions

Question 22

If prisoners wanted to leave early, how would they do this?

Answer 22

• apply for parole

Question 23

How were the guards encouraged to play their role?

Answer 23

• being reminded that they had complete power over prisoners

Question 24

What were 4 ethical issues of the Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 24

• led to significant psychological harm to those who were emotionally stable
• participants weren’t informed about the potential psychological risks involved in the experiment
• they felt pressured to continue in the experiment even though they wanted to leave
• zimbardo took on the role of prison superintendent which blurred the line between researcher and participant

Question 25

What was Milgrims aim?

Answer 25

- to investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain and injure an innocent person

Question 26

How big was the sample? How were participants recruited? How much were they payed to take part? Milgrim

Answer 26

- 40 male americans - all volunteers - newspaper article - 4.50 dollars

Question 27

When each volunteer arrived at Milgrims lab, he was introduced to another participant. Who was this?

Answer 27

- a confederate

Question 28

Then, they drew lots to see who would be the learner and the teacher. How did they do this?

Answer 28

- the participant was always the teacher and the confederate the learner because it was fixed

Question 29

How was the experimenter involved? Milgrim

Answer 29

- telling the teacher to carry on

Question 30

What were the main findings? Milgrim

Answer 30

- every participant delivered all shocks up to 300V - 12.5% of participants stopped at 300 V - 65% continued to the highest level of 450 V

Question 31

What did participants show signs of? Milgrim

Answer 31

- signed of extreme tension - swearing, trembling, biting lips, groaning - 3 had full-blown uncontrollable siezures

Question 32

Did Milgrims experiment break informed consent?

Answer 32

- Yes - they were told the aim of the study was about memory, they were deceived

Question 33

Were the participants in Milgrims experiment decieved?

Answer 33

- Yes - shocks weren’t real and learner deliberately got questions wrong

Question 34

Did Milgrim break the right to withdraw?

Answer 34

- although participants were told they could withdraw, they were actively encouraged to continue to the experiment

Question 35

Were the participant of Milgrims study protected from harm?

Answer 35

- many participants were visibly traumatised, anxious, upset and shaken from the experience, there was no protection

Question 36

What situational variables did milgrims research identify that he believed to influence obedience?

Answer 36

- proximity - location - uniform

Question 37

When the learner was in the same room as the teacher what did obedience rates fall to?

Answer 37

- 40%

Question 38

When the experimenter left the room and gave instructions over the phone what were the obedience rates?

Answer 38

- 20.5%

Question 39

What were the obedience rates when the teacher forced the learners hand onto the shock plate?

Answer 39

- 30%

Question 40

When the experiment was done in a run down building, what was the obedience rate?

Answer 40

- 47.5%

Question 41

When the experiment didn’t wear a white lab coat, what was the obedience rate?

Answer 41

- 20%