Social influence Flashcards

Question

What were the results of the research into group size?

Answer 1

1 confederate the conformity was 3% 2 confederates the conformity was 13% 3 confederates the conformity was 32% Conformity peaked with around 7 confederates, after that there was a slight drop

Answer 2

When a dissenter gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 5.5% When a dissenter gave a different incorrect answer to the confederates, conformity dropped to 9%

Answer 3

When the task becomes more difficult, conformity rates increase

Answer 4

Did many different trials with different numbers of confederates ranging from 1-15

Answer 5

Conformity increases as group size increases, but only to a certain point. After having around 7-9 participants the rates of conformity drop due to participants guessing that it is not a visual perception test

Answer 6

Introduce a dissenter who would give a different answer to the rest of the confederates

Answer 7

When the group is divided, conformity decreases as the participant feels less pressure to conform to the majority. If the participant has support for their answer, their confidence increases even more which means that conformity decreases further.

Answer 8

He made two of the lines very similar in length to the stimulus line, so that the answer was more ambiguous

Answer 9

If the participants are unsure of their answer, they are more likely to conform, this is most likely due to informational social influence

Answer 10

To investigate the extent to which people would conform to social roles

Answer 11

Stanford university

Answer 12

A controlled observation

Answer 13

24 male students from a volunteer sample

Answer 14

All participants were psychologically and physically screened, participants were randomly allocated to their role as prisoner or guard

Answer 15

A process where people are degraded by lessoning their human qualities

Answer 16

A process where people loose their sense of individual identity

Answer 17

The guards made the prisoners clean the toilets with their bare hands

Answer 18

The prisoners and guards referred to themselves and each other as their numbers instead of their names

Answer 19

It was supposed to last 14 days and it actually lasted 6 days

Answer 20

The same conformity to social roles was evident in Abu Ghraib. He believed that the guards in the prison notorious for committing horrible crimes were victims of situational factors such as lack of training, boredom and no accountability to authority. Zimbado’s study helps us to understand the power of situational factors, which has led to reform within prisons. This means that it has good real world application

Answer 21

Lack of protection from harm - at least one participant reported having a mental breakdown while all participants went through deindividuation and all the prisoners went through dehumanisation Right to withdraw - Zimbado made this difficult by responding to the participants as a prison superintendent would instead of how a psychological researcher would

Answer 22

Put a chain on the prisoners foot, had the prisoners and guards in uniform

Answer 23

To test how far ordinary people would obey a perceived legitimate authority figure To test the “Germans are different” hypothesis

Answer 24

Yale university, lab experiment

Answer 25

To see how punishment affects learning

Answer 26

Volunteer sample of 40 male participants, aged 20-50 paid $4.50

Answer 27

The real participant played the teacher, there was a confederate playing the experimenter who wore a white lab coat. There was also a learner who was a confederate, he was called Mr Wallace and the participant met him in the waiting room

Answer 28

The participant would meet Mr Wallace in the waiting room, they would watch Mr Wallace be tied down and they would also be given a 15 Volt shock. These are all things that Milgrim did to reduce demand characteristics. The learner would give wrong answers, and the participant would give them shocks starting at 15 volts and increasing by 15 volts each time up to 450 Volts. A pre- recorded track of someone screaming would be played each time

Answer 29

All participants obeyed and gave shocks up to at least 300 volts 12.5 % of participants stopped at 300 volts (a lethal shock) 65% of participants continued all the way to 450 volts

Answer 30

Ordinary people will obey authority even if it goes against their regular beliefs

Answer 31

Proximity, location, uniform

Answer 32

Legitimacy of authority and agentic state

Answer 33

Authoritarian personality

Answer 34

Experimenter gave teacher orders via phone call from a different room

Answer 35

Obedience dropped to 20.5% from baseline 65%

Answer 36

If the experimenter was in the room, diffusion of responsibility would happen and they would take on responsibility. This meant an agentic shift would happen and the participant would go into agentic state. If the experimenter was in a different room, the participant would have to take responsibility for their own actions, this is known as autonomous state

Answer 37

Repeated his study in a run down office block

Answer 38

Dropped to 48% from 65%

Answer 39

Location adds/ takes away from the legitimacy of the authority figure. If it is in a prestigious location, more people will have confidence in the integrity of the situation.

Answer 40

Carried out a field experiment in which passers by were given one of three orders: pick up a paper bag, give money to a stranger for a parking meter or stand at another place at a bus stop

Answer 41

When given orders by someone in a security guard uniform, obedience was 82% When given orders by someone in normal clothes, obedience was 36%

Answer 42

Uniforms convey power and authority, this means that the participant would have more trust in the integrity of the situation. This increases the legitimacy of the authority figure

Answer 43

Orne and Holland claimed that Milgrim’s study had low internal validity due to participants showing demand characteristics. They claimed that the study was really measuring how the participants played along with requests given by the experimenter, rather than actually measuring obedience.

Answer 44

Ecological validity - done in a lab in Yale university Population validity - volunteer sample 40 male participants aged 20-50 Temporal validity - done in 1963

Answer 45

Hoffling did a field experiment with nurses in a hospital where he asked them to give an unsafe dosage of a medicine to patients. The order was given by a more senior doctor. 21 out of 22 participants went along with it. When they were allowed to discuss their actions with other nurses, only 11% of nurses followed the orders

Answer 46

Repeated on a television show where participants had to give electric shocks to other contestants, 80% went up to 460 volts

Answer 47

Milgrim and Elms did research where they interviewed participants who were a part of the original study. They found a link between authoritarian personality types and those who went up to 450 volts on Milgrim’s study

Answer 48

Although a clear correlation has been found between authoritarian personality and high levels of obedience, there could be a third factor involved such as low IQ. The two could also be random, we cannot prove from a correlation that one causes the other

Answer 49

Proximity experiment - when experimenter and learner were apart obedience rates dropped from 65% to 20.5%. This shows that when the experimenter is closer, the participants diffuse responsibility to them so are more likely to obey. The switch from taking responsibility for your own actions to not anymore is known as agentic shift. When the participant and the experimenter are not in the same room, the participant is in autonomous state which means they are taking responsibility for their own actions, this decreases obedience Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi commander who was responsible for the genocide of millions in the Second World War claimed that he was “only following orders”

Answer 50

Bickman’s study into uniform (82% obeyed in uniform, 36% obeyed not in uniform) Milgrims situational variables study where he repeated it in a run down office block ( obedience dropped from 65% to 48%) These factors affect obedience as uniform and prestigious locations convey power and authority, therefore they are perceived as having the right to demand obedience. This leads to increased fear and people regarding the situation as much more serious, which leads to increased obedience

Answer 51

Kilham and Mann (1974) replicated Milgrim’s study in Australia and found that only 16% of participants went to 450 Volts Mantell (1971) found that 85% of German participants went all the way to 450 Volts This reflects the idea that how we obey reflects how our society is structured and the ideas that children are raised with

Answer 52

Does not take into factors such as dispositional variables (authoritarian personality) or situational variables such as proximity

Answer 53

Rotter 1966

Answer 54

Take responsibility for their actions, better at resisting social pressure, more prone to anxiety

Answer 55

Believe that what happens to them is controlled by luck, fate, or the actions of other people. Do not take responsibility for their own actions. More prone to depression. Less likely to resist social pressure

Answer 56

Oliner and Oliner (1998) interviewed non- Jewish survivors of WWII. They found that the “rescuers” those who had resisted orders were more likely to have an internal locus of control Spector (1983) Found that people with an internal locus of control were less likely to conform to normative social influence however there was no difference for informational social influence

Answer 57

It ignores factors such as social responsibility. Elms and Milgrim interviewed the disobedient participants in Milgrim’s study and found that they scored higher on a social responsibility scale. This shows that while there does seem to be a correlation between obedience and locus of control, this does not establish cause and effect and there may be a third variable

Answer 58

Used a questionnaire, which could create social desirability bias, which becomes an extraneous variable and lowers internal validity

Answer 59

The presence of other people who resist the pressure to conform or obey and act as role models

Answer 60

Breaks the Unanimity of the group which frees people up to think or behave in a way which is different from the group, feel more confident in their own decision

Answer 61

Challenges the legitimacy of the authority figure, shared punishment appears less daunting than individual punishment

Answer 62

When a confederate gave the right answer in Asch’s experiment, conformity dropped to 5.5%, shows that having an ally makes someone more confident in their belief and therefore less likely to conform to The support did not have to be credible- Allen and Levine carried out an Asch style study with a confederate who wore thick glasses and complained of eyesight problems, who gave the correct answer. Conformity still dropped.

Answer 63

In one of Milgrims variations, the real participant was paired with two confederates who also played teachers and withdrew from the experiment early, obedience dropped from 65% to 10%

Answer 64

Factors such as confidence could affect whether we conform or obey. In Lucas et al study, participants were given easy and difficult maths questions. They found that 92% resisted social influence on easy questions but only 29% on difficult questions. Spencer and Perrin repeated Asch’s study with engineering students from the UK, and conformity levels decreased to 1 out of 396 trials

Answer 65

A gradual process which starts with people thinking the minority are wrong and eventually ending in the majority changing their views

Answer 66

Consistency, flexibility, commitment

Answer 67

The majority will assume the minority is wrong, therefore the minority must keep the same beliefs over time and between all individuals, draws attention to the minority and gets the majority rethinking their own views, which leads to a cognitive conflict, over time this leads to internalisation of the minority’s views

Answer 68

The minority keeping the same views over time

Answer 69

All the individuals having the same view

Answer 70

When people make personal sacrifices, it shows that they are not acting out of self interest which means they are more likely to be taken seriously

Answer 71

Relentless consistency can be seen by the majority as unreasonable and off putting. Shows that they are willing to adapt their point of view which makes the majority more sympathetic to their cause

Answer 72

Moscovici et al (1969) fount in a laboratory experiment using female participants, researched groups of 6, four real participants and two confederates who repeatedly estimated the colour of slides wrong. Consistent: 8.42% Inconsistent: 1.25% Control: 0.25%

Answer 73

Nemeth (1986) created groups of three, two real participants and one confederate and asked them to decide how much compensation to pay to a victim of a ski lift accident. When he argued a low amount and refused to change his position, no one agreed, but when he settled for a slightly higher amount, the majority changed their opinion

Answer 74

A minority slowly gains support for their views, after a while this become the majority view and this is conformity. Conformity is a much faster process and the view becomes accepted by much more of the majority

Answer 75

People may remember that a change has taken place but forget that it was originally a minority view as the new belief becomes embedded as a social norm

Social influence Flashcards

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