Social influence Flashcards
(51 cards)
What is conformity?
When an individual changes their behavior or thinking due to group pressure.
What is the aim of aschs study?
Aim- asch set out an experiment to see how people respond to group pressure. He chose to test this in a situation where the answers are clearly wrong (unambiguous) to see if people are influenced by what other individuals think.
What is the Method of aschs study
123 participants who were American students (all men). These participants were called naive since they didn’t know the aims of the study.
They were shown 2 large cards. One with a single black line, and the other with 3 comparison lines.
There were 18 trials. The first trials the confederates gave the correct answers. Last 12 trials, they gave the wrong answers.
What is the result and conclusion of aschs study?
N.P- naive participants
Results: On the 12 trials that the confederates gave the wrong answers in, the N.P have also given a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. 25% of N.P never conformed. 75% N.P. conformed at least once. 100-25=75
Conclusion: The results show that peoples thinking are influenced by group pressure, Some N.P show high levels of independence, since they can resist the pressure to conform.
Evaluation of aschs study (9marker)
Weakness- Results are only relevant to the 1950’s America(lacks validity). 1950’s were a conformist time in America. The N.P were scared to behave differently from the majority because of the movement that was being done which aimed to identify anyone with communist tendencies.
Weakness- The task and situation is artificial. The N.P were asked to judge the length of a line with a group of strangers, which doesn’t reflect everyday situations where people conform. It was a trivial task so there is no reason why people wouldn’t conform. This means that the results may not generalise to everyday situations.
Strength- asch used a replicable procedure which means that the procedure could be repeated many times to check for reliability. Experimenters/psychologists are able to repeat this procedure and check for validity and compare the data they have gotten with the original research study.
Explain Conformity mentioning the social and dispositional factors.
Dispositional factors- When individuals conform because they have a conformist personality and are less confident.
Social factors- Individuals conform because they feel a sense of pressure from their surroundings.
How does social factors affect conformity?
Group size- The greater the group size people are in, the greater the pressure to conform. Adding more confederates, made the participants feel more of a sense of pressure due to more people.
Anonymity- Being anonymous tends to reduce conformity, because it reduces people’s desire to be accepted and pressure.When we are not identifiable, we also no longer have the fear of consequences for our actions. participants in aschs study have said they conformed because they did not want to be rejected from the rest of the group.
Task difficulty- As the difficulty of the task increases, the answer becomes less certain, so people would then conform because they’re not sure what the right answer is. and they think that they will get the wrong answer if they don’t conform, causing them to conform for the “right” answer.
What are the dispositional factors that affect conformity?
Personality- Research has found that some personality characteristics influence the likelihood to conform. People with low IQ levels, low self esteem and low status in a group tend to think that people around them have a better understanding of how to behave and think, so they look for guidance from others since they can’t trust their own judgment, which increases conformity.
Expertise-
People with greater expertise tend to be less conformist. They’re more confident in their opinions because they tend to have more experience. Research study has shown that people who rated themselves good at maths were less likely to conform since they were confident, others who were less confident had higher conformity rates.
What is Obedience
A type of social influence that causes individuals to act in a certain way because of orders from a figure of authority.
What is the agency theory?
When a person acts as an agent for someone else. They act as an agent because they assume the person giving the orders is taking responsibility.
A person can either be in an-
Agentic state- Where an individual is acting on behalf of someone else and they feel no personal responsibility for their actions.
Autonomous state- When a person will only act/behave according to their own principles and they feel personal responsibility for their actions.
What is Authority and how does it affect obedience and refer to to the term agentic shift-
Authority is The right to give orders and expect obedience. Agentic shift is the change from an autonomous state to a Agentic state, milgram mentioned that this change occurs due to a person perceiving someone else as a figure of authority. When one person is in charge, people shift from having an autonomous state into having an Agentic state.
What are the factors of milgrams agency theory that affect obedience?
Agency, authority, culture, and proximity.
Culture- the social hierarchy and how it affects obedience
Culture refers to someone’s set of beliefs and expectations.
Obedience towards authority figures is culturally transmitted to individuals, since it is taught via the cultural and societal norms as part of someone’s upbringing.
Most cultures operate a social hierarchy in which authority figures occupy the highest positions and expect to be obeyed.
What is proximity and how does it affect obedience?
Proximity is how near or far something or someone is from you.
Obedience is easily achieved if the person you’re harming is out of sight.
If you have an up close and personal view of the person you’re harming then you would be more likely to feel uncomfortable, distressed, upset. Because the closer someone is to you, the more difficult it is to follow orders to harm them.
Participants in milgrams study would find it more difficult to harm people with electric shocks if they were close to them.
Distinguish between obedience and conformity-
Conformity and obedience are both types of social influence. However, Conformity is when you change your behavior and thinking due to group pressure. obedience is when you act in response due to a direct order from a figure of authority.
What is the authoritarian personality-
Are people who would be far more likely to obey individuals with a figure of authority. They tend to be submissive to people with a higher status, and dismissive to inferiors. They have a rigid cognitive style and have experienced harsh parenting.
What are two ethical issues to consider to the study of obedience?
Protection from harm- If you ask the participants to put themselves in a position in which goes against their wishes then they’ll feel uncomfortable and distressed.
Participants may have not wanted to obey orders but may have done so because they felt pressured.
Right to withdraw- important ethical issue to consider in the study due to participants being able to have an ‘escape route’ from any procedure/task that they find unpleasant and uncomfortable for them to do.
What are the dispositional factors that affects adornos theory of obedience?
Cognitive style, originates from childhood, scape goating
How does cognitive style affect obedience?
C.S refers to the way a person thinks about the world. authoritarian people tend to have a particular way of thinking.
Tend to have black and white opinions.
They see the world in a rigid and inflexible way and tend to have rigid stereotypes.
This thinking in authoritarian people is called rigid cognitive style.
How does originating in childhood affect obedience?
Adorno mentioned that authoritarian personality develops when a child experiences overly strict parenting. The child’s parents will exert strong discipline over the child and are very critical with the child’s behavior. The parents will expect loyalty and have high standards of achievement. The parents will offer conditional love if the child were to behave correctly.
Adorno mentioned that the child will learn these behaviours and attitudes and eventually develop authoritarian personality.
How does scapegoating affect obedience?
People with authoritarian personality tend to feel anger and resentment and so will take these feelings of hostility out on lower status people (socially inferior people) basically they will displace their anger on something/someone else.
Evaluate adornos theory of the authoritarian personality-
People with Authoritarian personality tend to have a different and particular way of thinking, they tend to have black and white thinking. People develop authoritarian personality due to experiencing overly strict parenting, their parents exerted strong discipline over them and were very critical over their behavior. People with A.P tend to look down on individuals who are socially inferior, but tend to obey authority figures.
A weakness is that Adorno based his theory on his research that uses the F- Scale. The f scale was criticized since it contained a response bias. Since the questions were structured in a way in which giving a yes answer would be an authoritarian response. This challenges the validity of the theory since it is based on Poor evidence.
Another weakness is that Adorno has not found proof that authoritarian personality causes high levels of obedience. He has only found a correlation between personality type and obedience. So cause and effect cannot be proved.
Another weakness is that researchers have found the people with low educational levels tend to be more obedient. This shows that dispositional factors may be important and personality type is not enough on its own since it cannot explain all cases of obedience.
What is the aim of piliavins subway study?
Piliavin wanted to investigate bystander behaviour in a more natural setting. They also wanted to find out if certain characteristics of the victim will affect if the victim receives help or not.
What is the method of piliavins subway study?
A team of 4 student researchers boarded a New York City subway train always at the same stop.
103 trials.
One member of the team played the role of the victim. (always male student)
Victim stood next to a pole in the center of the critical area in the subway carriage. After 70 secs, he pretended to collapse and remained on the floor until help was forthcoming.
38 trials the victim smelled like alcohol and carried a bottle of alc in a brown bag.
65 trials the victim carried a black cane and appeared sober (disabled condition)
2 of the student researchers were observers, they noted when people would offer help and what the people did.
4th member of the team would offer help to the victim after 70 to 150 secs if no one stepped in to help.
