Social Influence Flashcards
(33 cards)
What is Conformity?
it is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to be in line with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined group pressure.
What is social influence?
Social influence looks at human behavior as influenced by other people and the social context in which this occurs. Examples include smoking, vaping and gay marriage
What is identification?
A form of influence where an individual adopts an attitude or behavior because they want to be associated with a particular person or group.
What is Informational social influence?
The result of wanting to be right i.e looking to others for the right answer, and conforming to their opinion.
What is internalisation?
Going along with others because of an acceptance of their point of view. This is a result of an examination of the groups position, which may lead to validation of the persons own views or acceptance of the group’s view both in public and in private.
What is compliance?
Individuals may go along with the group in order to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval. When exposed to the views or actions of the majority, individuals engage in a process of social comparison, concentrating on what others say or do so that they can adjust their own actions to fit in with them.
Who studied Conformity?
Asch - 1951. Asch used 123 male undergraduates as participants in the study. The task involved asking participants to estimate which of three comparison lines was the same length as the target line. However not all the participants were real, they were ‘confederates’, only one participant was real. The participants were tested in groups of 7-9. The real participants were placed either last or second to last to answer.
Who proposed the three types of conformity?
Kelman- 1958
What are the two explanations for conformity?
Normative social influence- normally referred to as compliance. Conforming to be liked. The desire to be liked- when an individual conforms to fit in with a group because they don’t want to appear foolish or left out. The motivation is to be accepted by others and to be liked and respected by them and certainly not rejected. This may be because belonging to a group is rewarding. Their change in behaviour will only be temporary. Privately, opinions will not have changed and any conformity will depend on the groups presence.
Informational social influence. “Conforming to be right”. When an individual is unsure about something they may seek the opinions of others: especially if the individuals believes that others are in a better position to form an opinion than they are, for example they are more knowledgeable. If conformity occurs due to ISI it is likely that the individual will believe the opinions they adopt. They will be converted to that way of thinking, i.e there will be a permanent change in behaviour and beliefs.
How many trials were there in Asch’s study?
18 different trials. 12 critical trials and 6 neutral trials.
The two trials in Asch’s experiment where the confederates answered correctly are called?
Neutral trials.
What were the findings of Asch’s study?
On the 12 critical trials, 33 percent was the rate of conformity i.e participants agreed with the incorrect response given by other group members. Asch discovered individual differences in conformity rates. One quarter of the participants never conformed on any of the critical trials and one in 20 of the participants conformed on all 12 of the critical trials. In the trial that had no fake participants, mistakes were made on 1 percent of the trials.
What are the three variables affecting conformity?
Group Size, The difficulty of the task and The unanimity of the majority.
What is the Group size evaluation of Asch’s study?
Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. Conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases up to a point. Little conformity when there were only one or two confederates. When there were three confederates conformity jumped to about 30 percent. However there is little change in conformity once group size reaches 4-5.
Campbell and Fairey (1989) suggests the influence of
group size is affected by the type of judgement and
motivation of individuals.
When there is no objectively correct answer (e.g. musical preference) and the individual wants to ‘fit in’, then the larger the majority the more likely they are to conform. However, when there is a correct response and the individual is concerned about being right, then the views of just one or two others will sway an individual.
How does unanimity of the majority affect conformity?
Originally the confederates gave the same wrong answer (unanimity). When Asch instructed one confederate to give the right answer. He reported that conformity dropped from 33 % to 5.5 %. In this variation, when a confederate gave a different answer to the group, but was still an incorrect answer conformity was reported at 9 %. Supported by Allen and Levine (1968). In their version of the
experiment, they introduced a dissenting confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses – thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired. Even with this seemingly incompetent dissenter conformity dropped from 97% to 64%. Clearly, the presence of an ally decreases conformity. The absence of group unanimity lowers overall conformity as participants feel less need for social approval of the group (re: normative conformity).
How does the difficulty of the task affect conformity?
When the task is easy and the answer is clear, people are less likely to conform. Asch found that when the comparison lines were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased. Conformity increased because it became an ISI task. Lucas et al. (2006) found that the influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability to succeed) of the individual.
When exposed to a maths problem in an Asch-type task, ppts high in self-efficacy remained more independent than those low in this trait, even when the task was more difficult. Therefore, task difficulty and personality traits are important determinants of conformity.
Evaluating Conformity- What is a strength of ISI?
However what is one problem with it?
A strength of ISI is there is a lot of research support. In one of Asch’s variations the task was made harder and as the difficulty of the ask increased the conformity levels rose due to participants being less sure of the answer and the situation becoming more ambiguous. This suggests that conformity was due to ISI because in this ambiguous situation participants did change their behaviour to align with the group, and many said when interviewed afterwards that this was due to not knowing the correct answer.
However, this could be an issue because the evidence comes from an artificial task in a controlled environment.
What is the research that supports NSI?
Likenhurst and Perkins (2003) reported that adolescence’s who were exposed to the simple message that the majority of their peers did not smoke were subsequently less likely to take up smoking. This suggests that the theory has high ecological validity and useful in real life applications i.e reducing smoking rates in young people.
What is a criticism of research into NSI?
As there seems to be a great deal of individual difference, depending on other factors. For example some people are less likely to conform due to NSI as they do not feel as much of a need to be liked. These people are called Affiliators. McGhee and Teevan’s (1967) research suggested that students who cared less about being liked are less likely to conform. This is a criticism as it means that NSI as an explanation does not account for individual differences (i.e it is too nomothetic in nature: it focuses on laws of behaviour and does not consider individuals)
What is a criticism of both NSI and ISI?
There are difficulties distinguishing between the two explanations of NSI and ISI, and that they work together for many people . For example, some people may conform as they want to be liked and others as they want the right answer, but many conform for both reasons. This may mean it is difficult to distinguish which explanation is actually at play and may mean any findings from research into this cannot clearly be interpreted. This is a weakness as it is difficult to distinguish and lowers the validity of the theories.
What is meant by “types of conformity”?
Kelman (1958) identified three types (levels) of conformity: 1) Compliance, the shallowest level 2) Identification, the Intermediate level and 3) Internalisation, the deepest level.
In Asch’s original study, 1) how many critical trials were there? 2) what % of participants never conformed once? 3) What % of participants conformed every time?
1) 12. 2) 25 %- Suggests some people are highly resistant to social pressure. 3) Only 5 %- Suggests most people will attempt to resist but eventually give in to social pressure.
What % of participants conformed with 1,2 and 3 confederates (and beyond) ?
1) 1 confederate- 3 %. 2) 2 confederates- 13 %. 3) 3 confederates- 33 %. Percentage did not rise much higher than 33 %, even with 15 confederates).
Evaluation of Asch’s conformity study. What is a criticism?
It has been argued that Asch’s research may not apply to everyone. Perrin and Spencer replicated the Asch experiment in the UK in 2008 using science and engineering students, they found only one conforming answer out of 396 trials. Further research using youths on probation, however, found similar levels of conformity to Asch. Therefore, these results could be highlighting the fact that some people have been thought to think more critically and independently and are used to problem solving (such as science and engineering students) whilst other people are used to needing to conform (such as youths on probation) and therefore there will be individual differences in conformity that Asch has not considered or the results could lack temporal validity as cultures become less conformist. Further research needs to be conducted to analyse the cause of this disparity.
