Social Influence

Question 1

What is Conformity?

Answer 1

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people.

Question 2

What is internalisation?

Answer 2

A deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct. It leads to a far-reaching and permant change in behaviour, even when the group is absent.

Question 3

What is identification?

Answer 3

A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be part of it.. But we don’t necessarily agree with everything the majority believes.

Question 4

What is compliance?

Answer 4

A superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. The change in our behaviour only lasts as long as the group is monitoring us

Question 5

What is informational social influence?

Answer 5

An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well. This may lead to internalisation.

Question 6

What is normative social influence?

Answer 6

An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked. This may lead to compliance

Question 7

How many of the critical trials in Asch’s study were critical trials?

Answer 7

12 out of 16

Question 8

What were Asch’s variations?

Answer 8

1. Group size
   He wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. Asch found that with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% (see graph on facing page). But the addition of further confederates made little difference. This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, at the other extreme, there is no need for a majority of more
2. Unanimity
   Asch also wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the naïve participant’s conformity. To test this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others - sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes he gave the wrong one.
   The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the naïve participant to behave more independently. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous.
3. Task difficulty
   Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length. He found that conformity increased under these

Question 9

Evaluation of Asch’s study

Answer 9

+ well controlled
- temporal validity
- generalisable