Social influence Flashcards
(14 cards)
Types of conformity
Compliance - the lowest level of conformity. Here, a person changes their public behaviour (the way they act) but not their private beliefs. This is usually a short-term change and often the result of normative social influence.
Identification - the middle level of conformity. Here, a person changes their public behaviour (the way they act) and their private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group they are identifying with. This is usually a short-term change and is often the result of the normative social influence.
Internalisation - the deepest level of conformity. Here a person changes both their public behaviour (the way the act) and their private beliefs. This is usually a long-term change and often the result of informational social influence.
Explanations for conformity
Informational social influence - when a person conforms to gain knowledge, or because they believe that someone else if ‘right’. E.g. Jenness (1932) found that when, after they had engaged in a group discussion, they were provided with another opportunity to estimate the number of beans in a glass bottle, nearly all pps changed their original answer to confirm more closely to the group answer. This was due to informational social influence, as they believed that the group estimates were more likely to be correct, in comparison to their own.
Normative social influence - when a person conforms in order to be accepted and belong to a group. They do this because it is socially rewarding and/or to avoid social rejection, e.g. ridicule for not ‘fitting in’. Asch (1951) found that the real pps in his line-matching experiment would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was unambiguously incorrect. They wanted to fit in, or avoid ridicule.
Asch (1951)
Study on conformity
Aim:
-To examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority affects the individual conformity.
Procedure:
- Asch’s sample consisted of 123 male students from colleges in the USA, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. He used a line judgement task, with one real pp and with 7-9 confederates.
- In turn, each person had to say which line (A, B and C) was nearest the target line in length. Each pp completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 critical trials.
Results:
- On average, the real pps conformed on 32% of the critical trials.
- 74% of the pps conformed at least once.
- 26% of the pps never conformed.
Variations of Asch
Group size - Asch found that as he increased the size of the majority, conformity levels increased. With 2 confederates, conformity occurred on 12.8% of trials, rising to 32% with three confederates. However, increasing the group size even further did not make a significant difference to the rate of conformity.
Unanimity - the extent that members of a majority agree with one another and was identified by Asch as a variable that affects conformity. He found that if one of the confederates dissented and gave the correct answer, the conformity levels dropped from 32% to 5%.
Task difficulty - Asch found that when he made the line judgement task more difficult, conformity levels increased as the pp was more likely to believe that the confederates were right. This is a shift from normative social conformity towards informational conformity.
Zimbardo (1973)
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Aim:
- To investigate how readily people would conform to the social roles of guard and prisoner in a role playing exercise that simulated prison life.
Procedure:
- 21 male university students volunteered. There were two social roles: prisoners or guards.
- The guards were instructed to run Stanford Prison without using physical violence. The experiment was set to run for 2 weeks.
Findings:
-Prisoners and guards quickly identified with their social roles: within days the prisoners rebelled; the guards dehumanised the prisoners.
- The experiment was terminated after just 6 days.
Conclusion:
- The guards and prisoners conformed to the social roles they were expected to play and therefore the experiment clearly supports the situational explanation of behaviour rather than the dispositional one.
Milgram (1963)
Study on obedience
Aim:
- To investigate to what extent an individual will obey, even when the orders go against their moral principles.
Procedure:
- 40 male pps volunteered and the real pp was always assigned to the role of ‘teacher’.
- The teacher had to give an ‘electric shock’ every time the learner made a mistake.
- The experiment continued until the pp refused to continue, or 450 volts was reached. If the teacher tried to stop, the experimenter used probes such as “The experiment requires that you continue”.
Findings:
- All of the pps went to at least 300 volts.
- 65% continued until the full 450 volts.
Conclusion:
- The study shows that inhumane, immoral acts can be committed by ordinary people. Situational factors led people to lose their autonomy and become agents of an authority figure.
Variations of Milgram
Proximity - In Milgram’s experiment proximity worked on several levels: how close the teacher was to the learner, and how close the teacher was the the experimenter. With teacher and learner in the same room, the % of pps who administered the full 450V shock fell from 65% to 40%. When the experimenter was outside the room giving instructions over the telephone, obedience levels fell to 20.5%.
Location - When Milgram conducted a variation in a run-down office block, he found that the % of pps who went to 450V on the ‘electric shock’ generator fell to 47.5% from the 65% who went to 450V when the experimenter was at the prestigious Yale University.
Uniform - This is a situational variable affecting obedience, because authority figures often wear clothes that symbolise their position of authority. In Milgram’s research, the % of pps who were fully obedient fell from 65% to 20% when the experimenter wore his own clothes, rather than the ‘uniform’ white lab coat.
Authoritarian personality - dispositional explanations of obedience
Adorno et al - The concept of an authoritarian personality was first identified by Adorno et al. (1950) and refers to a person who has extreme respect for authority and is more likely to be obedient to those who hold power over them.
F-scale - Adorno found that individuals who scored highly on the F-scale and other questionnaires identified with ‘strong’ people and showed disrespect towards the ‘weak’. In addition, those high on the F-scale were status-conscious regarding themselves and others, showing excessive respect to those with higher power. Adorno and colleagues also found that authoritarian people had a particular cognitive style, which categorised other people into specific stereotypical categories leading to a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
Elms and Milgram (1966)
Study on authoritarian personality
Aim:
- To see if the obedient pps in Milgram’s original research were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits in comparison with the disobedient pps.
Procedure:
- 20 obedient and 20 disobedient pps from Milgram’s original experiment.
- Completed Adorno’s F-scale to measure their level of authoritarian personality and interviewed about their relationship with parents and their thoughts about the experimenter in Milgram’s original experiment.
Findings:
- Obedient pps scored higher on the F-scale
- Obedient pps were less close to their fathers.
- Obedient pps admired the experimenter in Milgram’s experiment.
Conclusion:
- There is a relationship between obedience and authoritarian personality traits.
Resisting social influence: locus of control and social support
Locus of control - Rotter (1966) propose the idea of locus of control, which is the extent to which people believe they have control over their lives. People with internal locus of control believe that what happens in their life is largely the result of their own behaviour, and are more likely to resist pressure to conform or obey.
Social support - One way in which people can resist the pressure to conform or obey is if they have an ally as social support, someone supporting their point of view. Having an ally can build confidence and allow individuals to remain independent. In one variation, Asch found that the presence of an ally, who agreed with the real pp, lowered the latter’s rate of conformity from an average of 32% to just 5%.
Minority influence: consistency, commitment and flexibility
There are 3 key factors that can have an effect on minority influence:
Consistency - the ways in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority members share the same belief and retain it over time. This then draws the attention of the majority to the minority.
Commitment - the way that minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority shows dedication to their position. Commitment typically involves some form of personal sacrifice, which shows the majority that the minority is not just acting out of self-interest.
Flexibility - the way in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority is willing to compromise. This means they cannot be viewed as dogmatic and unreasonable.
Moscovici (1969)
Study on minority influence (consistency)
Aim:
- To see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task.
Procedure:
- 172 female pps in groups of six.
- They were shown 36 slides, which were all different shades of blue.
- In one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green.
- In the other condition (inconsistent) the confederates said that 24 of the 36 slides were green and 12 were blue.
Findings:
- In the consistent condition, the real pps agreed on 8.2% of the trials.
- In the inconsistent condition, the real pps only agreed on 1.25% of the trials.
Conclusion:
- This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.
Nemeth (1986)
Study on minority influence (flexibility)
Aim:
- To examine the idea of flexibility as a key characteristic of minority influence.
Procedure:
- Pps, in groups of four (with one confederate), had to agree on the amount of compensation they would award the victim of a ski-life accident.
- There were two conditions: 1) The minority argued for a low rate and refused to change their position (inflexible); 2) The minority argued for a low rate of compensation but compromised, offering a slightly higher rate (flexible).
Findings:
- In the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority; however, in the flexible condition, the majority members were much more likely to compromise.
Conclusion:
- Nemeth’s research highlights the importance of flexibility and questions the idea of consistency, suggesting that striking a balance between the two is the most successful strategy for a minority to adopt.
Social influence processes and social change
Social change refers to the ways in which a society (rather than an individual) develops over time, replacing former beliefs, attitudes and behaviours with new norms and expectations.
There are a number of processes that can be used to explain social change. Three of the main ones are consistency, deeper processing and flexibility.
Consistency - displaying consistency of viewpoint and intended outcome is beneficial in bringing about social change.
Deeper processing - the more people think about the issue at hand, rather than blindly accepting it, the more they will, in turn, be able to challenge the existing social norms to bring about change.
Flexibility - the way in which minority influence is more likely to occur if the minority is willing to compromise. This means they cannot be viewed as dogmatic and unreasonable.
