Social Influence Flashcards
(20 cards)
Conformity - Asch’s Research (A01)
Asch’s Baseline Study
- Asch (1951) investigated the extent to which people would conform to the opinion of others in a procedure with 123 American men where they were each set up in a room with 6 other participants (confederates) and they were always sat in the 6th seat in the row, they were shown two cards one that had a single white line and the other had three lines, they were told to identify which of the white lines length matched the one on the first card, the participants were asked in order from 1-7 which line they thought matched and the confederates all answered with the same incorrect line
- on average, the naive (genuine) participant answered with the same incorrect answer as the confederates 36.8% of the time - they conformed a third of the time, there was however individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave an incorrect answer - never conformed
- in 1955 Asch extended his research and investigated three variables that might impact the level of conformity (group size, unanimity, task difficulty)
- group size was investigated to see if the size of the group was more important than the agreement of the group, he varied the number of confederates in the groups from 1-15, he found a curvilinear relationship - conformity increased with group size but only up to a point, with three confederates conformity rose to 31.8% and then as more confederates were introduced it levelled off, the suggests that people are very sensitive to the views of others as just one or two confederates was enough to swap opinion
- unanimity, in another variation Asch inserted a confederate that gave the correct answer and that gave a different incorrect answer, the genuine participant conformed less in the presence of the dissenter, the conformity rate dropped to a quarter of the level when the majority was unanimous, the presence of the dissenter freed the participant to behave more independently even when they answered a different answer, this suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous and that non-conformity is more likely when there are cracks percieved in the majority’s unanimous view
- task difficulty, Asch made the line task more difficult to investigate if that affected the rate of conformity, making it harder for the genuine participants to identify the matching line, conformity increased, this could be because the situation was more ambiguous and it is natural to look to other people for guidance and assume that they are right and you are wrong if unsure (ISI)
Conformity - Asch’s Research (A03)
- a strength of Asch’s study is that there is supporting research for task difficulty from Lucas et al. (2006), he got participants to solve ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ maths questions, they were given three fake (unknown) answers from other students, the participants conformed more when the questions were harder, suggesting that Asch was right in findings that task difficulty affects conformity
however, Lucas et al.’s study found that conformity is more complex as the ones who were highly confident in their maths abilities conformed less than those with lower confidence, this shows that individual factors can influence conformity when interacting with situational variables, and Asch did not investigate individual-level factors - another limitation is that the task and situation was artificial, the participants knew they were in a research study so the possibly of demand characteristics influencing the findings in fairly high, the task of identifying lines is also relatively trivial and there was therefore no reason to not conform, Fiske (2014) also claimed that Asch’s groups were not very ‘group’ and did not resemble groups in real everyday life, this means that the findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those were conformity consequences may be important, as well as limiting the external and internal validity
- another limitation of Asch’s study is that the participants were all American men making it ungeneralisable to the general population, other research suggest that women may be more conformist potentially because they care more about social relationships being accepted (Neto 1995) as well as the US being an individual culture where people are generally more concerned about themselves rather than their social groups, similar conformity studies were carried out in collectivist cultures like China and Asian where conformity levels were higher (Bond and Smith 1996), therefore Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from other cultures, limiting its strength and generalisability
Conformity - Types and Explanations (A01)
Types of Conformity
- Kelman (1958) suggested that there are three ways people conform to the opinion of a majority
- internalisation occurs when a person genuinely accepts a groups norm, private and public change of opinions and behaviour, usually a permanent change because people’s attitudes have been internalised (become part of the way the person thinks), the change in opinion/behaviour persists even when a member of the majority is absent
- identifacation, sometimes we conform to a group because there is something about the group we value and we want to be a part of it, publicly change our opinions to be accepted by the group but privately have our own beliefs
- compliance is ‘going along with others’ in public but privately not changing their personal opinions or behaviours, only a superficial change, particular behaviour or opinion stops as soon as pressure stops
Explanations for Conformity
- Deutsch and Gerald (1955) developed a two-process theory which argues that there are two main reasons people confirm which are both based on two central human needs - to be right (ISI) and to be liked (NSI)
- Informational Social Influence is about who has the better information, you or the rest of the group, often we are uncertain what beliefs or behaviours are right or wrong eg. an answer in class, but if most of the class gave the same answer you would accept it due to the assumption that it is correct, so we follow the behaviour of the majority because we want to be right, ISI is a cognitive process because it is involved with what we think, it leads to permanent change in opinion/behaviour (internalisation), ISI is most likely to occur when a person is in a new situation where they don’t know what is right or wrong or where there is some ambiguity, it also occurs in crisis situations where important decisions need to made quickly so it is simpler to just agree with the group
- Normative Social Influence (NSI) is about norms (what is typical behaviour for a social group), norms regulate the behaviour or groups or individuals so people pay attention to them as they don’t want to appear foolish and gain approval from the group rather than being rejected, NSI is an emotional process rather than cognitive and leads to temporary changes in behaviour/beliefs (compliance), NSI is likely to happen in a situation with strangers where someone’s concerned about rejection, but may also occur with people you do know as we are most concerned about the social approval of friends, it may be more pronounced in stressful situations than non-stressful where people have a greater need for social support
Conformity - Types and Explanations (A03)
- a strength of ISI is research support by Lucas et al. (2006), he found that participants conformed more often to incorrect answers when the tasks were more difficult, as they were concerned about giving an incorrect answer, this is because when questions were easy they ‘knew their own mind’ whereas when the questions was difficult it was more ambiguous, the participants did not want to appear wrong so they relied on the answers they were given, this strengthens the ISI explanation for conformity as the results are what the ISI explanation predicted
however, it is often unclear in research studies whether it is ISI or NSI being worked, in Asch’s study he investigates unanimity affecting conformity where the dissenter may have reduced the power of NSI because they provide social support, they also could have reduced the power of ISI as the participant would feel more independent and a new source of social information was provided, therefore both interpretations are possible, meaning it is hard to separate ISI and NSI as they often probably operate together in real life situations - a strength of NSI is the evidence supporting that it is an explanation for conformity, after Asch conducted his baseline experiment he interviewed some of his participants who reported that they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer as they were afraid of social disapproval, when participants wrote down their answers rather than speaking them in front of the group the conformity dropped to 12.5%, this was because answering privately meant there was no normative group social pressure, this therefore shows that at least some conformity is down to the desire to not be rejected by a group for disagreeing with them
- a limitation of NSI is that it doesn’t predict conformity in every case, some people are especially concerned about being liked by others - known as nAffiliators, they have a strong need for affiliation (they want to relate to others), McGhee and Teevan (1967) found that students who were nAffiliators were more likely to conform, therefore NSI underlies conformity for some people more than others and the individual differences can not fully be explained by just one general theory of situational pressures
Conformity to Special Roles - Zimbardo’s Research (A01)
- in the 1970s there was lots of prison riots in America so Zimbardo and his colleagues investigated why prison guards were so brutal and aggressive - was it because of a personality type or because they were living up to a social role that created their behaviour
- Zimbardo et al. (1973) conducted the Stanford prison experiment (SPE) where he set up a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford Uni psychology department, they selected 21 male psychology student volunteers who tested as ‘emotionally stable’ for the study, the men were randomly assigned to prisoner or guard roles and they were encouraged to conform to their roles through uniform and behaviour
- the prisoner uniforms were loose smocks with a cap to cover their hair as well as being assigned with a number to identify them with rather than names, the guards has their own uniforms to reflect their higher status with a wooden club, handcuffs and sunglasses, the uniforms created a loss of personal identity - known as de-individuation, meaning they would be more likely to conform to their social role
- the prisoners were encouraged to identify with their role through several procedures, such as asking to leave by applying for parole, the guards were encouraged to fulfill their role by being reminded that they had complete power over the prisoners
- the guards took up their roles enthusiastically by treating the prisoners harshly, within two days the prisoners had rebelled by ripping their uniforms and shouting and swearing at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers, the guards played the prisoners off against eachother and harassed them to make them feel powerless such as headcounts and punishments, after the rebellion was put down the prisoners became subdued, anxious and depressed, one prisoner had to leave based on psychological disturbance, two more left on the fourth day, one went on a hunger strike and was force fed by the guards and then punished, the guards identified more and more with their role and even started showing signs of enjoying their power while becoming more aggressive and brutal, the study only went on for 6 days when it was supposed to be 14 days
- Zimbardo et al. concluded that social roles appear to have a strong influence on an individual’s behaviour as the guards became brutal and the prisoners became submissive, the roles were very easily taken on by all participants and even extra volunteers who came in for only a day to fulfill an individual prison position behaved as if they were in a real life situation
Conformity to Special Roles - Zimbardo’s Research (A03)
- a strength of the Stanford prison experiment was that it was highly controlled so the researchers were able to control the key variables, such as the participants being emotionally stable volunteers being randomly assigned roles of guard or prisoner as this rules out individual personality differences as an explanation for their findings and the fact that the guards and prisoners acted very differently and were allocated by chance leads suggestion that their behaviour must have been down to their assigned social roles, the degree of control over variables increased the internal validity of the procedure and conclusion making us more confident in drawing conclusions about the influence of social roles on conformity
- a limitation of the SPE is that it lacked realism in comparison to a real prison, Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) argued that the participants were somewhat play-acting in the experiment as they knew it wasn’t a real prison so they weren’t genuinely conforming to the roles, the participants performances were based on the stereotypes of how guards and prisoners are supposed to act, for example one of the guards claimed to base his performance on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke, this would also explain why the prisoners rioted because that is what they thought happened in real life, therefore suggesting that the SPE tells us little about how conformity is influenced by social roles in actual prisons
however, McDermott (2019) argued that the participants acted as if they were in a real prison, conversations they had were about prison life, between them they discussed how it was impossible to leave the SPE before their sentencing was over, prisoner 146 also later explained that he believed it was a real prison run by psychologists rather than the government, therefore this suggests that the SPE did replicate the social roles of prisoners and guards in a real prison, giving the study a high level of internal validity - another limitation is that Zimbardo may have exaggerated the influence of social roles on conformity (Fromm 1973), for example only one third of the guards behaved in a brutal way and another third tried to apply to the rules fairly, whilst the rest actively tried to help and support the prisoners, they sympathised by offering cigarettes and reinstating their privileges (Zimbardo 2007), most guards were able to resist situational pressures to conform to a brutal state, this suggests that Zimbardo overstated his view that the participants were conforming to the social roles and minimised the influence of dispositional factors eg. personality
Obedience - Milgram’s Research (A01)
- Milgram (1963) designed a baseline procedure to assess obedience levels and later variations to make comparisons of findings
- 40 American men volunteered to take part and each participant was in a condition with a learner (confederate) and an experimenter (confederate), the study aimed to assess obedience in a situation with an authority figure (experimenter) ordered the participant (teacher) to give shocks to the learner in a different room, shocks went from 15V to 450V
- every participant delieverd up to 300V and 12.5% stopped there, the rest went up to 450V (ie. were fully obedient), Milgram also collected qualitative data and observations of the ppts and saw that they showed signs of anxiety and distress by sweating, trembling, biting their lip, digging their fingernails into their skin, three even had seizures
- before the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the findings and they said no more than 3% of ppts would go up to 450V, meaning the findings were unexpected and the students underestimated how obedient people are, after the procedure all ppts were debriefed and reassured of their behaviour, 84% further replied to a questionnaire saying they were glad they took part
- Milgram concluded that German people are not different as the American ppts were willing to follow orders even when they might harm another person, he suspected there were certain factors that encouraged obedience which lead him to carry on his studies with his situational variables
Obedience - Milgram’s Research (A03)
- a strength is that Milgram’s findings have been reflected in other research by Hofling et al. who conducted a field experiment with 22 naïve nurse participants, each nurse what phones by an unknown doctor and told to either give a patient and underdose or overdose of an unfamiliar drug, 16/18 obeyed the order and broke hospital guidelines, suggesting that caring people can act harmful when being obeyed by an authority figure, therefore giving Milgram’s study external validity as his findings were reflected in a real-life situation
- a limitation is that there is low internal validity as only 75% of participants said they believed the shocks were real, Orne and Holland (1968) argued that ppts behaved as they didn’t believe in the set up so they were just ‘play acting’, Perry’s research confirmed this when she listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and stated only half of them believed the shocks were real, two thirds of these participants were disobedient, this suggests that the ppts were responding to demand characteristics rather than giving genuine responses as they were trying to fulfill the aim of the study
- another limitation is that Milgram broke multiple ethical guidelines, the ppts were deceived by the screams and orders of the confederates, they were not protected by harm as they showed signs of mental disturbance and stress even physical harm by digging their nails into their skin, he also didn’t get their informed consent prior to the study, however he did debrief them after and they had the right to withdraw throughout the entire procedure, 84% of ppts stated they were glad to have participated
Obedience - Situational Variables (A01)
Proximity
- in the original baseline study the teacher (ppt) could not see the learner however in the proximity condition they were in the same room, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%
- in the touch proximity variation the teacher had to place the learners hand onto an electrical plate and obedience dropped further to 30%
- in another variation the experimenter left the room and ordered the teacher through a phone call, obedience dropped further to 20.5% and some even faked shocking the learner
- deceased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, when the leaner and teacher where in different rooms the teacher was less aware of the harm being inflicted on the learner
Location
- Milgram conducted the study in a run-down office building compared to Yale University, obedience dropped to 47.5%
- the prestigious university environment gave the study legitimacy and authority, obedience was higher in the baseline condition because they percieved that the experimenter shared the authority and that obedience was expected
Uniform
- in the baseline study the experimenter worse a grey lab coat but in one variation they stepped out for a phone call and a confederate member of the public took their spot who was wearing ordinary clothes, the obedience rate dropped to 20% (lowest)
- uniform encourages obedience because they are widely recognised symbols of authority, we accept someone in uniform is entitled to expect obedience as their authority is legitimate, someone without uniform has less right to expect obedience
Obedience - Situational Variables (A03)
- supporting research by Bickman (1974) where he had three confederates dressed in different outfits, a suit and tie, a milkman uniform and a security guard uniform, and asked passers in the street to do tasks like picking up litter, people were twice more likely to obey the security guard than the one in the tie
- another strength is that Milgram’s findings have been reflected in studies in other cultures, such as Dutch participants being ordered to say stressful things to job interviewees, 90% obeyed however when the person giving orders was not in the room obedience dropped dramatically
however research shows that it may not be suitable to claim that Milgram’s findings can be applied in other cultures - low internal validity as participants may have known the procedure was fake, One and Holland argued that the participants were ‘play-acting’ and that some of the variations seemed so fake (member of public) that participants would’ve realised it was fake and were responding to demand characteristics rather than the variables of the study
Obedience - Situational Explanations (A01)
Agentic State
- Milgram’s initial interest came from Eichmann who was on trial for leading Nazi camps but he claimed he was only obeying orders
- Milgram believed that destructive authority occurs when a person acts but does not believe they are responsible for their actions, acting as an agent (acting in the place of another), and they feel moral strain when they realise they are acting wrong but feel too powerless to disobey
- the opposite of the agentic state is the autonomous state which is when someone is independent and free to behave on their own principles and feel responsible for their actions, the shift from autonomy to agency is the agentic shift, which occurs when someone perceives someone else as an authority figure, someone who has greater power as they are higher on the social heirarchy, in social groups when someone is in charge people often shift from autonomy to agency
- binding factors are aspects of a situation that allow a person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their actions and thus reduce moral strain, strategies of this include shifting responsibility to the victim or denying damage
Legitimacy of Authority
- people within society hold authority over us (parents, teachers, policemen) which is characterised as it is agreed on by society, most people accept that authority figures have to be allowed to exert social power over other in order for society to function, one consequence of legitimacy of authority is that people are allowed to punish others (judges or policemen) and we are willing to give up our independence and hand control to those we trust to exercise authority appropriately, we learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood, from parents then teachers then adults
- destructive authority is when authority figures use their power unacceptably which we have seen in history (Hitler, Stalin) and for destructive purposes by ordered people to act dangerously on their behalf, destructive authority was obvious in Milgram’s study as the experimenter was using prods to order participants to go against their moral conscience
Obedience - Situational Explanations (A03)
- a strength of the agentic state explanation is that Milgram’s own research reflects in, when participants hesitated to shock the learner Milgram asked the experimenter who was responsible for the shocks and they replied themselves then the participants often went through the rest of the procedure with no further objections, this demonstrates the participants acting as agents of the experimenter as the consequence of their actions was minimised and they felt less responsibility
- however it doesn’t explain why the 16/18 nurses disobeyed orders from the doctor as they remained in an autonomous state even when the doctor was a clear authority figure
- a strength of legitimacy of authority is that is it a useful account of cultural differences in obedience as studies show that countries differ in the degree of which people are obedient to authority, researchers found that only 16% of Australian women were fully obedient (450V), Mantell found that 85% of German participants were fully obedient, this shows that different cultures accept authority as legitimate to demand obedience and reflects on how different societies are structured and how children are raised to percieve authority figures
- however it cannot explain instances of disobedience in a heirarchy where the authority figure is legitimate and accepted, Rank and Jacobson’s study where 16/18 nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to give a patient an excessive dose of a drug, also a significant minority of Milgram’s participants disobeyed despite the experimenter’s clear authority position, this suggests that some people may just be more or less obedient than others or than innate tendencies may have more power to influence behaviour than the legitimacy of an authority figure
Obedience - Dispositional Explanation (A01)
- Adorno et al. wanted to understand the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany by drew a different explanation than Milgram that high obedience levels was a psychological disorder (pathology) which was caused by a personality type of an individual rather than the situation
- Adorno et al. argued that people with an Authoritarian Personality (AP) show extreme respect to authority, they believe society is weak and needs a powerful leader to enforce traditional values such as love for our country and family, these characteristics make someone with an AP more likely to obey to an authority source, people with an AP also view people of an inferior social status as worthless as for them there are no ‘grey areas’ so everything is either right or wrong and they are uncomfortable with uncertainty, people who are ‘other’ (different race, gender etc.) are responsible for the ills of society, ‘other’ people are targets for authoritarians who will obey orders from authority even when destructive
- Adorno believed the AP type forms in childhood from being brought up harshly with parents who discipline them and have high expectations, value loyalty, and criticise failings, they give conditional love and show care depending on how the child behaves, these experiences create resentment and hostility in children but they do not express them towards their parents out of fear so their feelings are displaced onto those percieved to be weaker (scapegoating), this is a psychodynamic explanation
- Adorno et al. (1950) studies over 2000 white Americans and their attitudes towards those from other ethnic groups, he developed the F-scale which is a way to assess the AP
- people who were high on the -scale identified with strong and looked down on the weak, they were very aware of status and showed extreme respect for those of higher status, he also found that they had a different cognitive style and percieved categories of people as ‘black or white’ with no fuzziness, they had fixed stereotypes about other groups and found strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and predjudice
Obedience - Dispositional Explanation (A03)
- supporting evidence from Milgram and Elms as original ppts from Milgram’s obedience studies completed the F-scale and 20 more obedient ppts scored highly compared to 20 disobedient ppts who scored lower, the two groups were significantly different in authoritarianism, supporting Adorno’s view that people with the AP are more obedient
however, researcher reviewed the F-scales and found that the obedient ppts also possessed characteristics that weren’t associated with the AP such as non-hostile parenting or not glorifying their fathers - a limitation is that the AP cannot explain obedience for the rest of the country, for example in pre-war Germany millions of individuals showed obedience and anti-Semitic behaviour despite the fact that they must have had different personalities or it is unlikely, an alternative view is that the majority of the German population identified with the Nazi state and scapegoated the Jews, this is a social identity theory, therefore limiting Adorno’s explanation as it is ungeneralisable and other explanations are more realistic
- a limitation is that the F-scale only measures tendencies towards extreme right-wing ideology, Christie and Jahoda argued that the F-scape is a politically-biased interpretation of the AP and highlighted the reality of extreme left-wing ideology is that they have common beliefs, such as both emphasising obedience, this means that Adorno’s explanation is not comprehensively dispositional as it does not account for obedience across the whole political spectrum
Resistance to Social Influence - Social Support (A01 + A03)
Resistance to Social Influence - Locus of Control (A01 + A03)
Minority Influence (A01)
Minority Influence (A03)
Social Change (A01)
- drawing attention - through social proof
2.consistency - deeper processing
- the augmentation principle
- the snowball effect
- social cryptomnesia
- a dissent breaks the power of the majority and encourages others to do likewise which can lead to social change
- appealing to normative social influence by providing information on what other people are doing
Social Change (A03)
- Nolan et al. hung messages on front doors for a week saying that most residents are tryting to save energy compared to a control group where signs asked them t save energy, significant decreases in energy from the first condition
