social influence Flashcards
how do we resist social influence?
social support and conformity- helps reduce conformity due to another person not confirming- this allows the person to follow their conscience: Rosenstrasse protest
social support and obedience- Milgrams study, obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the participant was joined with a disobedient confederate- again allows us to follow our conscience.
what are the situational variables for obedience?
proximity: when the teacher and learner were in the same room variation, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%. in touch proximity, obedience dropped further to 30%
location: same study conducted in a run down setting instead of Yale Uni, obedience fell from 65% to 47.5%
uniform: experimenter wore a grey lab coat and when replaced with a normal member of the public obedience rates fell to 20%
what are the three types of conformity?
HERBERT KELMAN
Internalisation: genuine acceptance of the groups norms and values- private and public change
Identification: sometimes conform as there is something about the group that we admire, public change to achieve this goal
Compliance: ‘going along with others’, superficial change, particular behaviour or opinions no longer expressed if group pressure stops.
Minority influence
consistency:synchronic- they’re all saying the same thing, diachronic- they’ve been saying the same thing for a period of time. consistency makes people rethink their views.
commitment- extreme activities draw attention due to the risk demonstrates commitment to the cause. majority then pays more attention: augmentation principle( freedom riders)
flexibility- Nemeth- repeating the same behaviours can be seen as rigid, unbending and dogmatic, this is off putting to the majority. minority members need to be prepped to adapt their point of view and accept valid counter arguments
what was the Stanford prison experiment?
ZIMBARDO
mock prison was produced in the basement of a psychology department. volunteers underwent sever psychological testing and were randomly assigned the prisoner or guard role. 16 rules were enforced by the guards.
guards identified more and more closely to their roles as the experiment continued, it only lated 6 days instead of
the intended 14 due to psychological harm and an uprising
everyone conformed to their roles.
how do we resist social influence?
ROTTER
LOC
Asch study and his variations
tested conformity, a large white card with a line and 3 others. 123 white American male undergraduates, each with 6-8 confederates.
naïve students gave the incorrect answer 36.8% of the time
25% didn’t conform to any trials, 75% conformed to at least one
variations: group size, task difficulty, unanimity
what is the dispositional explanation for obedience?
ADORNO- authoritarian personality
investigated the causes of obedient personality, studied more than 2000 middle class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes- developed scales such as the F scale
people with authoritarian personalities identified themselves with ‘strong people’ and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’
explanations for conformity
DEUTSCH&GERARD
ISI- who has the best information, cognitive thought process, most likely to happen in situations where there is some ambiguity so it isn’t clear what is right, where decisions must be made quickly
NSI- norms regulate the behaviour of groups, preference to gain social approval than be rejected, most likely to occur in situations with strangers where you feel concerned about rejection.
social psychological factors for obedience
Agentic state- feel no responsibility as we believe we are acting on behalf of someone else. this frees us from the demand of our consciences.
Autonomous state- behaving according to our own principles
MILGRAM: suggested the agent shift occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority- has greater power due to higher position in the social hierarchy
binding factors- aspects off the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the effect of the behaviour and this reduces moral strain.
what was the original obedience study?
MILGRAM
40 male participants through advertising in newspapers and flyers. paid 4.50 to participate, teacher student and experimenter. shock level began at 15V all the way to 450V
No participant stopped below 300V
12.5% stopped at 300V
65% continued to 450V
Milgram asked 14 psychology student to estimate what would happen. they believed 3% of the participants would continue to 450V
evaluation of aschs research
- only men were tested (androcentric)
- Perrin and Spencer, Conducted Asch’s original obedience study on engineering students and found that obedience rates were lower- may have been because they were more confident In their responses.
- ethical issues: naïve participants were deceived because they thought the confederates were genuine participants
- artificial situation and task- participants knew they herein a research study and may have simply gone along with demands of the situation.
evaluation of the Stanford prison experiment
- lack of realism: ‘merely play acting’ rather than genuinely conforming to a role- their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are ‘supposed’ to behave.
- control- large amount of control- emotionally stable individuals were chosen
- ethical issues- a student wanted to leave however the whole conversation was conducted on the basis that the student was a prisoner in a prison asking to be ‘released’. zimbardo responded to him as a superintendent worried about the running of his prison rather than as a researcher with responsibilities
- lack of research support- partial replication of the Stanford prison experiment was conducted and find gins were very different. it was the prisoners who took control of the mock prison and subjected the guards to a campaign of harassment and disobedience.
evaluation of milligrams original obedience study
-low internal validity- ORNE&HOLLAND argued the participants guessed the shocks werent real
-good external validity- HOFLING studied nurses in a hospital ward and found levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors were very high- suggest the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in Milgrams lab study can be generalised.
-ethical issues- deception of the participants- the roles of the teacher and and learner werent random but were fixed, betrayal of trust
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evaluation of milgrams variations
- research support- BICKMAN milkman body guard and jacket and tie, people were twice as likely to obey to the assistant dressed as a security guard than the man dressed in a jacket and tie- supports the conclusion that uniform conveys the authority of its wearer and is a situational factor likely to produce obedience.
- cross cultural replications- his study has been replicated in other cultures, MIRANDA found an obedience rate of over 90% amongst Spanish students. suggests that milgrams conclusions about obedience aren’t limited.
- control of variables- he systematically altered Ione variable at a time to see what effect it would have on the level of obedience, all other procedures and variables were kept the same as the study was replicated over and over again more than 1000 participants in total
- lack of internal validity- ORNE&HOLLAND suggested the participants worked out that the procedure was faked- even more likely that they realised this from extra manipulation- limitation because it is unclear as to whether the results are genuinely due to the operation or because the participants saw through the deception.
