Social influence Flashcards
(20 cards)
Name and explain the three ways in which Herbert Kelman suggested people conform to the opinion of a majority.
Internalisation: when a person genuinely accepts group norms which is likely to be because attitudes have been internalised and this change is present in public and in private.
Identification: Publicly changing our opinions to conform to the opinions and behaviour of a group which we value and identify with.
Compliance: A superficial change which consists of going along with others in public but privately not changing personal opinions or behaviour.
Explain the two-process theory of conformity.
Suggests that there are two main reasons people conform: the need to be liked and the need to be right.
Informational social influence: agreeing with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is right and we also want to be right. This may lead to internalisation.
Normative social influence: Agreeing to the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked. This may lead to compliance.
Evaluate types and explanations of conformity.
There is research support for informative social influence. It was found that there was greater conformity to incorrect answers to difficult questions than to easier ones. This was most true for those who rater their mathematical ability to be poor. This supports informative social influence as it shows that we copy others thinking they are right in situations of uncertainty.
Individual differences may effect normative social influence. Some people are nAffiliators and have a greater need for affliction while others don’t care as much. A study found that students with a greater need for affiliation were more likely to conform. This shows that individual differences affect how normative social influences affects someone.
The two process theory suggests that EITHER NSI or ISI are involved in behaviour but they are actually both involved and so it is hard to tell which one is at work in experiments.
A limitation is that informational social influence is affected by individual differences. For example, students have been found to be less conformist and there was less conformity found in engineering students in the Asch task, suggesting that confidence relating to a task will limit conformity (engineers will have v good spatial awareness)
Explain the Aim, Procedure, and Findings of Asch’s study.
Aim: to test conformity
Procedure: Showed participants 2 white cards at the same time. One had a standard line and the other had 3 lines on it. They had to match the standard one with one of the three. They used 123 male American undergraduates and each ‘naive’ person was tested with 6-8 Confederates.
Findings: The naive participant gave the wrong answer 36.8 percent of the time. Overall, 75 percent of participants conformed at least once. The extent to which participants conform when the answer is unambiguous is known as the Asch effect. Most participants said they conformed to avoid social rejection (normative social influence).
Explain Asch’s variations.
Group size:
- Asch found that conformity rose up to 31.8% with 3 confederates but after this little effect was created by adding confederates. This shows that while a small majority is not sufficient for conformity, there is no need for too many people.
Unanimity:
- Asch introduced another confederate who sometimes gave the right answer and sometimes gave the wrong one. He found that the presence of a dissenting confederate reduced conformity by a quarter. The dissenting confederate enabled the naive participant to behave more independently.
Task difficulty:
- Asch found that conformity increased when he made the comparison lines more similar in length, thus making the task more difficult. This suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task is more ambiguous.
Identify the aim, procedure, findings and conclusion of Zimbardo’s Standford Prison Experiment.
Aim: To find out whether guards in prisons across America were so brutal because of having a sadistic personality or because of the situation.
Procedure: A mock prison was made in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University. Zimbardo advertised for students to participate through newspapers and chose those who were emotionally stable to volunteer. They were randomly allocated to the roles of prisoner or guard. The prisoners were arrested at home to make it seem more real and were blindfolded, strip-searched and issued a uniform and number, this dehumanised them. The social roles were strictly divided; the prisoners were heavily monitored and had strict rules and were only referred to by their numbers while the guards were given their own uniform with mirror shades (to maintain anonymity- people are more brutal when they cannot be identified), handcuffs and keys and were told they could not physically hurt the prisoners but otherwise had full control over them.
Findings:
- guards took up their roles with enthusiasm
- guards behaviour became a threat to psychological and physical health of prisoners and study was ended after 6 days instead of 14
- prisoners rebelled after 2 days by ripping their uniforms, swearing at guards etc
- Guards responded by playing prisoners up against each other
- guards constantly harrassed prisoners and reminded them that they were in charge ie frequent headcounts at night
- prisoners became subdued and depressed after rebellion and 3 were released earlier.
Conclusion: Study revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour as everyone ( guards, prisoners, and researchers) conformed to their roles. Even one time volunteers acted as though they were in a real prison.
Evaluate Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
+ good control over variables ie emotionally stable participants were chosen to rule out paricipant variables. Good internal validity.
- lack of realism because participants may have been acting rather than conforming ie may have been performing based on stereotypes. One guard said he based his character on a fictional brutal character. HOWEVER Zimbardo found that it felt real to participants as 90 percent of prisoner conversations were about prison life. High internal validity.
- Zimbardo may be exaggerating the effect of the situation on conformity. Only a third of guards behaved brutally, another third wanted to apply the rules fairly and another third wanted to help the prisoners. Zimbardo’s conclusion may be overstated and ignore dispositional influences such as personality.
- ethical issues because of Zimbardo’s dual role (researcher and superintendent). When a prisoner asked to leave, Z responded from the viewpoint of a superintendent rather than that of a psychologist with a duty of care towards his participants. This violates the right to withdraw by making in confusing.
+ Potential for real-world applications to address problems in prisons
Name to causes of resistance to influence.
Social support and locus of control.
Outline social support as a resistance to influence.
Social support is the presence of other people who resist pressure to conform or obey. They act as role models.
As shown in Asch’s experiment, the person resisting pressure does not need to be giving the right answer. The effect does not last long as when the confederate stopped giving a different answer, the participant started to conform again.
Social support encourages resistance to obedience. Milgram found in a variation that when joined by a disobedient confederate, obedience dropped from 65 percent to 10. The participant did not necessarily follow the behaviour of the disobedient confederate but felt freed to act of their own conscience.
Evaluate social support as a resistance to influence.
+ There is research support for social support increasing resistance to conformity: A study found that an Asch-type experiment, the presence of a dissenting confederate, even if he had bad eyesight and was likely to have been wrong, reduced conformity. This supports that it is the presence of a non=conformer rather than their specific view or answer.
+ research support for social support increasing resistance to obedience: A study found higher levels of resistance than Milgram when participants were asked to work in a group to brainstorm ideas to help an oil company run a smear campaign. This shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance.
Outline locus of control as an explanation for resistance to social influence.
Locus of control is concerned with internal versus external control. Some people are ‘internals’ and believe that they are, to a large extent, in control of what happens to them. Other people are ‘externals’ and believe that what happens is out of their own control.
There is a continuum with high external LOC and internal LOC on either end and low LOC of both lying in the middle. A continuum is a sequence in which the end elements are quite different to each other but the middle ones are similar.
People with an internal LOC are more likely to resist social influence and pressure to conform or obey because they take responsibility for their actions. They also tend to be more confident and intelligent which may explain why they are able to resist more than externals.
Evaluate locus of control as an explanation for resistance to social influence.
+ research support: a psychologist repeated Milgram’s baseline study and found that there were higher levels of obedience in externals (23 percent did not want to continue) than in internals (37 percent did not want to continue). This gives the explanation good validity.
- there is contradictory research: a study found that over the span of 40 years resistance has become more common but at the same time so has having an external locus of control. This challenges the link between LOC and obedience levels.
What is a minority influence?`
A form of social influence in which a minority of people (or just one person) persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. This leads to internalisation where both private as well as public behaviours are changed.
Explain the 3 main processes in minority influence.
Consistency: There are 2 types of consistency; synchronic (agreement within the group) and diachronic (when the group sticks to their views for a long time). Consistency increases the amount of interest in the group from other people and encourages them to consider the message from the minority group.
Commitment: This is when a minority group engages in extreme activities which are a risk to them in order to gain attention for their views. The augmentation principle comes into play when people start to consider the view of the minority group because they are making personal sacrifices and so must be committed to their cause.
Flexibility: Being too consistent and repeating the same arguments again and again can be seen as rigid and inflexible which is off-putting to the majority. The minority needs to be prepared to adapt their views to accept reasonable counterarguments and compromises. There should be a balance between consistency and flexibility so the group doesn’t seem too dogmatic.
These all lead to deeper processing, which is an important part in converting others to the minority view.
Explain the snowball effect.
A process that starts from an initial state of small significance and increasingly becomes larger. In this case, the more people convert to the minority group, the faster the rate of conversion gets.
Evaluate research into minority influence.
+ research support for consistency: A study found that a minority group with greater consistency had a greater effect than one with less consistency. Another found that minorities that are seen as being consistent are the most influential.
+ research support for depth of thought: A study presented participants with a view from either a majority group or a minority group. When later confronted with an opposing view, those who and heard from a minority group were less likely to change their opinion. This shows that the minority view had reasoned with them as it had been more deeply processed, giving it a more enduring effect.
- artificial tasks: A lot of research done involved artificial tasks such as identifying the colour of a slide. This is not done in real life and so reduces the external validity of the study as the results cannot be extrapolated.
- limited real-world application: in the studies there is a clear distinction between the minority and majority group but in real life there is more involved than just numbers. For example, status and power. This means findings cannot be generalised.
Explain the A01 for a social change essay.
Example of the African American civil rights movement.
They drew attention by providing social proof of the inequality through segregation rules.
They were consistent in their intent and their message through having multiple marches.
They showed commitment by risking their lives and enduring violence (augmentation principle).
Social cryptomnesia
Information learned from research into resisting conformity: Asch found that conformity can bring around social change. He found that the presence of a dissenting confederate reduced conformity as it enabled the participant to resist conformity, even if the dissenting confederate’s answer was wrong. Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to what the majority are actually doing.
Information from obedience research: Milgram’s research showed that the presence of a disobedient confederate reduced conformity from 65 percent to 10 percent. Zimbardo (2007) suggested that obedience can be used to cause social change through a process called gradual commitment, in which after a small instruction has been obeyed, it becomes much harder to disobey a larger one.
Evaluate social change.
+ research support for normative influences in social change: A study tried to encourage reducing energy in a community. They found that in the group where they said that all other neighbours were trying to reduce energy consumption, the reduction was higher. This shows that conformity can lead to social change through normative social influence.
- The effects of minority influence are delayed and indirect: They are delayed because it takes time to see the effect and indirect because people are only concerned with the matter at hand. This means the role of minority influence in is limited in social change.
- Moscovici argued that minority influence causes deeper processing, but another psychologist argued the opposite. He proposed that majority influence can lead to deeper processing when they hold a different view to us because we are forced to consider their reasoning. This is a limitation as it casts doubt on Moscovici’s validity and challenges a central element of minority influence.
- Methodological issues: Social change relies on studies which have been criticised for their artificial tasks- Asch, Milgram, Moscovici. This reduces the validity of the explanations proposed.
Explain Moscovici’s study into minority influence.
Procedure: 192 women in six groups. Ps were given the task of having to judge the colour of slides shown to them. All slides were blue, but different shades. Two out of the 6 participants in each group were confederates. In one condition (the consistent condition), the confederates called all 36 slides ‘green’, and in another condition (inconsistent), they called 24 of the slides ‘green’, and 12 ‘blue’.
Results: In the consistent condition, 8.4% of the time the Ps adopted the minority condition, and in the inconsistent condition, the Ps moved to the minority position only 1.25% of the time. This study demonstrates minority influence, and shows that consistency is a variable enhancing minority influence.
Evaluate Moscovici’s study into minority influence.
- artificial task
- proof that majority influence leads to more deeper processing than minority influence
- lab experiment- low external validity
