Social Influence Flashcards
(34 cards)
What are the three types of conformity?
(1) internalisation
(2) identification
(3) compliance
Who suggested the three types of conformity?
Herbert Kelman
What is conformity?
A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
What is internalisation?
A deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct and it leads to a permanent change in behaviour, even when the group is absent
What is identification?
A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way as the group because we value it and want to be part of it but we don’t necessarily agree with everything the majority believes
What is compliance?
A superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it and our behaviour only lasts when the group is monitoring
What are the two explanations of conformity?
(1) informational social influence (ISI)
2) normative social influence (NSI
What two psychologists proposed the explanations of conformity?
Deutsch and Gerard
What is informational social influence?
An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct and we accept it because we have a need to be correct too and this may lead to internalisation
What is normative social influence?
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 and this may lead to compliance
What are some strengths of the explanations of conformity?
(1) RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR ISI
- Lucas gave maths problems to students that were either hard or easy and he found that there was a higher level of conformity when the questions were harder and this shows that people conform in situations where they don’t know the answer
(2) RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR NSI
- Asch found that many of his participant went along with the clearly wrong answer because they were self-conscious of giving the right answer because they were afraid of disapproval
What are some limitations for the explanations of conformity?
(1) INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NSI
- some people are less concerned about being liked that others who have a greater need for affiliation and this show that there are individual differences in the way people respond to conformity
(2) ISI AND NSI WORK TOGETHER
- both processes may be involved for example conformity may be reduced when a dissenting participant is involved because either the dissenter reduces the power of NSI because they produce social support or they may reduce the power of ISI because there is an alternative source of information and this casts doubt on them working independently
(3) INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN ISI
- Asch found that students were less conformist than other participants and this is supported by Perrin and Spencer’s study and therefore ISI does not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way
What two psychologists conducted research into conformity?
Asch and Zimbardo
Describe the procedure of Asch’s study
Participants were shown one card with a standard line and another card with three comparison lines and there asked which one was the same length as the standard line and the other too were clearly wrong
Each participant was tested individually with 6-8 confederates and on 12 out of 18 trials the confederates were told to give the wrong answer
Describe the same of Asch’s study
123 American male undergraduates
What were Asch’s findings?
Overall 25% of participants did not conform which means that 75% confirmed at least once and this is called the Asch effect
When interviewed after most participants claimed they confirmed to avoid rejection
In Asch’s variation what were the 3 variations?
(1) group size
(2) unanimity
(3) task difficulty
What did Asch find in the group size variation?
He found that with 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% but the addition of further confederates made little difference
What did Asch find in the unanimity variation?
The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced than when the majority was unanimous and therefore the presence of a dissenter enabled the participant to behave more independently
What did Asch find in the task difficulty variation?
He found that when he made the line-judging task more difficult there were higher levels of conformity which suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder
Suggest some strengths of Asch’s research
There are none
Suggest some limitations of Asch’s research
(1) NOT CONSISTENT
- Perrin and Spencer replicated this experiment on engineering students and out of 396 trials only one student conformed and this means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situation and may not be consistent across time
(2) ARTIFICIAL SITUATION
- participants knew they were being studied and therefore there is a risk of demand characteristics and the group did not resemble groups in everyday life and therefore the findings do not generalise to everyday situations
(3) LIMITED APPLICATION
- only American men were studied and research has found that women and people from collectivist cultures tend to be more conformist and therefore Asch’s findings only apply to American men
(4) ETHICAL ISSUES
- the participants were deceived because they thought the confederates were real participants
What was the name of Zimbardo’s experiment?
The Stanford prison experiment
What are social roles?
The parts people play as members of various social groups and these are accompanied by expectations we and others have if what is appropriate behaviour in each role
