Social Influence and Conformity Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is Obedience?
compliance with another’s authority
What is an example study of obedience?
Milgram (1974) electric shock experiment
What are the findings from Milgrams (1974) study?
65% of ppts were willing to give shocks described as extremely intense and severe
What does agentic state mean?
unquestioning obedience in which personal responsibility is transferred to the person giving orders
What 3 factors affect obedience?
- sunk cost fallacy
- immediacy of the victim
- immediacy of authority figure
What is the sunk cost fallacy?
once you’ve gone part way down a path it’s hard to stop yourself as you have to admit responsibility and awareness of actions
How does immediacy of the victim affect obedience?
when victim was visible in same room, obedience rates dropped to 40%
prevents dehumanisation of victim
How does immediacy of authority figure affect obedience?
when experimenter gave instructions over the phone, obedience rates were 20.5%
What is conformity?
a private and enduring change in behaviour and attitudes due to group pressure
Sherif (1936) - what is the convergence effect?
the need to be certain that a behaviour is correct
especially in ambiguous situations
What is one study on conformity?
Asch (1951) line study
What are the findings of Asch’s (1951) line study?
25% did not conform to confederates
50% conformed on 6 or more trials
conformity rate was 33%
What are some variations of Asch’s (1951) line study?
group size
group unanimity
privacy (write down answers, conformity dropped to 12.5%)
Bond and Smith (1996) - findings on culture and conformity?
found collectivist cultures have higher levels of conformity compared to individualistic
Sistruck and McDavid (1971) - what can increase conformity?
lack of expertise and familiarity
What is referent informational influence?
pressure to conform to a group norms that defines oneself as a group member
prototypical in group members are the most reliable source of information
What 3 main factors are social influence modalities?
conformity
normalisation
innovation (creating conflict to persuade)
According to Moscovici, what do minorities have to show to be effective?
consistency (across time and context)
commitment (show investment)
autonomy (act out of own principle)
What was the most important factor for a minority to show?
consistency
Moscovici, Lage, Naffrechoux (1969) study on minority influnce
2 confederates versus 4 ppts
said slides were ‘green’ instead of ‘blue’
Moscovici (1969) findings
consistent conditions had over 8% conformity levels
Moscovici (1980) - conversion theory
sudden internal change in attitudes of majority
influence can be exerted through majority and minority
Nemeth (1986) - convergent-divergent theory
when we have attitudes which disagree with majority we find this surprising and stressful
leads to narrow focused thinking
wheres disagreement with minority is expected of allows for more divergent views
Why is meant by leniency contract?
that there is greater leniency towards in-group minorities because they are unlikely to want to destroy the majorities core attributes
