Social Influence - AO1 Flashcards
(32 cards)
What’s conformity
- type of social influence
- changes in beliefs/ behaviour to fit in
- real or imagined social pressure
Types of conformity
- compliance (weakest) = superficial change: change in public with a group but don’t change personal, private opinion
- identification = conforming to the group while with them
- internalisation (strongest) = permanent change: accept the norms and change publicly and privately
What’s Deutsch’s and Gerard’s theory
- people conform to be right = informative social influence (ISI)
- people conform to be liked = normative social influence (NSI)
Asch’s research into conformity (baseline study)
- measuring length of lines
- 75% conformed at least once in all trials
Asch’s variations
- Group size = with 3 confederates conformity rose but adding more didn’t effect
- Unanimity = when all confederates said the same answer (was unanimous) there was highest conformity
- task difficulty = the harder it was to work out the correct line length, conformity increased as participants look at others for guidance
Zimbardo’s research (conformity to social roles)
- Picked random under-graduate males from the USA to play the role of prisoners or guards
- the prisoners and the guards identified with their social roles: prisoners referred to themselves as their number , the guards became abusive
What’s obedience
- form of social influence
- where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual
Milgram’s obedience study (baseline)
- wanted to understand why the German population followed Hitler’s orders in the Holocaust
- male participants were told to give the learner an electric shock if they got the wrong question
- 65% continued to the highest level of volts when the experimenter/ authorativr figure told them to
Milgram’s variations
- Proximity = distance between the participant & the experimenter or the participant & the learner (when the authoritative figure gave orders to participants over the phone obedience was the lowest)
- Location = conducted the study in a run down area rather than Yale University and obedience fell (the experimenter has less authority)
- Uniform = the experimenter wore ordinary clothes rather than a lab coat and the obedience rate dropped to the lowest
What’s the agentic state
Where someone feels no personal responsibility for their actions/ behaviour = acting as an agent for the authority
- doing something you don’t want to do but doing it anyway to obey
What’s the autonomous state
A person feels free to behave to their own personal principals = feel a sense of responsibility
What’s the agentic shift
The shift from autonomy to ‘agent’
What’s binding factors
Aspects of a situation that allow people to ignore/ minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour
What’s legitimacy of authority
A social psychological explanation for obedience that suggests we are likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
- the authority is justified (legitimate) by the individuals position of power within the social hierarchy
What’s social hierarchy
People in authority hold certain power over others below them
- the idea that we accept the fact that authoritative figures have to be allowed to exercise power in order for society to run
- people are willing to give up our independence and control to authority to exercise their power
- legitimate authority is learned from childhood
Dispositional explanations of obedience
Focus on internal characteristics (personality) that lead to a person to become more or less likely to obey
What’s the authoritarian personality
A type of personality that Adorno argued was highly susceptible to obey authority
• submissive to those with a high social status
• dismissive of inferiors
- said to originate from childhood as a result of harsh parents
Adorno’s research
Developed the f-scale (fascism scale) to investigate why people during the Holocaust obeyed so strongly
- High f scale score = authoritarian personality
Resistance to social influence
To ability to withstand social pressures to conform to the majority of obey to the authority
- influenced by situational factors (environment) and dispositional factors (internal)
Resistance to social influence - situational factors
Social support
- the presence of people who resist pressures to conform/ obey can help others to do the same
Resistance to social influence - dispositional factors
Locus of control
•internals = believe that things happen to them are due to themselves (high LoC)
- more likely to resist pressures of social influence as they feel responsible for their own actions
•externals = believe things happen out of their control (low LoC)
- it’s a continuum = people constantly differ in the way they explain their successes and failures
Minority influence
- form of social influence
- minority group tries to persuade others to adapt their beliefs, attitudes, behaviour
- the minority shaping the view of the majority
- leads to internationalisation or conversion
Three processes that allow the minority to have an impact
- CONSISTENCY
•synchronic = all saying the same thing
•diachronic = same thing overtime - COMMITMENT
•show dedication and risk to the cause = majority are more likely to consider their view and they can clearly see how important it must be - FLEXIBILITY
• need to accept the possibility of compromise / adapt to enact smaller changes
Moscovici’s study
- blue green slides
- groups where a minority of confederates consistently said the same colour, participants also answered the same wrong answer ~ 32% gave the same answer as the minority (confederates) at least once
