Social Influence (AS) PAPER 1 Flashcards
Explain what is meant by Conformity
A type of social influence that changes your belief or behaviour due to social pressure.
Explain what is meant by compliance, internalisation, and identification
Compliance - Agree with a groups opinions in public to gain approval, however disagree with the opinion in private. (superficial change)
Internalisation - Deepest level of conformity, publicly changing to fit in with a group, as well as internally agreeing. (permanent)
Identification - (both compliance and internalisation) They accept the groups attitudes and opinions, but the reason for accepting it is to gain approval from the group.
Explain the two explanations for conformity
Informational social influence - the desire to be right, its a cognitive process, looking to others you believe are correct.
Normative social influence - the desire to behave like others, its an emotional process, people prefer social approval than rejection.
Evaluate the two explanantions of conformity
Informational:
(+) research support - Lucas et al asked students to give answers to easy and more difficult maths problems, there was more conformity to incorrect answers when the qs were hard than when they were not. People conform in situations when they do not know the answer.
Normative:
(+) research support - Ashs study, he asked ppts why they conformed to wrong answers and they said they felt self conscious, afraid of disapproval.
Outline what Asch did in his study of conformity and the findings of this study (1956)
- He recruited 123 american male students, each one was tested individually with a group of 6-8 confederates.
-The purpose of the study was to see whether the lone ‘real’ participant would react to the behaviour of the others.
Procedure-
- They were all shown a standard line and three comparison lines and had call out one by one which comparison line was identical to the standard line, with the real participant answering second to last.
The confederates were told to give the same wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials.
Asch was interested to see whether the real participant would stick with what they believed to be right or cave into the pressure of majority.
Findings-
- Real participant conformed to 33% on the 12 critical trials.
- 75% conformed to at least one of the trials.
- Asch effect = people conform even in unambiguous situations
When Asch interviewed the participants afterwards, majority agreed publicly but privately disagreed to avoid disapproval from the group (compliance)
Explain the role of group size as a variable affecting conformity
Asch found that there was very little conformity with just one or two confederates, however with 3 or more confederates, conformity raised to 32%. However conformity didn’t increase when the group size was larger than 4/5.
optimal group size is 4.
Explain the role of unanimity as a variable affecting conformity
A person is most likely to conform when all other participants agree and give the same answer.
The presence of 1 dissenting confederate, conformity levels dropped significantly from 33% to just 5.5%.
- Allows ppt to behave more independently.
Explain the role of task difficulty in Ashs study as a variable affecting conformity
When the comparison lines were made more similar in length it became harder to distinguish which one was closest to the standard line, it was revealed that the more difficult it was, the higher rise in conformity levels as participants looked to others for confirmation.
Outline Zimbardo’s research into conformity to social roles
Social roles : e.g, teacher, police officer, Conforming to a social role is identification.
Zimbardo wanted to see how quickly people would conform to either the role of a prisoner or guard in a simulated prison.
Procedure- Zimbardo converted a basement in the Stanford University psychology block into a mock prison.
24 male students emotionally stable.
Was meant to last 2 weeks.
Prisoners were given uniform and were referred to by numbers.
Guards were given all the tools: whistles, khaki uniform, handcuffs.
Zimbardo was prison superintendent.
Findings- Both prisoners and guards adapted quickly to there roles.
- guards took up roles with enthusiasm and there behviours threatened prisonors psychological and physical health
- 3 prisoners released early due to psychological disturbance
- only lasted 6 days instead of intended 2 weeks
- - more the guards identified with there roles the more brutal they became
- power of situation to influence peoples behaviour
Outline Milgrims study into obedience and findings
Procedure:
- 40 male participants
- teacher and learner, this was rigged so that the real participant was always the teacher and the confederate was the learner.
- teacher had to test the learners word pairs
-teacher and learner in seperate rooms
- learner was strapped in a chair and wired with electrodes.
-teacher gave increasingly severe shocks everytime they made a mistake (teacher didnt know shocks and learer were fake)
- shocks started at 15v going up to a max of 450v in 15v increments.
- learner purposly gave wrong answers(pounded on the wall and gave no response at 300v = shocks)
- If the teacher asked to stop producing the volts then the experimenter has a series of prods to tell his e.g you have no other choice, you must continue’
Findings:
- 65% of people gave max 450v despite the shock generator being labelled danger severe shock., all participants went to 300v.
- ppts showed extreme tension, tremble, sweat, full blown seizures
3 variables effecting obedience
Proximity:
- teacher and learner in same room
-obedience dropped to 40%
- in touch proximity conditions obedience dropped to a futher 30% (force learners hand on shock)
- when the experiment was not in the room and was giving orders through a telephone only 21% continued with max shock level.
Location:
- psychology laboratory in yale university.
- milgrim did a study in a run down office, obedience dropped slightly, only 48% gave max volts.
Uniform:
-lab coat which gave him high status in original
- second study replaced by ordanary person and ordinary clothes
- fell to 20% LOWEST OUT OF ALL
evaluations of milgrims study of obedience
(-) Lacked ecological validity
- people not likely to encounter in real lide
- unfamilliar situation = cant be sure ppts would acc behave like that, knew they were being watched (overt)
(-) Ethical issues (STRONGEST)
- deception, they did not know about fake learner and fake shocks, no informed consent
COUNTER - deception needed, debreifed after
- psychological harm, some had seizures
COUNTER - only 2% regretted taking over . - benefits outweigh costs, milgrim even got an award. not ethical but lots of backlash
(-) gender bias
- all white males (androcentric)
- lacks population validity, cant generalise
(-) demand characteristics
- may not have believed it was real, just went along with the study
COUNTER - they showed extreme tension (sweating, trembling, some seizures) felts guilty for shocks so must have thought it was real
(+) lab study
- controlled extraneous variables
- could test situational variables (proximity, loaction, uniform) and cause and effect
Outline and evaluate two explanations of obedience
Agentic state:
- people will obey authority when they believe authority will take responsibility for there actions. moral stain = odeying immoral orders, reduce by agentic shift = autonomous (independent) to agentic state.
AO3
(+) evidence from milgrims study
- ppts expeirenced distress when giving shocks (moral strain)
- more likely to obey when experimenter took responsibility
- when learner was more far away, mosre likely to ignore consequences of actions
Legitimacy of authority:
-Because we grow up in a social heirachy, we learn from a young age to obey people higher than us on the heirachy, if authority is legitimate, we are more likely to obey
AO3
(+) evidence from milgrims study
- uniform = higher obedience, lab coats
- loaction = prestigous uni, higher obedince, experimenter as more power
(-) individual variables
- personality
- 35% didnt follow orders in milgrims study.
Outline and discuss the authoritarian personality explanation of obedience
Authoritarian personality - some people are more likely to obey due to there authoritarian personality which makes the strict, aggressive and overly overly respectiful of authority, this develops from having overstrict parents.
Adorno wanted to see if there was a way to test obedience to hitlers orders: F- SCALE (fascism)
-He investigated 2000 middle class white americans and there unconscious attitudes to other racial groups using the F scale to measure authoritarian personality. Individuals who scored highly on the F scale and had an authoritarian personality seemed to dislike the weak, they obey authority and they are conscious of there own status, they had stereotypical veiws on other groups.
A03
(+) milgrims study
- some people more likely to obey than others
- 65% obeyed, 35% did not
- individual variables
(-) not all obedience can be argued by authoritarian personality
- just because authoritarian personality correlates with obedience doesnt mean you can determine cause and effect
- could be third varibles e.g said to have lower education levels
(-) situational variables
- location, uniform, proximity
- focuses on personality not situation
Explain the role of social support in resisting social influence
Enables an individual to resist conformity pressure from majority.
Validates there own answer, giving them the confidence to deny the majority.
In Ashs study, a dissenter (confederate who doesnt conform) causes conformity to drop from 33% to 5.5%. It breaks the unanimous position of the majority. Allows people to follow their own conscience
