Social Influence landmark 3

Question 1

What is locus of control?

Answer 1

• This refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour (Rotter, 1966)
• It is measured along a scale of ‘High Internal’ to ‘High External’
  
  • People with an internal locus of control believe that what happens to them is largely a consequence of their ability and effort
  • People with an external locus of control believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors such as luck

Question 2

What characteristics are there of internal and external locus of control?

Answer 2

Characteristics of Internal and External locus of control:

• Research has uncovered a number of characteristics of internals and externals that have relevance for the study of independent behaviour
• These include the following:
  
  • High internals are active seekers of information that is useful to them, and so rely less on the opinions of others
  • High internals tend to be more achievement orientated, and more likely to become leaders and entrepreneurs
  • High internals are better able to resist coercion from others
    
    • For example, in a simulated prisoner war camp situation, internals were better able to resist the attempts of an interrogator to gain information. The more intense the pressure, the greater the difference between the interval’s performance and that of the externals (Hutchins and Estey, 1978)

Question 3

What did 1983 Spector find?

Answer 3

1983 Spector found externals would conform more than internals. In cases of normative pressure but not in cases of informational pressure.

Question 4

What did Twenge et al find in meta analysis?

Answer 4

• What did Twenge et al find in meta analysis?
  
  • A meta-analysis by Twenge et al. (2004) found that young Americans increasingly believed that their fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions. Researchers found that locus of control scores had become substantially more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002

Question 5

What did Avtgis warn about external locus of control?

Answer 5

• What did Avtgis warn about external locus of control?
  
  • The analysis showed that individuals who scored higher on external locus of control tend to be more easily persuaded, more easily influenced and more conforming than those who score as internal in terms of locus of control

Question 6

Who is more likely to survive a tornado?

Answer 6

• Who is more likely to survive a tornado?
  
  • Those with an internal locus of control is more likely to survive a tornado as they are more likely to be proactive

Question 7

Holland (1967)

Answer 7

• There is research support for locus of control influencing social influence
  
  • Holland (1967) - found that participants with an internal locus of control were more able to resist obedience in a Milgram procedure than those with an external locus of control. 63% of internals obeyed to the highest shock level, compared to 77% of externals

Question 8

How can viewing internal locus of control as desirable be ethnocentric

Answer 8

• Viewing an internal locus of control as desirable may be ethnocentric
  
  • Certain cultures view external locus if control as desirable. Dyal (1984) suggested that for cultures with ‘karmic’ beliefs (e.g. Buddhists or Jains), acceptance of one’s helplessness to control life’s problems is a crucial (and possibly helpful) part of the philosophy

Question 9

What did Oliner and Oliner (1988) find?

Answer 9

• Oliner and Oliner (1988)
  
  • interviewed two groups of non-Jewish people who lived through the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. They interviewed 406 people who had rescued and protected Jewish people from the Nazis and 126 who had not. They found that the ‘rescuers’ were more likely to have an internal locus of control

Question 10

What did Asch find happened to conformity rates when he introduced an ‘Ally’ who gave the correct answers?

Answer 10

• Resisting conformity
  
  • What did Asch find happened to conformity rates when he introduced an ‘Ally’ who gave the correct answers?
  • The most important aspect of support is that it breaks the unanimity of the majority
    
    • This undermines the legitimacy of the majority’s opinion and raises the possibility that there are other ways of thinking or responding
    • Reduced from 33% to just 5.5%

Question 11

What did Milgram find when he organised the participant as being part of a group of three

Answer 11

• Resisting obedience
  
  • Research has shown that individuals are generally more confident in their ability to resist temptation to obey if they can find an ally who is willing to join them in opposing the authority figure
  • What did Milgram find when he organised the participant as being part of a group of three
    
    • The other two were confederates who refused to continue shocking the ‘learner’
    • Only 10% continued to the maximum 450v shock level

Question 12

How did Asch variations show the effectiveness of social support may vary, depending on when it occurs?

Answer 12

• The effectiveness of social support may vary, depending on when it occurs
  
  • Asch variations showed that a participant was only given a ‘partner’ half way through, conformity dropped to 8.7%. When the participant started with a ‘partner’ who later ‘deserted’ him, conformity levels reached 28.5% after the desertion

Question 13

What is an advantage of situational explanations such as social support over dispositional explanations such as Locus of Control?

Answer 13

• One advantage of situational explanations such as social support is that they appear to be a more powerful explanation of resistance to SI than the dispositional explanations such as Locus of Control
  
  • The decrease in obedience and conformity found by Milgram and Asch in their social support studies is much larger than that found by Holland (1967) when investigating locus of control

Question 14

How did Allen and Levine (1969) show the importance of response order?

Answer 14

In one condition, a confederate answered first, giving the right answer, while the other confederates all gave the same wrong answer. The real participant always answered fifth (last). In the second condition, the confederate answered fourth, i.e. after the confederates. Support was significantly more effective in position 1 than in position 4

Question 15

How did Rees and Wallace (2015) show the importance of social support in resisting social influence

Answer 15

Individuals with a majority of friends who drank alcohol were significantly more likely to have engaged in drunkenness and binge drinking over the previous 12 months. However, they also found that individuals were able to resist pressures to drink alcohol when they had a friend or two who also resisted

Question 16

What was the Rosenstrasse protest and how does it show social support in the real world?

Answer 16

In 1943, a group of German women protested in the Rosenstrasse in Berlin, where the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) were holding 2,000 Jewish men, most of whom were married to non-Jewish partners or were the male children of these ‘mixed’ marriages. Despite the Gestapo threatening to open fire on them, the women’s courage eventually prevailed and the Jews were set free

Question 17

Elms and Milgram 1966 supports the idea of the Authoritarian personality however there are questions as to whether or not participanst actually thought it was real. How has this evaluation point been countered by Danbrun and Vatine (2010)?

Answer 17

Dambrun and Vatine (2010) overcame this problem by using an ‘immersive virtual environment’, where an actor taking the role of the learner was filmed, recorded and displayed on a computer screen. Participants were informed that the experiment was a simulation and that the shocks and the victims reactions were not real but simulated. Despite this, participants still tended to respond as if the situation was real

Question 18

How do the variations in Milgram’s study go against the dispositional explanation

Answer 18

Milgram showed that variations in the social context of the study were the primary cause of differences in participants levels of obedience, not variations of personality

Question 19

What did Elms and Milgram discover about the relationships between participants and parents that was shocking?

Answer 19

When Elms and Milgram asked participants about their upbringing, many of the fully obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with their parents instead of an overly strict family environment.It also seems implausible, therefore, given the large number of participants who were fully obedient in Milgrams study, that the vast majoirty would have grown up in a harsh environment with a punitve father

Question 20

How does education effect the development of an authoritarian personality?

Answer 20

Milgram found that participants with lower levels of education tended to be more obedient than those with higher levels of education

Question 21

How was it found that left wing views are associated with lower levels of obedience and how does this provide support for the authoritarian personality.

Answer 21

Beavous 2012: carried out a replication of Milgram’s study as part of a fake game show, where contestants had to deliver (fake) electric shocks to other contestants.

Begue et al (2014): Subsequent interviews using the ‘World Value Survey Questionnaire’ revealed that the more participants defined themselves as on the left of the political spectrum, the lower the intensity of shocks they agreed to give.

Question 22

What did Adorno and al. claim?

Answer 22

• The authoritarian personality
  
  • Adorno et al. (1950) claimed some people have an authoritarian personality. Such individuals are more likely to be obedient and have the following characteristics:
    
    • Rigid beliefs in conventional values
    • General hostility towards other groups. More likely to be prejudiced
    • Intolerance of ambiguity
    • Submissive attitudes towards authority figures. Hostility towards those with less power
  • Adorno sampled over 2000 American male students from white, middle class background
  • Interviewed about their political views and early childhood experiences
  • Unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups assessed through projective tests
  • Several scales, including the F scale (fascism scale) were used to measure for an authoritarian personality

Question 23

How do early experiences effect an authoritarian personality?

Answer 23

• early experiences
  
  • Harsh treatment of children when they were young causes them to have hostility towards his/her parents
  • This hostility remains unconscious, which is then displaced onto non-threatening minority groups, usually in the form of prejudice

Question 24

What is the F scale?

Answer 24

• The F Scale
  
  • Adorno et al. devised the F (Fascism) Scale to measure the attitudes of the authoritarian personality
  • It contained statements such as ‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’
  • Adorno et al also found that those who scored high on the F-scale tended to have been raised by parents who used an authoritarian parenting style

Question 25

Elms and Milgram (1966)

Answer 25

• There is supporting research for the authoritarian personality as a factor influencing obedience
  
  • Elms and Milgram (1966) conducted a follow-up study to Milgram’s original research using 20 ‘obedient’ participants (who went to 450v) and 20 ‘defiant’ participants (who stopped before 450v). Authoritarianism amongst ‘obedient’ participants

Question 26

Why is social context important for situational variables?(Milgram)

Answer 26

• Importance of social context
  
  • Milgram argued that situational variables are much more important in understanding the causes of obedience
  • Milgram’s variations clearly demonstrate the impact of situational factors

Question 27

What is right-wing authoritarianism?

Answer 27

• Robert Alterneyer (1981) refined the concept of the Authoritarian Personality by identifying a cluster of three original personality variables he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA).
  
  • Conventionalism - an adherence to conventional norms and values
  • Authoritarian aggression - aggressive feelings toward people who violate these norms
  • Authoritarian submission - uncritical submission to legitimate authorities
• Alterneyer tested the relationship between RWA and obedience in an experiment where participants were ordered to give themselves increasing levels of shock when they made mistakes on a learning task
  
  • There was a significant correlation between RWA scores and the level of shocks taht participants were willing to give themselves

Question 28

What did Elms and Milgram (1966) research?

Answer 28

• Key study: Elms and Milgram (1966)
  
  • Research on obedience measures actual submission to authority, not just what a person says they are likely to do, and therefore allows researchers to study whether participants high in authoritarianism are more likely to obey an authority figure
  • Procedure - Follow up to Milgram’s previous experiments - 20 ‘obedient’ participants and 20 ‘defiant’ participants
    
    • Completed MMPI and F scale, and asked open ended questions
  • Findings - little difference between obedient and defiant participants in MMPI
    
    • Higher levels of authoritarianism in obedient participants
    • Obedient participants reported being less close to fathers

Question 29

How did 1960s China’s revolution show authoritarian personality?

Answer 29

• The Cultural Revolution
  
  • Interviews with refugees from Communist Leader Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution in 1960s China showed highly authoritarian personality
  • Stemmed from school education rather than family
  • Once removed from the environment that encouraged the behaviour, authoritarian side of their character disappeared

Question 30

What was Begue et al’s aim and procedure?

Answer 30

• Aim:To investigate which personality traits best predict levels of obedience in a ‘Milgramesque’ situation.
• Begue et al (2014) felt that socially desirable traits such asConscientiousnessandAgreeablenessmay in fact contribute to destructive obedience as they predict normative behaviour and should facilitate submissive behaviour toward authority.
• The second aim of the study was to look at howpolitical opinionsrelate to obedience to authority.
• Procedure:Participants were35 malesand31 femalesaged26–54from the general population ofPariswho were contacted by phone 8 months after their participation in a study transposing Milgram’s obedience paradigm to the context of a television game show, (Beauvois et al 2012).

Question 31

What was Begue et al’s findings and conclusions?

Answer 31

• Findings:
  
  • The intensity of shocks administered did not significantly differ between male and female Pps.
  • There also was no relationship between obedience and age, nor between obedience and the familiarity of individuals with TV game shows.
  • Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were significantly (p= .039) associated with willingness to administer higher-intensity electric shocks to a victim.
  • Political orientation was also significantly related to obedience; the more the participants defined themselves as on the “left” of the political spectrum, the lower the intensity of shocks they agreed to give to the contestant.
  • Rebellious political activism and obedience were also significantly correlated, although this was not only marginally significant,(p= .10). Analysis by gender showed that the relationship was significant for females, (p= .03), but not for males, (p= .95)
• Conclusions: The results provide empirical evidence suggesting that individual differences in personality and political variables matter in the explanation of obedience to authority. As expected, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness predicted the intensity of electric shocks administered to the victim. Second, disobedience was influenced by political orientation, with left-wing political ideology being associated with decreased obedience. Third, we showed that women who were willing to participate in rebellious political activities such as going on strike or occupying a factory administered lower shocks.

Question 32

authoritarian personality

Answer 32

a distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience or submission to authority

Question 33

dispositional

Answer 33

explanations of behaviours such as obedience emphasise them being caused by an individuals own personal characteristics rather than situational within the environment

Question 34

f scale

Answer 34

also known as the ‘California F scale’ or the ‘Fascism scale’, the F scale was developed in California in 1947 as a measure of authoritarian traits or tendencies

Question 35

right wing authoritarianism

Answer 35

a cluster of personality variables (conventionalism, authority submission and authoritarian aggression) that are associated with a ‘right-wing’ attitude to life

Question 36

externality

Answer 36

individuals who tend to believe that their behaviour and experience is caused by events outside their control

Question 37

internality

Answer 37

individuals who tend to believe that they are responsible for their behaviour and experience rather than external forces

Question 38

locus of control

Answer 38

people differ in their beliefs about whether the outcomes of their actions are dependent on what they do (internal locus of control) or on events outside their personal control (external locus of control)