Social Influence Lessons 1-7

Question 1

What is Social Psychology?

Answer 1

Social Psychology looks at the relationships between people and how people affect each other’s behaviour, attitudes and views.

Question 2

What is Conformity?

Answer 2

Conformity is a form of social influence where an individual changes their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs so that they are in line with the majority. This occurs due to the influence of either real or imagined pressure from the majority group.

Question 3

Give an example of Conformity:

Answer 3

When a person might purposely laugh at a joke that they don’t understand when a large group of people is around so that they fit in.

Question 4

What are the 3 types of Conformity?

Answer 4

Compliance
Internalisation
Identification

Question 5

Who researched the 3 types of conformity? And when?

Answer 5

Kelman (1958)

Question 6

What is Compliance?

Answer 6

Compliance is a type of conformity where individuals change their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs in public, so that they are in line with the majority. However, there is change to their private behaviour, attitudes and beliefs where the conformity only lasts while the group is present. This type of conformity is superficial and temporary.

Question 7

What is Internalisation?

Answer 7

Internalisation is a type of conformity where individuals change their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs publicly and privately, so that they are in line with the majority. The individual examines their own behaviour, attitudes and beliefs based on those of the majority, and ultimately decide that the majority is correct. This type of conformity is deeper than compliance and more permanent.

Question 8

What is Identification?

Answer 8

Identification is a type of conformity where individuals adopt the behaviours, attitudes and beliefs of a particular social group that they admire due to wanting to be associated and identified with them. The individual may agree with the group publicly but disagree privately.

Question 9

Who developed a 2 process theory for why we conform? And when?

Answer 9

Deutsch and Gerald (1955)

Question 10

What are the 2 explanations for conformity?

Answer 10

Informational Social Influence

Normative Social Influence

Question 11

What is Informational Social Influence?

Answer 11

Desire to be correct.

If a person is unsure of the correct answer in a situation, they will immediately look to others for the correct answer and copy them to avoid standing out. If they get it wrong, they will fit in with the majority OR they will get the correct answer with everyone else.

Question 12

What is Normative Social Influence?

Answer 12

Desire to be accepted.

When an individual avoids behaviour that could get them laughed at, ridiculed or rejected by a particular group so instead they change their behaviour to fit in - even if they don’t agree with the groups behaviour.

Question 13

When does Informational Social Influence tend to occur a lot? (2)

Answer 13

in an ambiguous situation

in a hard situation

Question 14

When does Normative Social Influence tend to occur a lot? (2)

Answer 14

when people are concerned about being rejected

when people what the support of a social group or want to be in a social group

Question 15

What does Informational Social Influence tend to lead to? And why?

Answer 15

Internalisation as they want to be correct both publicly and privately by accepting the views of someone else who might have more of an expert opinion than themselves

Question 16

What does Normative Social Influence tend to lead to? And why?

Answer 16

Compliance as the individual will act a certain way to avoid being ridiculed by a particular group even if they privately do not agree with what the groups behaviour and norms are like.

Question 17

What is a strength of the explanation for conformity?

Answer 17

There is research to support both NSI and ISI

Question 18

What research is there to support ISI?

Answer 18

• Lucas et al (2006) asked students to answer mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult.
• Lucas discovered that conformity occurred more when the questions were more difficult (students would look to others who they felt had more knowledge towards mathematics as they wanted to answer the questions correctly).
• This supports the ISI explanation of conformity as the research suggests that conformity is more likely to occur in a difficult or ambiguous situation

Question 19

What research is there to support NSI?

Answer 19

• The Asch study in 1951 found that many participants would go along with the wrong answer to a very easy question just because other people gave that answer.
• This supports the NSI explanation for conformity as the research shows that conformity is more likely to occur when an individual wants to fit in with the majority around them even if they do not agree with them privately.

Question 20

What are the weaknesses of explanations for conformity? (3)

Answer 20

Individual Differences

What are the weaknesses of explanations for conformity? (3)
ISI and NSI may work together in explaining conformity instead of separately (Asch study (participants change their behaviour due to the influence of the majority and not wanting to stand out (NSI) but to also be correct and therefore listen to the others around them (ISI))).

Many research studies that support explanations for conformity lack ecological validity

Question 21

What are Individual Differences and why are they a weakness to the explanations for conformity? (NSI and ISI)

Answer 21

NSI - Some individuals are not concerned about being liked and don’t care about social approval, unlike nAfilliators who need affiliation - a need to fit in and have relationships with others, and therefore will not be affected by NSI which means that NSI as an explanation for conformity may lack population validity.

ISI - Asch discovered that individuals part of different social groups don’t conform in the same way. For example, 28% of students conformed but 37% of other participants who were not students conformed.

Question 22

What is ecological validity and why is to e explanations for conformity?

Answer 22

Many of the research methods carried out to support NSI and ISI are carried out under lab conditions and therefore do not reflect the real world and therefore lack ecological validity. For example, participants may not behave in the same way in lab conditions as they would in real life.

Also, many of the research methods have strange tasks (like comparing the length of lines (Asch study in 1951)) that participants would not do in everyday life (lack ecological validity) so it is hard to utilise the results from the research methods to support the explanations for conformity.

Question 23

What are three studies that looked into conformity? And when?

Answer 23

Jenness (1932)
Sherif (1935-1936)
Solomon Asch (1951)

Question 24

Describe Jenness’ study? Results? Conclusion?

Answer 24

Aim: identifying if people conform to group norms when they are put in an ambiguous situation.

Method: An ambiguous situation involving A glass bottle filled with jelly beans. He asked individuals to estimate how many beans the bottle contained. He then asked a group of people and asked them to provide an estimate together. He then asked the individuals to estimate how many beans the bottle contained again but by themselves to see if they had been influenced by the majority.

Results: almost all of the individuals had changed their estimates to be closer to the groups estimates.

Conclusion: When put in an ambiguous situation, a person will look to others for guidance due to them wanting to be right. This is an example of ISI.

Question 25

Describe Sherif’s study? Results? Conclusion?

Answer 25

Aim: in 1935 Sherif conducted an experiment to identify if people conform to group norms when they are put in an ambiguous situation

Method: Sherif utilised the autokinetic effect experiment to study conformity. This is where a small spot of light is projected onto a wall in a dark room and it appears to move even thought it actually doesn’t.

Sherif asked individuals how far the spot of light moved and the answer greatly varied from each other.

Sherif then manipulated the composition of groups of three by including 2 people with similar results with 1 person with very different results in the same group and asking them how far the spot of light moved again.

Results: The person with a greatly different estimate actually conformed to the majority and gave an answer more similar to the other 2 participants.

Conclusion: When put in an ambiguous situation, a person will look to others for guidance due to them wanting to be right. This is an example of ISI.

Question 26

What problem did Asch believe Sherif’s experiment had?

Answer 26

That there was no correct answer to the ambiguous situation.

Question 27

What did Asch investigate?

Answer 27

Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform in an easy situation, not an ambiguous one.

Question 28

Describe Asch’s procedure:

Answer 28

Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity where 123 male students from America participated in a ‘vision test’ using a line judgement task.

Ashes study involved 18 different trials were the participant and other Confederates were told to state allowed which line on the comparison card was the most unlike the line on the target card. Before the study the Confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task. The participant would always answer last and would either conform to fit in with everyone else (NSI) or give the correct answer and choose to stand out. There were 12 critical trials out of 18 (where the Confederates gave the wrong answer) and those are the only trials that the rate of conformity could be based off of.

Asch also had a control group comprised of 36 participants that had 20 trials that he could use to compare his results to.

Question 29

What were Asch’s results? (3)

Answer 29

32% to 36% conformity rate per critical trial
75% conformed at least once
In the control group less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer

Question 30

What was Asch’s conclusion?

Answer 30

The majority of participants who conformed did so publicly but not privately (compliance) as they did not really believe the answers that they gave when they conformed. They had only conformed due to the fear of being ridiculed and not fitting in (NSI). However, a few participants said that they really did believe the groups answers were correct (internalisation) which is an example of ISI.

Question 31

What are three variables that affect conformity?

Answer 31

Group size
Unanimity of the majority
Task difficulty

Question 32

Why is group size a variable affecting conformity?

Answer 32

If there were one or two confederates in the majority, there was very little conformity. However, if there was a majority of three confederates or more conformity rate went up to 30% due to there being more pressure.

Question 33

Why is unanimity of the majority a variable affecting conformity?

Answer 33

If one confederate gave the correct answer to the line judgement task then conformity levels dropped significantly from 33% to 5.5%

Question 34

Why is task difficulty a variable affecting conformity?

Answer 34

If a task is made MORE difficult and the answer was VERY ambiguous, conformity rate increased as people look to others for the correct answer and believed that others could actually be correct (ISI).

Asch made the line lengths much smaller so that the correct answer was less obvious which increased the rate of conformity

Question 35

What are 4 weaknesses of Asch’s study?

Answer 35

• Lacks Temporal Validity as society has changed greatly since 1951. This is supported by Perrin and Spencer who repeated Asch’s study on engineering students in 1980 that found that only 1 student conformed in a total of 396 trials. However some may argue that due to the participants being engineering students, they were more confident when measuring lines and didn’t feel the need to look to others for guidance.
• Lacks ecological validity as the artificial situation and task didn’t properly reflect real-life situations. Therefore, Asch’s results that were collected may not be what was originally set out to measure and may be inaccurate. In everyday life, people do not measure lines in a lab room.
• Ethical issues - Asch’s findings came at the expense of some participants’ good mental state as the study may have caused psychological harm due to the deception involved which made them confused and possibly stressed as to why everyone was giving the wrong answer to a clearly easy question. Furthermore there was more deception due to Asch lying to the participant about the other confederates also being participants. Therefore some people may perceive Asch’s study as very unethical and his findings not legitimate.
• Lacks population validity - The study only relates to men and not anyone who is female. Therefore the study may not be representative of the population as a whole.

Question 36

What are social roles?

Answer 36

Social roles are the parts people play as members of various social groups which are accompanied by expectations we and others around us have of what appropriate behaviour is for each role.

Question 37

What was Philip Zimbardo interested in finding out and when?

Answer 37

Phillip Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality amongst the guards in American prisons was provoked due to their own sadistic behaviour/attitude or had more to do with the prison’s environment. Therefore, in 1973, he introduced the Stanford prison experiment (SPE) to see whether normal people would conform to new social roles such as guards or prisoners.

Question 38

Describe the method of the Stanford prison experiment: (4)

Answer 38

Zimbardo converted the basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison.

Zimbardo advertised for volunteers to participate, who he would pay $15 each day, and received 70 applicants which he narrowed down to 24 by eliminating candidates with potential psychological problems by making each applicant complete a diagnostic interview and personality tests.

The 24 participants were then randomly assigned the social role of either a prisoner or guard.

To ensure ecological validity Zimbardo made sure that everything that would normally happen to a prisoner, starting from being arrested in their own home to being stripped naked and having all the personal belongings taken away from them, happened.

Question 39

What were the results of Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment? (2)

Answer 39

Zimbardo discovered that even perfectly normal, stable people conform to new social roles. Guards immediately started to torment prisoners and behaved in a brutal, sadistic manner as they taunted them with insults and gave them petty orders. The prisoners too soon adopted prison-like behaviours where they became submissive to the guards so that they might stop being tormented by them.

The experiment was called off after six days due to participants experiencing high psychological harm: nervous breakdowns nervous rashes and hunger strikes

Question 40

What are 4 advantages of the SPE?

Answer 40

A strength of Philip Zimbardo’ research was that it could be generalised to the Abu Ghraib prison where the guards heavily abused their prisoners by physically assaulting them and humiliating them by taunting them with insults. The research proved that it was the social roles that were causing the violence in the prisons and their inexperience in the role.

No experimenter bias as the roles of the 24 participants were selected at random.

High ecological validity due to the experiment reflecting how presents were in real life scenarios.

Good control over variables
- every person had an equal chance of being a prisoner or a guard
- choosing mentally stable patients
Thus made the results easy to make conclusions from

Question 41

What are 2 disadvantages of the SPE?

Answer 41

1 The SPE LACKED RESEARCH SUPPORT. Furthermore the research that there was to support the SPE actually made it seem unreliable due to the results being completely different to the SPE:
Reicher and Haslam (2006) replicated the SPE and found that it was the prisoners who eventually took over control of the mock prison as they actively identified themselves as members of a social group and refused to accept the limits of the assigned role as prisoners (social identity theory) (THE SPE RESULTS DIDNT ACTUALLY REFLECT ANY OTHER PRISONS)

2 The SPE had many ethical issues:
Despite asking for the consent of each participant, Zimbardo’s study involved passive deception which involved not telling the participants everything involved (for example the house arrest).
Another ethical problem with the research is that the participants didn’t really have their RIGHT TO WITHDRAW from the experiment which was ultimately due to Zimbardo playing dual roles in the study: psychologist and superintendent. Zimbardo fell too deeply into his role of the superintendent and forgot he was actually a psychologist who needed to take care of the participants involved and let them be released when they asked. In fact, the study was only stopped due to Christina Maslach objecting to the experiment after she questioned its morality after she saw another ethical issue (PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM involving nervous breakdowns, rashes and hunger strikes) which provoked Zimbardo to terminate the study.

Question 42

What is obedience?

Answer 42

Obedience is a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order, usually from an authoritative figure, who has the power to punish individuals when obedient behaviour does not occur.

Question 43

Who studied obedience and when?

Answer 43

Milgram (1963)

Question 44

What did Milgrim want to identify/what was the aim of his study?

Answer 44

Milgram wanted to investigate the level of obedience participants would show when a figure of authority ordered them to administer electric shocks to another human being. Milgram did this to identify whether the dispositional explanation (that it was individuals own personalities or characteristics that caused certain behaviour) or situational explanation (that behaviour is caused from the situation a person was in) was more accurate when explaining why the Nazis slaughtered 6 million innocent people under Hitler’s reign. milgram’s hypothesis was that the situational explanation was accurate when explaining the actions of the Nazis.

Question 45

Describe Milgram’s procedure?

Answer 45

Milgram advertised for male participants studying at Yale university and selected 40 of them.
The participant was paired with a confederate (who they though was another participant) and they drew fixed lots to find out who would be the learner and teacher where the participant was always the teacher.
The confederate had electrodes attached to their arms and then the participant and experimenter went to a room next door that contained a pretend electric shock generator with a row of switches marked from 15V to 450V.
The learner had to remember pairs of words that the participant would read out. If they got one wrong or said nothing at all, the participant had to give them an electric shock and increase the voltage each time.
The confederate would shout that they could not stand the pain at 180V, at 300V - begged to be released and after 315V there was silence.
If the participants ever questioned the experiment or wanted to not take part any longer, the experimenter would encourage them with a sequence of prods:
1 please continue
2 the experiment requires that you continue
3 it is absolutely essential that you continue
4 you have no other choice, you must go on
If the teacher/participant still wanted to not continue with the experiment after prod for the experiment was terminated

Question 46

What were Milgram‘s findings? (3) And what did he do after the study? (1)

Answer 46

Predicted 2% would got to 450V and the 14 psychology students he asked prior to the study predicted 3% would go to 450V.

Results: ALL 40 WENT TO 300V AND 65% WENT TO 450!!!

Results: participants were very nervous - nervous laughter, sweating, trembled (some psychological harm perhaps) uncontrollable seizures from 3 participants which stopped the experiment

Debriefing at the end

Question 47

What was Milgram’s conclusion?

Answer 47

His conclusion was that normal ordinary people obey authority even if their actions may be detrimental to others.

Question 48

What are 3 strengths of Milgram’s research?

Answer 48

1 Good external validity (meaning that the research can be related to the real world) as it accurately showed the relationship between the authority figure (experimenter) and the participant. (Can perhaps be related to Hitler and the Nazis who committed atrocities under his reign).

2 There is research support to back up Milgram’s study - Hofling et al (1966) carried out an experiment where 21/22 nurses were willing to exceed the maximum dosage of an unknown drug due to a doctor named Dr Smith telling them to do so, even when they didn’t know if Dr Smith was a genuine doctor or not!

3 There is more research support to back up Milgram’s study - Le Jeu De La Mort (The Game of Death) (2010) where a replication of Milgram‘s study is included. The participants believed that they were contestants and a pilot show for a new game show called La Zone Xtreme. The participants were paid to give electric shocks when ordered by the presenter (a figure of authority) to other participants (confederates).
Results: 80% went up to the maximum of 460V (similar to Milgram) and all showed signs of nervousness through laughter, biting nails and anxiety.

This replication supports Milgram‘s original conclusions about obedience to authority, and demonstrates that his findings were not just a one-off chance occurrence.

Question 49

Describe Hofling’s study:

Answer 49

22 nurses working in various American hospitals received telephone calls from a confederate named Dr Smith, instructing them to give Mr Jones, a patient, 20 mg of a made up drug called Astrofen, despite the label on the box clearly stating that the maximum dose was 10 mg.

Dr Smith assured them that he would sign the drug authorisation form when he came to see the patient in 10 minutes time but the nurses must give him the drugs now.

Results: 21/22 nurses obeyed just because the information came from a supposed figure of authority. The nurses would be breaking the rules by giving a patient a drug before they receive a signed drug authorisation form. The nurses gave a higher dosage that was lethal to the patient too.

Conclusion: normal ordinary people will obey a figure of authority even if their actions are not moral or maybe detrimental to others.

Question 50

What is an advantage of Hofling’s study over Milgram’s?

Answer 50

Hofling’s study was more ecologically valid as it took place in actual hospitals and therefore could properly relate to real life situations.

Question 51

What is a disadvantage of Hofling’s study?

Answer 51

The study may be inaccurate. Rank and Jacobson (1977) replicated the experiment with a real drug called Valium and the nurses were told, by a known doctor, to give a patient three times the recommended level. The nurses were also able to discuss this with other nurses before proceeding which more accurately reflected a real-life hospital (even higher ecological validity) and discovered that only 2/18 nurses prepared the medication that had been requested.

Question 52

What are 2 disadvantages of Milgram’s study?

Answer 52

Lacks internal validity - Orne and Holland (1968) argued that the participants showed demand characteristics as they guessed that they were not electric shocks/didn’t believe in the set-up of the experiment - meaning that the study is not properly measuring what it intended to measure (not valid). Perry (2013) listened to tapes of Milgram’s study and confirmed that many of the participants expressed doubts on whether the shocks were real or not.

Ethical issues - Baumrind (1964) criticised the deception involved in the study where Milgram deceived the participants by telling them that the roles of teacher and learner were purely randomly allocated when they were actually rigged so that the participant was always the teacher.

Question 53

Describe three ethical issues with Milgram’s study and his defences to those issues:

Answer 53

1 Issue: Participants were not fully informed about the nature of the study (unable to get their written fully informed consent)
Defence: deception was necessary so that they weren’t aware of the true nature of the study (so that behaviour shown was accurate/no demand characteristics) and there was a debrief after the experiment had finished.

2 Issue: The participants could not withdraw from the experiment very easily (when they said they wanted to stop they were actively told to continue (prods))
Defence: withdrawal was not IMPOSSIBLE and 35% of the participants did actually withdraw before the study finished

3 Issue: there was a risk of long-term psychological harm as the participants were put in an extremely stressful situation which led them to believe that they had either seriously injured or maybe even killed another person
Defence: through thorough debrief and the participants were made aware that they had not actually harmed another individual. They were also told that their behaviour was very normal so that they would not be upset with their own responses to the study.

Question 54

Questionnaires were sent out after Milgram’s experiment? What were the results of this?

Answer 54

84% glad to have taken part
1.3% sorry to have taken part
74% learnt something of vital importance from the study

Question 55

What are the 3 situational variables that may affect levels of obedience?

Answer 55

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 56

Why is Proximity a situational variable?

Answer 56

Original - In an adjoining room so that the teacher could HEAR but NOT SEE the learner = obedience rate 65%

Proximity variation - SAME room = obedience rate dropped to 40%

Touch proximity condition - teacher had to physically force the learners hand onto the electroshock plate = obedience rate dropped to 30%

Remote instruction condition - experimenter (figure of authority) left the room and gave the teacher instructions via the telephone = obedience rate dropped to 20.5%

Question 57

Why is Location a situational variable?

Answer 57

The Location was of the study was changed from the prestigious Yale University, to a run-down building = obedience rate dropped to 47.5%

Question 58

Why is Uniform a situational variable?

Answer 58

In the baseline study, the figure of authority wore a uniform, a grey lab coat, as a symbol of their authority.
In the variation, Milgram made the experimenter get called out of the room due to an important phone call and was then replaced with someone wearing everyday clothes instead of the grey lab coat = obedience rate dropped to 20%

Question 59

What are 3 advantages of Milgram’s variations (where he proves that there are situational variables that affect levels of obedience)?

Answer 59

1 There is research that supports it which also demonstrates the influence of these situational variables on obedience. (Bickman on the power of uniforms)

2 Cross cultural replications - Milgram’s research and his variations have been replicated in developed in other countries too. Miranda (1981) found high obedience rates in Spanish students (90%) where proximity and location affected this initial result. This proves that Milgram’s research can be generalised to lots of other developed cultures for example females as well as men.

3 Milgram had high control over his variables - when investigated proximity and location, he kept everything the same other than that one variable to see what effect this would have on obedience (high in validity (accurately measured how these variations would affect obedience )). Furthermore Milgram did the test on situational variables on 1000 participants which means that his results can easily be repeated and are therefore very reliable.

Question 60

Describe Bickman’s study on uniforms and when?

Answer 60

In 1974, Bickman researched the power of uniforms and how they affected levels of obedience. Three male researchers gave orders to 153 randomly selected pedestrians in New York. One was dressed in a suit, one as a milkman and one in a guards uniform. They all gave orders to these pedestrians. Bickman found that the pedestrians obeyed the guard the most (80% obedience rate) compared to the milkman or civilian (40% obedience rate) which supports Milgram’s view that a uniform conveys high authority which is a situational factor that produces obedience.

Question 61

What are 2 weaknesses of Milgram’s variations (where he proves that there are situational variables that affect levels of obedience)?

Answer 61

Lack of internal validity - Orne and Holland suggested that participants had worked out that the procedure was a set-up and that they were just showing demand characteristics instead of real obedience towards a figure of authority. For example the uniform test where the experimenter in the grey lab coat left and the ‘supposed member of the public wearing casual clothes came in’ seemed to not fool many people as they admitted into recognising the aim of the study.

The obedience alibi - David Mandel (1998) disliked the use of the situational variables as he believed that it gave an excuse or ‘alibi’ for bad behaviour (Nazis can say that they only killed all those people because of Hitler wearing a uniform for example)