Social influence: Majority Influence Flashcards
(43 cards)
What do we mean by social influence?
- Other people make deliberate attempts to persuade us (eg. others persuading us to buy something)
- We are also induced into obeying authorities (political authorities, religious authorities) so here we are referring to obedience.
- But we are susceptible to social influence even when others are not necessarily trying to influence us.
Social influence definitions:
- majority influence
- minority influence
Majority influence (conformity)
“Social influence resulting from exposure to the opinions of a majority or the majority of one’s group”
(Can be behaviours as well as opinions)
Minority influence (innovation)
“Situation in which either an individual or a group in a numerical minority can influence the majority”
What are the classical studies on majority influence?
- Sherif’s autokinetic effect
- Asch: classical paradigm and findings
Solomon Asch
The “Asch” experiments
Often referred to as his studies of “conformity”
Muzafer Sherif
- what is Asch’s work?
- what was Asch’s work stimulated by?
- Asch’s work central and influential
- Asch’s work stimulated by the work of Sherif on social norm formation and transmission
What are social norms? (+ examples)
“belief systems about how (not) to behave, that
guide behaviour, but without the force of laws, and reflect group members’ shared expectations about typical or desirable activities”
examples of social norms:
- gender norms
- lifestyle norms
- dress styles
- how we relate to others
Muzafer Sherif (1936)
- what did Sherif believe
- what is the autokinetic effect?
- what happens when people are asked to estimate how much this light moves?
Sherif believes that it is when we are unsure about how to behave that we observe social norms around us. To test this idea he created a visual task for pp’s based on autokinetic effect.
autokinetic effect= when you show someone a fixed point of light in a completely dark room, it appears to move as people open and close their eyes but in reality it is not moving.
When people are asked to estimate how much this light moves, they find this task very difficult and they feel uncertain about their essence.
Muzafer Sherif (1936) study
Sherif used autokinetic effect (ambiguous stimuli) and asked groups of US male participants to determine how much the point of light had moved. He was interested to see whether pp’s will converge towards a group norm in their estimates given the ambiguous nature of the task.
The point of light never moved
Sherif (1936) autokinetic effect
Procedure, results and conclusion
- the experimental context used the autokinetic phenomenon
- there were 2 conditions
- in each condition, pp’s went through 4 sessions to judge how much the light had moved
In condition (a):
Individuals 1, 2 and 3 started alone and settled on a personal norm.
Later in groups, they gradually converged on a group norm. (estimates changed from being widely different to slowly converging towards a common estimate)
in condition (b):
Individuals 4, 5 and 6 started in groups and converges on a group norm
Later when alone, they used their group norm, now internalised, as a personal guide (estimates when they are alone are similar to the group estimate - they have internalised the group norm)
Conclusion: Therefore sherif was showing that when we are confronted by an ambiguous physical reality, we tend to look to others around us to decide how to perceive our own reality rather than just simply relying on our own perception.
What were the takeaway points from:
1- Sherif (1936)
2- Asch (1951, 1955, 1956)
1- Sherif (1936): influence of others on our behaviour when faced with ambiguous stimuli.
2- Asch (1951, 1955, 1956): influence of others on our behaviour when faced with unambiguous stimuli.
What do Asch’s experiments consist of?
The Lines
- Asch recruits pp’s for a visual task
- His pp’s are male, white, American, college students
- The visual task includes seeing a task with a reference line on the left and three lines of differing lengths on the right
- The reference line always matches with one of the lines on the right (in this case C)
- Pp’s have to pick between a, b and c to determine which line on the right matches with the reference line
- This is an unambiguous, straight forward task
- Through a multiple of tasks, the reference line will change
- When pp’s are tested on their own, they commit almost 0 errors
- In reality, what Asch is interested in is how pp’s will react to the task when they are at least with the majority of pp’s in the same room who give incorrect responses to this straightforward task.
Explain Asch paradigm
- Series of experiments
- Basic experiment
- pp’s do the experiment in the presence of other pp’s like them who are in fact confederates (recruited by experimetner)
- 18 trials
- Pp’s take turns in saying what the correct answer is out loud in front of the experimenter, one by one.
- Differing number of confederates (e.g., 9)
- Naïve participant last but one to call out
- Correct responses is given by confederates on 6/18 trials (1/3rd of trials)
- Confederates made errors on 12/18 trials (2/3rds of trials), starting trial 3
- Unanimous majority
Basic findings (Asch 1951; 1956; see also Asch, 1955)
CONFORMITY
- 37% of responses were incorrect.
- 75% of participants made at least one error (compared to almost 0% when doing task alone)- so the majority of pp’s conformed to the majority at least once
- 5% of participants yielded all the time (conformed to majority all the time)
So Asch’s experiment is taken as evidence for how conformist people can actually be.
Basic findings (Asch 1951; 1956; see also Asch, 1955)
INDEPENDENCE
- 63% of responses were correct.
- 95% of participants gave correct responses at least once. (meaning at least all pp’s resisted majority pressure at least once
- 25% of participants never yielded.
- 65% of participants gave correct answers most or all of the time.
Asch’s take on his results
“Despite this large effect, the preponderance of judgments was independent, evidence that under the present conditions the force of the perceived data far exceeded that of the majority. (Asch, 1956, p.
10).”
Ones perception was more important/ stronger than the force and pressure of the majority
When do we conform?
- Group size
- Unanimity
- Culture
Group size
Does conformity increase the larger the size of the majority?
Inconsistent: leveling off (e.g. majority of 3 in Asch, 1951) vs linear increase (Gerard et al., 1968) (see meta-analysis by Bond, 2005, suggesting inconclusive findings!)
Bond found that it depends on several factors and the results are inconclusive
Effect of increasing majority size on conformity to majority (Asch, 1955)
In Aschs’ experiments he finds that conformity does increase the larger the group but only up until a certain point
When one person gives an incorrect answer there is very little conformity
When two people give an incorrect answer conformity increases a little bit but is still quite low
When 3 people give incorrect answers, there is a remarkable increase in conformity but then it levels off as the group size increases.
How can we think of unanimity?
Can think of it as a simulation of how likely we are to be leaders and to speak up if we disagree with people around us.
Effect of breaking consensus on conformity to majority
Asch varied whether the naive pp is confronted with a group that shows absolute unity (meaning everyone else is giving the incorrect answer) or whether the pp is faced with a majority that answer incorrectly but there is some dissent among those people.
- In one condition, pp’s hear the majority say incorrect answers alongside another naive pp who gave the correct answers. So this is the 2 true pp’s conditions.
- In a third condition, pp’s saw the majority give incorrect answers along with a confederate who also gave correct answers.
- In both of these conditions, you are seeing dissent happening- even though the majority are saying incorrect answers, there are still some people who are dissenting.
- You see a dramatic drop in rates of conformity. We see that unanimity is a very important factor in whether people actually conformity to the majority or not.
- (therefore when one person decides to dissent against the majority, it makes it a lot easier for others to dissent too)
What is another variation of Aschs’ experiment:
He tried to test whether dissent of any kind helps decrease conformity. A confederate gave incorrect answers that were different to those of the majority
Conformity actually drops- this tells us that one type of disagreement with the majority can encourage other types of disagreement as well. Again showing the importance of dissent.
Unanimity- what decreases conformity?
Variation where confederate gives a deviate but wrong answer decreases conformity. Dissent in Asch’s paradigm, regardless of accuracy, decreases conformity
Culture- what did Bond and Smith (1996) find in relation to conformity?
Bond and Smith (1996) found that the effect is replicated across various cultures but the degree of conformity differs depending on some cultural characteristics. (Effect replicated across various cultures but conformity degrees vary)
They found
- Collectivistic cultures show greater conformity
133 Asch Replications (Adapted from: Bond & Smith, 1996)
1- what was conformity like in western cultures?
2- where did the studies come from - limitation?
3- what is there more emphasis on in individualistic cultures?
4- what is there in collectivist cultures?
1- Western cultures like North America, the UK, Western European countries- there is a lower degree of conformity compared to the countries that were non-Western. These included countries like the, Japan, Ghana, Kuwait, Lebanon and some other countries.
2- From the 133 studies found, the vast majority around 100 actually came from the US and 10 came from the UK. So very few actually came from non-western countries (so more cross-cultural research is needed)
3- In individualistic countries, there is more emphasis on being independent and being separate from others.
4- Whilst in collectivistic countries there is greater emphasis on maintaining social harmony.
