Social Influences Flashcards
Conformity: What was Asch’s baseline procedure and findings ?
- 123 white male participants
-Groups of 6-8 with only 1 naive participant
-Asked to match their line to one of the same length out of 3 on a separate sheet of paper
-All or all but one confederates go first giving the wrong answer
-36.8% conformed
-25% did not confirm once
Conformity: What were Asch’s variations findings and conclusions?
-Group size: varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15
-Conformity increased with group size up to 3 confederates (31.8%) then levelled off
People are sensitive to others opinions (1 or two others was enough to significantly sway opinions)
-Unanimity: introduced a disender to give a different (sometimes also wrong) answer
-Conformity decreased to less than a quarter of what it had been even when the dissender and pp disagreed
-Majority influence depends on unanimity
-Task difficulty: made the lines more similar in size
-Conformity increases
-People will conform because they want to be right (ISI)
Conformity: Evaluate asch’s research
-Artificial stimuli
>can’t be generalised
-All american men
> can’t be generalised
+Research support
> lukas et al did the same thing with maths problems
CA: conformity may be more complex than Asch thought.
> more confident people conformed less
-Ethical issues
> PP were technically deceived
What are the three types of conformity?
- Internalisation: when a person accepts a group of people’s ideals and behaviours as there own resulting in a private change of belief and public change of behaviour
- Identification: conforming to a group because you value them in some way. This may result in a public change of behaviour and opinions but not private
- Compliance: ‘going along with it’ publicly but not privately. The compliance stops as soon as the perceived pressure is gone.
Explanations of conformity: What is Normative social influence?
Conforming to gain social approval (need to be liked)
Explanations of conformity: What is Informational social influence?
Conforming because you don’t want to be wrong (need to be right)
Evaluate the explanations of conformity
+Research support (NSI)
> Asch’s research
+Research support (ISI)
> Lukas
CA: results could have been because of ISI or NSI so differentiating doesn’t matter
-Doest account for conformity in every case
>nAffiliators (McGhee and Teevan: nAffiliators are more likely to conform)
Social roles: What was Stanford’s prison experiment?
- 21 emotionally stable male american volunteers
- Randomly assigned prisoner or guard
Prisoner: uniforms (loose smock, cap) and identified by a number (causing deindividualization), had to ‘apply for parol’ to withdraw
Guards: uniform (wooden clubs, mirror shades, handcuffs)
Social roles: What were the findings of the Stanford prison experiment?
- After 2 days, the prisoners rebelled. - Guards responded using fire extinguishers
- Guards harassed prisoners to remind them of their powerlessness
- Prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious
- One prisoner was released after 2 days because of psychological disturbance
- The experiment ended after 6 days instead of the originally planned 14
Social roles: Evaluate stanford prison experiment
+It was well controlled
> internal validity
-Demand characteristics
> prisoners knew it was fake and may have acted as ‘stereotypes
CA: they acted as if it was real
-Power of social influence may have been exaggerated
> only ⅓ of the guards acted in a brutal manner
Obedience: What was Milgram’s baseline procedure and findings?
- 40 American male volunteers
- Partnered with a confederate
- Drew fixed lots to see who would be teacher (T) and learner (L) (real participants were always T)
- They asked the confederates questions and everytime they got one wrong they had to shock the L with an increasing amount of voltage starting at 15v up to 450
- 12.5% (5) of participants stopped at 300v. 65% went all the way to 450v
- Showed signs of anxiety stress and even seizures
Obedience: Evaluate Milgram’s research
+Findings were replicated by a french documentary about reality TV
-Demand characteristics
> perry conforms only about ½ of the participants believed the shocks were genuine
CA: Sheridan and King conducted a similar study using a puppy. 54% of men and 100% of women gave what they thought was a fatal shock
-Milgram may be wrong about ‘blind obedience’
>participants obeyed when given verbal cues where they could identify with the aims (SIT) but not when told to blindly obey
-Ethical issues
> participants were technically deceived but were also debriefed.
Obedience: What were Milgram’s situational variables, findings, and conclusions?
- Proximity: touch: participants had to move the confederated hand onto the shock plate if they disobeyed
- Obedience dropped to 30%
- Sight: participants could see the confederate being shocked
- Obedience dropped to 40%
Remote instruction: experimenter wasn’t in the room and gave instructions over a speaker
- Obedience dropped to 20.5%
- Decreased proximity allows psychological distancing from the consequences of our actions
- Location: experiment was conducted in a rundown office building instead of yale uni labs
- Obedience dropped to 47.5%
- The experiment had lower legitimacy of authority
- Uniform: the experimenter was replaced by a ‘regular member of the public’
- Obedience dropped to 20% (lowest it ever got)
- Uniform is a widely accepted symbol of authority
Obedience: Evaluate Milgram’s situational variables
+Research support
> Bickman had 3 confederates dresses as a milkman, business man, and security guard ask passers by to complete simple tasks like pick up litter
> Security guard was most obeyed
+Cross cultural replication
> replicated with dutch participants
CA: mostly replicated in countries with similar cultures and attitudes to authority to the USA
-Participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
> may have known it was fake (especially uniform)
Situational explanations: What is the agentic state
When a person doesn’t feel responsible for their actions because they feel they have no other choice. They may face moral strain but feel powerless to disobey.