Social influence

• Internalisation

  Deepest conformity, private and public beliefs permanently. ISI.

  
• Identification

  Middle conformity, public beliefs and temporary private beliefs. Happens around a group you identify with. NSI
• Compliance

  Lowest conformity, public but not private belief. NSI. Strangers
• Research support for NSI

  Asch's 1951 study
• Unanimity

  Asch added a confederate who would not agree with the other confederates some of the times. (Either gave the other wrong answer, or the correct answer.) Reduced conformity: 25%. Therefore the influence of a majority relies on unanimity
• Task difficulty

  Asch made the line judging harder, and conformity due to ISI increased.
• Why Asch' original research lacks temporal validity

  1950s America (McCarthyism) was a highly conformist time
• Bond and Smith 1996

  Asch's study, but with collectivist cultures. Conformity was much higher
• Zimbardo's findings

  The study had to be stopped after 6 days rather than the intended 14 because it escalated too dramatically. One prisoner had a psychological break down, one went on hunger strike. Three (including the one who had the breakdown) were released even earlier. The guards seemed to enjoy the psychological torture. They humiliated the prisoners and divided them. The prisoners became subsided, depressed, and anxious. Zimbardo also conformed.
• Zimbardo's conclusions

  Everyone conformed. Social roles can cause even normal people to become brutal
• Social roles

  The parts people play as members of various social groups, and the expected behaviour of a person in this role.
• Reason for Zimbardo's research

  He wanted to investigate the situational explanation behind why police were so brutal in American prisons
• Dispositional Factor


  To do with the person
• Situational Factor

  To do with the situation
• Situational variables to obedience

  proximity, location, uniform
• Location variable

  Done in a run down building rather than Yale. 47.5%
• Uniform variable

  The experimenter in a white coat went away and had an "ordinary member of the public" act as the experimenter. 20%
• Agentic state

  A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we are acting for an authority figure
• Agent

  Someone who acts under the order of an authority figure
• Autonomous state

  Believing in free will
• Agentic shift

  Moving from being in an autonomous state to an agentic state, usually due to the presence of an authority figure
• Social hierarchy

  Where some people have more power than others
• Destructive authority figure

  When an authority figure starts to order people to do things that are cruel and unjust
• Legitimacy of authority

  An explanation for obedience that suggests we are more likely to obey people who we see to have more power over us. It is justified by their position of power in social hierarchy
• Socio-psychological factors to obedience 


  agentic state, legitimacy of authority
• Binding factors

  Things that will keep a person in an agentic state despite the moral strain. (Gradual commitment, fear of increasing anxiety by disobeying, shifting responsibility)
• Authoritarian personality

  A type of personality that Adorno argues was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. They are submissive to those of higher status, and dismissive of inferiors
• Resistance to social influence

  The ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or obey an authority figure. Situational and dispositional explanations

  
• Minority influence

  A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs. Internalisation

  
• Consistency

  When minority groups keep the same ideas over a long time, and throughout the group. Makes it more effective because it draws attention to the idea.

  
• Synchronic consistency

  Consistency throughout the group
• Diachronic consistency

  Consistency over time
• Augmentation Principle

  When members of a majority will doing something extreme/ risky to draw attention to the group
• Flexibility

  Nemeth (1986) argued that consistency is not the only important factor. Also flexibility. Otherwise the group is rigid and that is off putting
• Snowball effect

  the process of change for a minority group. People start to join the minority group. The more people that join, the faster the rate of conversion.
• Process of social change

  Drawing attention, consistency, deeper processing, augmentation principle, snowball effect, social cryptomnesia
• Perrin and Spencer's engineering students

  1980 Asch variation in the UK with engineering students Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials
• Asch's variations

  1955 Group size, task difficulty, unanimity
• Evaluate Zimbardo's research

  Ethical issues: deception, psychological harm, right to withdraw. Realistic, the prisoner's conversations were 90% to do with prison life. Banuazizi and Mohavedi- the participants were play acting Ignores the role of dispositional factors (they were all volunteers) High internal validity, ruled our individual differences. Conflicting evidence, BBC prison study replication had different results.
• NSI

  Normative social influence. Conforming to be liked. Emotional - most likely to happen in situations where we fear rejection