Resistance to social influence

• Social support- resistance refers to the ability of people to withstand the pressure to conform or obey. One way we can resist this is with the help of social support in the form of allies.
• Asch found that when given an ally who gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 5%,
• Milgram found that when disobedient confederates were with the ppt obedience dropped to 10%, however this does not consider dispositional factors such as the locus of control
• Locus of control- refers to a person's perception of control over their behaviour, it is measured on a continuum from internal to external. Someone who is an internal locus of control believes in their own ability, they are more likely to be a leader and not seek social approval- so more likely to resist social influence than externals.
• social support- resistance refers to the ability of people to withstand the pressure to conform or obey. One way we can resist is with the help of social support in the form of allies
• examples of social support- Asch found that when given an ally who gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 5%
• Social support- Milgram found when disobedient confederates were with the ppt obedience dropped to 10%
• Locus of control= refers to a person's perception of control over their behaviour, it is measured on a continuum from internal to external. Someone who has an internal locus of control believes in their own ability, they are more likely to be a leader and not seek social approval- so more likely to resist social influence than externals.
• Locus of control- Oliner and Oliner found non-jewish Germans who rescued Jewish people during through Nazi Germany had a high internal locus of control compared to those who did not rescue the Jewish people
• Rotter proposed the idea of locus of control, the extent to which people believe they have control of their own lives
• Research support for internal locus of control- oliner and oliner (1998) interviewed non-jewish survivors of WW2 and compared those who had resisted orders and protected jewish people from the Nazi's, in comparison to those who had not. Found that the rescuers who had resisted orders were more likely to have a high internal locus of control.
• milgram 1974 variation where the real participant was paired with two additional confederates, who also played the role of teachers and in this variation refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early, the percentage of pps who decided to go to the full 450 volts dropped from above 60% to 10%. This shows that if the real participant has support for their desire to disobey, then they are more likely to resist the pleasure of an authority figure
• asch- in one of the variations, one of the confederates was instructed to give the correct answer throughout. in this variation the rate of conformity dropped, this demonstrates if the real participant has support for their belief then they are likely to resist the pressure to conform.