social Influence

• Compliance= weakest form, public behaviour changes bur personal beliefs remain the same
• Identification= moderate form of conformity, act the same as the group as we share some of the values and ant to be accepted - temporary
• Internalisation= de--est form of conformity, persons public and personal beliefs change as they have accepted the views of the group
• Explanations of Conformity

  Normative Social Influence= gain social approval/be liked, lead to compliance

  😃 research support - Asch key study

  😔individual differences

  Informative Social Influence= belief their views and actions to be correct, lead to internalisation
• Asch key study

  • see the extent of people conform to the opinions of others even if clearly wrong (normative social influence)
  • 50 male participants were tested with a group of confederates
  • genuine participant always seated at the end/last
  • everyone had to say aloud which line matched with x
  • real participants conformed on 32% incorrect answers
  • 74% participants conformed at least one in a critical trial and 26% of the participants never.conformed

  Suggest that people will conform to the majority view even if clearly wrong
• variables that Asch investigates to increase/decrease conformity

  Group size= with 3 confederates conformity rose to 31%

  Unanimity= presence of non-conforming person effect the participant, reduced conformity to 25%

  Task difficulty= increase difficulty, conformity increased
• Eval of Asch key study

  😔 limited generalisability- all men

  😔 situation was artificial, low ecological validity
• Conformity to social roles= when an individual adopts a particular behaviour/belief when in a social setting
• Zimbado- social roles

  • 24 male volunteers from newspaper article
  • paid
  • participants were arrested strip-searched and given a number by real 'police'
  • guards were instructed to run the prison free from physical harm for 2 weeks
  • both prisoners and prisoners quickly identified into their social roles
  • guards dehumanised the prisoners by e.g. cleaning toilets with bare hands
  • terminated after 6 days
• Eval of zimbado

  😃real world applications to us prison system, how prisoners are treated in e.g. juvie

  😔ethical issues
• processes to explain social change

  consistency

  deeper processing

  drawing attention

  argumentation principle

  snowball effect

  social cryptonesisia

  nsi

  gradual commitment
• eval of social change

  😔minority influence can often act as a barrier to social change

  😔 methodological issues, links drawn between social influence processes and social change