Social Influence

• Social influence is a the effect other people have on our opinions or behaviour
• Conformity is the change in our behaviour or opinions to fit in with the social norms of society or as a result of perceived group pressure.
• Deutsch and Gerrard (1955) say there are two reasons as to why people conform, normative and informational social influence
• Informational social influence is changing our behaviour or opinions because we think other people have superior knowledge to us.
• Normative social influence is when we change our behaviour or opinions because we want to fit in and be accepted by others.
• Social factors affecting conformity are group size, task difficulty and anonymity
• Dispositional factors affecting conformity are personality and expertise
• The study used to test for conformity was Asch
• Asch's conformity study was in 1956
• Asch used the Line Game to test for conformity
• The aim of Asch's study was to investigate if people would conform to the opinions of others to give an answer they knew to be wrong.
• Asch used a laboratory experiment with standardised procedures
• Groups of 7-9 people were shown sets of 4 lines, 1 control line and 3 other comparison lines. They were asked to state out loud which comparison line was the same length as the standard line. The correct answer was always clear - the task was not ambiguous. There was only 1 real (naive) participant in each group
• The other members of the group were confederates. Confederates were people who were told to act a certain way on behalf of the researcher. They were asked to give the incorrect response for 12 out of the 18 sets of lines.
• Participants conformed to give the incorrect answer of the group 36.8% of the time. 76% conformed to the incorrect majority at least once. 24% of the participants resisted the pressure to conform
• The results showed that people conform to fit in with a group, even when they know they are giving an incorrect judgement
• Asch used 123 American male college students to participate
• Obedience is when people follow the orders of an authority figure
• During the Second World War, Nazi soldiers followed orders that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish people in concentration camps. Even though they knew it would be costly for the lives of so many people, they still obeyed.
• Milgram's Agency Theory of obedience is a social explanation of obedience
• The Agency theory is the idea that a person will obey an authority figure knowing the authority figure will take responsibility for whatever they do.
• Milgram's Agency Theory (1963) suggest we are more likely to obey orders when we enter an agentic state.
• An agentic state is when we believe that we are acting on behalf of an authority figure - we no longer feel accountable for our own actions
• Milgram called the move from the autonomous state to an agentic state the agentic shift
• Social factors affecting obedience is culture, authority and proximity
• Authority is when a person is perceived to have the right to give orders
• Culture is a group of people who share similar customs, belief and behaviour
• Proximity is how close or near something is to us.
• The dispositional factor for obedience is the authoritarian personality
• Adorno made the theory of the authoritarian personality
• In 1950, Adorno argued that some people form personalities that make them more obedient than other people, de to their early childhood experiences.
• People with an authoritarian personality are likely to be obedient because they were raised by strict parents who used punishment as a way of controlling their children's behaviour.
• Characteristics of people who have the authoritarian personality is that:

  • They have only black and white views - no opinions in the grey area
  • Only receiving conditional love
  • Highly critical of others
  • Against people who violate conventional values
  • They love when they are the authority figure
  • Immediately obeying and very submissive
• Adorno developed the F scale questionnaire to measure peoples' attitudes and behaviour
• Milgram's electric shock study tested for obedience