Resistance to social factors

• What is the first explanation of resistance to social factors?

  • Independent behaviour
  • Sometimes people do not obey/conform and are able to resist social influence
• What is the second explanation for resistance to conformity?

  • Dissenters are people that disagree
  • Makes unanimous groups weaker as they feel there is another option.
  • People feel more confident in dissenting and rejecting the majority.
  • Evidence for dissenters making it easier for other people to resist comes from Asch’s variation where there is a single dissenter, dropping to 5%. 
  • Group dissent does not need to be supportive and can affect resistance as long as it is a different option
• What is another explanation for resisting conformity?

  • Group size
  • Large group will have a bigger likelihood of conformity than a small group. 
  • Evidence comes from Asch’s study where his normal study uses 6 confederates
  • The variation only uses 2 confederates resulting in a more than half drop to 12.8%.
• What is an explanation for resisting obedience for Milgram?

  • People are able to resist obeying if there is a disobedient ally.
  • This may give another person confidence that they can refuse an order (a command from a higher person in the hierarchy)
  • There are different options, so p’s do not feel that they need to obey. 
  • Evidence from Milgram’s study where he uses 2 disobedient confederates
  • This shows a sharp decrease than all of his variations - 10%
• What is another explanation regarding legitimate authority?

  • From a young age, we are taught that we need to obey people with specific authorities like police and they have the right to exert power over us. 
  • Evidence comes from the legitimate authority variations like changing what sort of clothing we wear (65 to 20%)
  • And the location type from Yale to a seedy office (65-48%)
• What is an explanation for resistance to obedience regarding distress?

  • Disobeying due to distress they thought that the confederate was in.
  • A Jewish women said that she had seen too much pain during Nazi Germany and did not wish to inflict that pain onto others. 
  • One piece of evidence is from Milgram’s variations where the teacher and the learner are in the same room.
  • The teacher now visibly sees the learner and what harm it brings to them so there is a visible reduction - 40%.
• What shows individual differences in independent behaviour?(dispositional factors)

  Locus of control
• What is the locus of control?

  • The locus of control is a person’s perception of personal control that they have over their own behaviour.
  • It is measured along a scale of internal to external feeling.
• What do internals believe?

  • They have a great deal of personal control and they are likely to take responsibility for their behaviour.
  • This is associated with healthy mental health and healthy behaviour.
  • These people are also risk takers
  • They are unlikely to conform or obey
• What do externals believe?

  • Externals believe the opposite of internals such as believing in fate, things are outside of their control.
  • Therefore, they do not take much responsibility and blame it on fate or other external factors.
  • They are very much likely to conform and obey.
• How does locus of control affect independent behaviour?

  • People with internal LOC seek out information and rely less on opinion of others
  • Internals become leaders as they believe that they can take responsibility and enact decisions that change their circumstances
  • Internals are much more likely to be achievement oriented and thus be entrepreneurs or leaders. 
  • Internals are less anxious as they do not feel hopeless
  • People are much more optimistic and have a certain confidence along with no need for external approval
• What is evidence for locus of control regarding obedience?

  • Elms and Milgram (1974) looked at the disobedient p’s from Milgram’s experiment and were interviewed.
  • They were generally found to have an internal locus of control and scored highly on a social responsibility scale.
  • Those with an internal LoC can resist social influence.
• What is evidence for locus of control regarding conformity?

  • Burger and Cooper conducted a study similar to Asch but for conformity and locus of control.
  • 3 confederates and one participant rated how funny a cartoon was on a scale out of 100, the participant always answered last.
  • It was found that people with more internal locus of control conformed less by not rating less in the same way as the confederates.
• What is a general A03 point for resistance in social influence regarding independent behaviour?

  • There is contradicting evidence between locus of control and resisting social influence.
  • Twenge et al meta analysis found Americans increasingly found a lack of belief in personal control
  • In the studies, LoC had indicated that there were increasing numbers of people with external between 1960 and 2002, people had become more resistant to obedience and conformity
  • If these two were linked, people should be internal
  • This is could be due to society changing where many things are out of control for us
  • Therefore, it could be that it lacks temporal validity