Social Support

• Social support

  The perception of assistance and solidarity as available from others

  • The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others do the same
  • Seeing others disobey gives people comfort to do the same
• With conformity, the presence of others who dissent is a strong source of defiance because they provide moral support and free the participant to give the correct answer
• With obedience, disobedient peers act as a role model for the obedient peers. Such people demonstrate that disobedience is possible as well as how to do it.
• A03 - Supporting Evidence

  • Asch provides evidence for the social support explanation of conformity from his study with the dissenter.
  • The conformity was reduced from 32% to 5.5% which shows presence of social support can help resist conforming to the majority.
  • Asch also provided evidence that the timing of social support can affect conformity and showed that when a dissenter gave their incorrect answers later, the obedience drops only to 8.5% and this suggests that the earlier they receive social support, the sooner others will stop conforming and resist the influence
• A03- Research Support

  • Milgram - if two confederate teachers were paired with the real participant and disobeyed, the obedience rate drops from 65% to 10%. This supports the idea of disobedient models providing social support as a way of resisting social influence
• A03- Other factors

  • People of lower status in within a group, such as newcomers, are motivated to attain higher status by exhibiting conformist behaviour.
  • Suggests that conformity is likely to be resisted if individuals perceive themselves as of a higher status