Resistance

• Locus of control : a personality spectrum proposed by rotter in 1966. It refers to the amount of control a person believes they have over their life and their actions
• Internal locus of control - people believe that they can control what happens to them so they base their decisions on their own beliefs so are more likely to be leaders and confident as well as resist social pressure
• External locus of control - people believe that external factors such as luck or fate determine what happens to them, so are more likely to be a follower
• strengths of LOC : research support - repeated Milgram's baseline study and found internals were less likely to continue to 450v
• weaknesses of LOC: contradictory research - over a 40 year period LOC studies show that people are getting more external but also more resistant, LOC only affects a person in a new situation - behaviourism, operant conditioning
• social support: observing someone else resist social influence. they act as a model and demonstrate independent behaviour making it easy to imitate as you feel you are part of a supportive network
• social support strengths: research support - fresh start USA for teen mums to stop smoking, those with a buddy resisted smoking
• social support weakness: depends on the role model - in an Asch like test people were less likely to follow the role model if they had perceived bad eyesight/ glasses ( 36% sided with the role model)