Resistance to social influence

• one weakness for social support as an explanation for resistance to social influence…

  • has alternative explanations
  • rotter argued dispositional factors such as locus of control may be a more influencing factor than situational factors
  • situational factors alone may be too simplistic and dispositional factors also need to be considered
• one weakness of social support as an explanation for resistance to social influence…

  • supporting evidence from asch and milgram suffers from low external validity
  • lab experiments do not represent real life situations therefore lack egological validity, also androcentric, individualistic sample is unrepresentative
  • difficult to generalise due to lack of external validity meaning causal relationships cannot be applied else where
• one strength of social support as an explanation for resistance to social influence…

  • provides practical application for forms of protest
  • people are more likely to defy the majority and argue their rights if they have others who share similar views and are willing to do the same (suffregets)
  • provides applications for society as suggests in order to stand up against majority there must be more than one person with the same views willing to do so
• one strength of locus of control as an explanation for resistance to social influence…

  • research to support
  • Spector found significant correlation between locus of control and predisposition to social influence with externals being more likely to conform to social influence than internals
  • increases internal validity of claim and validates causal relationship meaning it can be generalised to other situations
  • no correlation was found between locus of control and informational social influence suggesting effect of locus of control is limited
• one weakness of locus of control as an explanation for resistance to social influence…

  • alternative explanations
  • Asch would argue situational factors such as social support are more influential than dispositional factors
  • dispositional factors such as locus of control are too simplistic alone and situational factors must also be considered