Resistance to social influence

    Cards (13)

    • What is resistance to social influence?
      • Disobedience
      • Ability to refuse to follow orders of even a legitimate authority
      • Non-conformity
      • Independence -> doing what you wish rather than moving with/against social norms
      • OR anti-conformity -> adopting behaviour/norms at odds with those of main social groups
    • What are the two explanations of resistance to social influence?
      • Social support
      • Locus of control
    • What is social support?
      We are more able to resist pressure of social influence if we have allies who also refuse to follow the crowd/authority figure
    • How does social support assist resistance to social influence?
      • Breaks unanimity of majority position
      • Allies act as role models
      • Lessens impact of group pressure
      • Reaffirms resistant individual's self confidence in their own judgement (Asch, 1956)`
    • What is locus of control?
      • Rotter (1966)
      • Extent to which people believe they are in control of + responsible for their own life rather than blaming external factors
      • Rotter's F scale (F standing for fascist) measures LOC to assess extent to which someone has a predominantly external or internal LOC
    • What is internal locus of control?
      • Feeling that you have control over your life + are responsible for your actions
      • People with ILOC = better at resisting social influence -> adhere to self-set standards
      • People with ILOC tend to be confident, intelligent + achievement-oriented
    • What is external locus of control?
      • Feeling that you have little control over your life + are not responsible for your actions
      • People with ELOC = less able to resist social influence since they believe that external factors will influence their outcome
      • People with ELOC tend to be insecure, lacking confidence + seek social approval
    • Social support A&E point 1: research evidence
      • Asch (1956) variation -> ppt provided with dissenting ally = conformity dropped from 31.8% to 5.5%
      • Allen + Levine (1971)-> presence of confederate resisting incorrect majority answer = ppt conformity decreased sharply
      • Even when this was invalid social support from someone with thick glasses + poor vision, undermining likelihood of their correctness
      • Milgram (1962) -> obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when ppt was in 3-person team in which 2 confederates refused to give higher shocks
    • Social support A&E point 2: research support = highly artificial experiments -> difficult to generalise beyond lab BUT, this is an unfair criticism
      • Gamson et al. (1982) -> controlled observation = 25/33 groups disobeyed order to consent to misleading + untrue video-recorded statement as part of a legal trial
      • Ppts unaware of study = no demand characteristics
      • Conformity to social groups' self-constructed identities = fundamental to ppts' ability to resist obedience
      • Presence of allies = vital in resisting social influence -> this external factor is key in enabling resistance
    • Social support A&E point 3: previous A&E point is too simplistic
      • Milgram (1962) -> 35% ppts refused to give maximum shock level
      • Asch (1956) -> 24% ppts resisted conformity in any critical trials
      • Disobedient + independent ppts in exact same situation as those who did conform/obey -> internal factors must be significant = social support cannot be a complete explanation for resistance to social influence
    • LOC A&E point 1: research support
      • Milgram + Elms (1974) -> disobedient ppts had more internal locus of control than obedient ppts = what we would expect to see if Rotter's explanation to resistance is correct
      • Oliner + Oliner (1988) -> real-life findings = non-Jewish Germans who lived through Holocaust
      • Those who disobeyed + ignored Hitler's orders by protecting Jews scored higher for internality + responsibility
      • Avtgis (1998) meta-analysis (large sample = more reliable) -> high correlation between internality/externality + extent to which people conformed
    • LOC A&E point 2: research support for LOC affecting obedience, but no agreement on LOC affecting conformity
      • Externals more likely to succumb to normative social influence
      • BUT, externals + internals' conformity is similar to informative social influence (Spector, 1983)
      • Don't overstate importance of locus of control when explaining resistance to all types of social influence!
    • LOC A&E point 3: Rotter himself acknowledged LOC not always most important factor in predicting resistance to social influence
      • Novelty of the scenario often ignored as factor affecting resistance -> familiar scenarios = continued behavioural patterns (usually a conformer = conform + vice versa) due to responding to environmental cues that trigger repeat behaviours
      • New scenarios = internality/externality has effect on behaviour = correlations between behaviour + LOC seen in studies
      • The situation in which someone is affects whether their LOC will lead them to resist or not