Resistance to social influence

• Locus of control refers to a persons perception of personal control over their own behaviours. It’s a personality explanation
• Internal locus of control = high level of personal control over their lives and behaviour, take personal responsibility for what happens in their life, less likely to rely on others, are more achievement orientated, they can resist pressures from others
• External locus of control = believe that life is determined by external/environmental factors such as luck, more likely to be influenced by others, and don’t believe they have personal control over their lives
• Example of social support as an explanation for resistance to social social influence = Asch found that the presence of another non-conforming confederate lowered overall conformity on the lines task
• Example of social support as an explanation for resistance to social influence = Milgram found that obedience levels dropped from 65% to 10%, when the teacher was joined by another disobedient Confederate
• Social support = One reason people can resist the pressures to conform or obey is, if they have someone supporting their point of view, this build confidence and allows the individual to remain independent
• Holland (1967) found that 37% of people with an internal locus of control didn’t go to the highest shock in his replica of Milgram study, however only 23% of externals did continue. The internals showed greater resistance to authority in a milligram type situation showing resistance is partially related to locus of control.
• Twenge et al (2004) refuse, the explanation that locus of control may affect how resistance someone is to social influence he analyse data from American locus of control studies over a 40 year time period the data showed that over the time span people became more resistance to obedient, but also more external in their locus of control, if resistance was linked to an internal locus of control, we would expect people to have become more internal rather than external. This suggests that locus of control is not a valid explanation of how people resist social influence.