Social influence

• Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. This is a response to a real or imagined pressure
• There are 3 types of conformity:

  1. compliance
  2. identification
  3. internalisation
• Compliance ‘going along with others’ in public but internally and privately not changing your personal opinions. This is only a superficial change and stops when the pressure stops
• Identification is to want to be perceived as belonging. A person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs but only while they are in the presence of others. this is usually a short term change and normally the result of normative social influence
• Internalisation refers to when a person genuinely accepts the group norms both in public and in private
• Deutsch and Gerard developed a 2 process theory which aimed to explain why people conform. They argued there are 2 reasons why:

  • informational social influence
  • normative social influence
• Informative social influence argues that you conform because you want to be RIGHT. You conform with the majority because you assume they are right
• Normative social influence argues that you conform because you want to be LIKED. Fitting in to social norm
• Asch’s line stud:

  participants were shown two cards with a standard line and comparison lines. only one of the people was a participant the others were all confederates who would purposely say the wrong answer to see if the participant would conform. Naive participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time. 25% didn’t conform, 75% did to avoid social rejection
• There 3 variations of Asch’s stud:

  • unanimity
  • group size
  • task difficulty
• Limitations of asch’s study:

  • child of its time (1950's was a conformist time, its proven not to have consistent results over time)
  • artificial
  • limited application because of participants
  • only applied to certain situations
  • ethical issues
• Ethical issues of aschs study

  the participants were deceived because they did not know the aims of the study or the fact that the other people were confederates. Participants should leave as entered, unharmed, can argue it was necessary
• Alpha bias- exaggerating difference between men and women
• Beta bias- ignoring difference between men and women
• 2 explanations of resistance to social influence:

  • social support - the presence of people helps others resist pressure
  • locus of control - dispositional factor, internal is more likely to resist, external conforms
• internals believe that they are responsible for what happens to them and that they direct their own lies
• externals believe outside forces direct their lives and they do not have control
• the stages of minoruty influence (SOCIAL CHANGE):

  • draw attention to their beliefs
  • consistency, commitment adn flexibility shown
  • deeper processing of the issue in the majority group
  • augemntation principle
  • the snowball effect
  • social cryptomnesia
• 3 key ideas for minorities to create change:

  • consistency
  • commitment
  • flexibility
• social cryptomnesia - takes place after snowball effect, people cant remember how social changes came about
• agentic state is when individuals obey an order even if they are aware it is morally wrong because they dont feel responsible as they are acting on behalf of someone else.
• what keeps somebody in the agentic state?

  • guild or anxiety about leaving
  • not wanting to seem rude
  • unwillingness to break commitment
  • shifting responsibility to victim
  • denying the impact of their actions
• 3 situational variable of milgrams study:

  • setting
  • clothes
  • proximity
• limitations of the F scale:

  • has aqcuiescence bias
  • politically biased
• the f scale measure authoritarian personality
• 3 features of the authoritarian personality:

  • submissive to superiors
  • dismissive of inferiors
  • highly prejudiced
• legitimacy of authority is an explantion for obedience which suggests we are more likely to obey people we perceive to have authority over us due to the position of power they hold in the social hierarchhy
• agentic shift is when somebody shifts from automony ( being independent ) to acting as an agent
• agentic shift support:

  • RESEARCH SUPPORT blass and schmitt showed a film of milgram's study to students and the students identified the experimenter as the person responsible for harm rather than the learner. they recognused the legitimate authority
• agentic shift limit:

  • LIMITED EXPLANATION agentic shift is not a complete theory, it doesnt explain why participants did not obey
• limit of social psychological factors:

  • OBEDIENCE ALIBI REVISITED. german police battalion shot civilians in a small polish town despite not being ordered to, they did this of their own volition so it challenges agentic state
• support for social psychological factors:

  • REAL LIFE CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE mai lai massacre, war crimes they massacred a vilage of women and children beacue they were ordered to
• support for social change:

  • RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR NORMATIVE INFLUENCES nolan et al hung messages on the door of houses in san diego once a week, participants of group 1 were given the message that most other residents were reducing their energy, group 2 were just ask to reduce usage- there was a significant decrease in energy useagesz in group 1. this shows conformity can lead to social chnage through NSI