Psych P1 - Social Influence

• Internalisation


  Deep conformity where a person genuinely has the groups values, resulting in a change in public and private behaviour.
• Identification


  Conforming to group behaviours because there is something about the group that is valued. This can result in a public change but not necessarily a private change
• Compliance


  Shallow conformity where an individual goes along with the group in the moment but would not behave this way otherwise.
• Informational Social Influence


  A cognitive process where an individual agrees with the majority based on the need to be right. Most likely to happen in a new situation.
• Normative Social Influence


  An emotional process governed by the need to be accepted by a group by conforming to the norms in order to be liked.
• Social roles


  Shared social expectations about how people in certain positions are supposed to behave, e.g.: parent, child, teacher, etc
• De-individuation


  Occurs when people lose awareness of their individuality and partake in deviant behaviour because they think that they will not be identified
• Obedience


  A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority
• Situational variables


  Features of an environment that affect an individual's behaviour
• Proximity


  Physical location/closeness of the authority
• Location


  Where the event takes place
• Uniform


  What the authority is wearing
• Agentic state


  A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure, i.e. as their agent.
• Legitimacy of authority


  We are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us based on their position in a hierarchy.
• Binding factors


  Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour
• Authoritarian personality


  A personality that is disposed to favour obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status, coined by Adorno.
• F-scale


  The questionnaire used by Adorno to measure authoritarian personality characteristics
• Resistance to social influence

  Refers to the ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority, influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.
• Social support


  The presence of others who also resist conforming to expectations, these people act as models.
• Locus of control


  A belief about the amount of control a person has over situations in their life. Internal - full control, external - no control
• Minority influence


  A small group of people change the beliefs of the majority
• Consistency


  The minority maintain the same beliefs
• Synchronic consistency


  People in the minority are all saying the same thing
• Diachronic consistency


  People in the minority have been saying the same thing for a long time
• Commitment


  Extreme dedication to the cause, such as making a personal sacrifice, this shows that the individuals are not acting out of self-interest
• Augmentation principle


  Greater weight is given to a particular behaviour because the belief and dedication is intense
• Flexibility


  Adapting a point of view to based on reasonable counterarguments.
• Deep processing


  Thinking and considering a new opinion more deeply than you otherwise would
• Snowball effect


  Rate of conversion slowly builds up and the minority view becomes majority view
• Social cryptoamnesia


  Where the majority forget the root cause of the social change, helping to maintain the change
• Conformity


  Adjusting one's behaviour or thinking to coincide with a group standard.