Psychology Paper 1

• Social Cryptomnesia = People have an idea that change occurred but don’t know how it started
• Solomon Asch (1951) wanted to devise a procedure that would see the extent to which people would conform to others opinions, even when the answer seems obvious.
• Asch's baseline study is a study because it is later compared to other studies.
• Asch extended his baseline study by investigating different variables that lead to an increase or decrease in conformity.
• Group size is a variable investigated by Asch, to test if group size would affect conformity, he increased the number of confederates by 1 to 15 (total group size from 2 to 16).
• Asch discovered a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity, conformity increased as group size increased, only up to a certain point however.
• Unanimity is another variable investigated by Asch, where a non-confederate, and the person would actually give the correct answer.
• Task difficulty is another variable investigated by Asch, where he made the stimulus line and comparison lines much more similar, making the participant genuinely think.
• Asch was right in suggesting task difficulty is correct in rates of conformity.
• Asch's study has limitations such as artificial situation and task, androcentric bias, and lack of generalisability to other genders and cultures.
• Internalisation is a type of conformity when a person genuinely accepts the groups norms, resulting in public/private change in behaviour and opinions.
• Identification is a type of conformity where we conform to group ideas because there is something we value, publicly changing our opinions and behaviour to be accepted by the group, even if we don’t agree with everything the group believes.
• Compliance is a type of conformity where we conform in public, but not privately changing opinions/behaviour, a particular behaviour or opinion stops as soon as group pressure stops.
• Informational Social Influence (ISI) is an explanation for conformity, where the question is who has the better information - you or the group, sometimes, we may not know the answer to a question, and the rest of the class give an answer, therefore, you accept that the class must be right, we follow the behaviour of the majority because we want to be right, it is a cognitive process, it is what we think, and it leads to a permanent change in opinion and behaviour (internalisation).
• There was a strong correlation between Authoritarianism and prejudice.
• Those who scored high in the F-Scale identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak.
• This may lead to internalisation - public and private change.
• Consistency in minority influence is crucial, as the beliefs must remain the same, and overtime attract more people to believe the idea.
• In Milgram’s study, when a participant disobeyed, obedience levels dropped from 65% to 10% when the genuine participant was joined by a disobedient confederate.
• Another explanation is that people with a high internal LOC tend to be more self confident and have high intelligence.
• Rutter (1966) proposed Locus of Control (LOC) as a concept of external vs internal.
• Minority influence refers to when one person all small group influences the beliefs of others.
• Adorno’s study aimed to investigate the roots of prejudice, particularly anti-semitism.
• People with internal results are more likely to resist conformity to obey.
• These traits lead to a higher level of resistance to social influence.
• Flexibility in minority influence is when the minority must come to terms with the majority to accept reasonable and valid counterarguments.
• Social change can be achieved through drawing attention, consistency, deeper processing, augmentation principle, and snowball effect.
• The disobedient role model acts as a model of dissent and frees the participant to act in their own conscience.
• Adorno also saw that Authoritarian Personality had a certain cognitive style and they had fixed stereotypes.
• Commitment in minority influence is when they must show determination to their cause, sometimes doing extreme things to get the attention of others.
• Adorno’s study used several measurement scales like the potential-for-fascism scale to measure Authoritarian Personality (AP).
• One strength of Milgram’s study is that it supports Authoritarian Personality.
• Synchronic consistency in minority influence is when they're all saying the same thing.
• Diachronic consistency in minority influence is when they've been saying the same thing for a long time.
• The behaviour in Zimbardo’s study became increasingly aggressive and brutal.
• Another prisoner in Zimbardo’s study went on a hunger strike.
• As a result of the harsh treatment, the prisoners in Zimbardo’s study rebelled after 2 days.
• Zimbardo’s study created a de-individualisation, meaning they were more likely to conform to their social roles.
• Guards in Zimbardo’s study were dressed in orange jumpsuit, a bat/club and handcuffs.
• Agentic shift is the transition from an autonomous state to an agentic state, usually happening when a person perceives someone else as the authority figure.