Social Influence

• What do we call a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people?

  Conformity
• Who studied the extent people skull conform to the opinion of others, even when the answer is certain?

  Asch
• What was Asch procedure?

  123 American men were in a group with confederates, with each participant seeing two cards, one with line X on and one with 3 comparison lines on, one of the lines was clearly the same length but all the other participants deliberately gave the wrong answer
• What % of the time did the genuine participant agree in Asch?

  36.8%
• There were individual differences in Asch, what % of participants never gave a wrong answer?

  25%
• What were the three situational factors on conformity that Asch extended his baseline study to investigate?

  Group size, unanimity, and task difficulty
• How did Asch investigate group size?

  He varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15
• What did Asch find about the effect of group size on conformity?

  Curvilinear relationship - conformity increased with group size up to 3 confederates (31.8%) and begins to decrease after 7
• How did Asch measure unanimity?

  Introduced a dissenter who disagreed with the other confederates
• What did Asch find about the effect of unanimity on conformity?

  The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the unanimous level
• How did Asch measure the effect of task difficulty on conformity?

  Made the stimulus line and comparison lines closer
• What did Asch find about the effect of task difficulty on conformity?

  Conformity increased as there is a change from normative social influence to informational social influence
• What are the evaluations of Asch on conformity?

  • Weakness: Ecological validity as task was trivial
  • Weakness: Limited application as Asch’s participants were all American men, Neto - women are more conformist, Bond and Smith - conformity rates higher in collectivist cultures
  • Strength: Research support - Lucas et al found participants in a maths test conformed more when questions were harder
  • Weakness: Individual factors - Lucas et al found it was based on confidence
  • Weakness: Ethical issues in deception
• Who proposed the three types of conformity?

  Kelman
• What are the three types of conformity proposed by Kelman?

  Compliance, identification and internalisation
• What is it called when we go along with others in public but don’t change personal opinions or behaviour?

  Compliance
• What type of change is compliance?

  Superficial
• When does a particular behaviour/opinion stop in compliance?

  When group pressure stops
• What is when we publicly change our opinions to be accepted by a group we admire without privately agreeing with everything?

  Identification
• What is it called when we genuinely accept the group norms resulting in a private as well as public change of opinions/behaviour, which persists even in the absence of group members?

  Internalisation
• Who developed a two-process theory to explain conformity?

  Deutsch and Gerard
• What two types of social influence did Deutsch and Gerard propose?

  Informational and normative
• Why does ISI happen?

  Because people want to be right
• What does the cognitive process of ISI lead to?

  Internalisation
• When is ISI most common?

  In ambiguous, new or crisis situations
• Why does NSI happen?

  Because people want to follow social norms
• When does the emotional process of NSI occur most commonly?

  In situations where we may be concerned with rejection or stressful situations where we rely on social support
• What are the evaluations for types of conformity?

  • Strength: Research support for NSI: Asch’s participants felt afraid of disapproval and conformity fell to 12.5% when participants wrote their answers down
  • Strength: Research support for ISI: Lucas et al found participants conformed more when maths questions were hard
  • Weakness: Unclear which social influence: Asch’s dissenter could have provided social support or source of information
  • Weakness: Individual differences - McGhee and Teevan found people who are concerned with social relationships (nAffiliators) are more likely to conform
• Who investigated conformity to social roles?

  Zimbardo
• What was Zimbardo’s experiment called?

  The Stanford Prison experiment
• What was the procedure of the Stanford Prison experiment?

  Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University, selected 21 men who tested as ‘emotionally stable’ And were randomly assigned to roles of prisoner or guard
• What was the uniform used in the Stanford Prison experiment?

  Prisoners were given a loose smock and cap and guards were given a wooden club and mirror shades, these created a loss of personal identity (deindividuation)
• What were the behaviour instructions in the Stanford Prison experiment?


  Prisoners were arrested from their homes and could ‘apply for parole’ to leave, the guards were reminded of their complete power over the prisoners
• What were the findings of the Stanford Prison experiment?

  • Guards took roles up with enthusiasm and treated prisoners harshly
  • Prisoners rebelled within two days
  • Guards reminded prisoners of powerlessness with head counts
  • Prisoners became subdued and depressed
  • Guards became increasingly brutal
  • One prisoner left because of psychological disturbance
  • Study was ended after 6 days rather than 14
• What did Zimbardo conclude?

  Social roles have a strong influence on people‘s behaviour
• What are the evaluations of Zimbardo?

  • Strength: Control over key variables like picking ‘emotionally stable’ participants to rule out individual differences
  • Weakness: Lack of realism, Banuazizi and Movahedi thought they were play-acting based on stereotypes as one guard said he based his character on someone from Cool Hand Luke
  • Strength: McDermott claimed they weren’t play-acting, 90% of conversations were about prison-life
  • Weakness: Fromm - exaggerated roles, only 1/3 off the guards was brutal
  • Weakness: Reicher and Haslam’s social identity theory - they had to identify with the role
• Who investigated obedience?

  Milgram
• Why did Milgramstyle investigate obedience?

  To see whether the blind obedience demonstrated by the Germans in the holocaust was only relevant to Germans
• What was Milgram’s procedure?


  40 American men were brought to Yale university and drew fixed lots to see who would be teacher and learner (confederate), they had to give electric shocks, which increased in voltage each time, to the learner in another room when they got a question wrong as commanded by an experimenter in a white coat
• At how many volts did the learner bang on the wall and remained silent for the rest of the procedure?

  315V