Social Influence

• Example of majority influence changing attitudes - Time to Talk

  A campaign to get people to talk about mental health and reduce stigma surrounding it, launched in 2014. In 2017, over 29 000 conversations were logged. Around 2 million people in the UK have shown an improvement in their attitudes to people with mental illness.
• Social Cryptoamnesia


  A failure to remember the origin of change, in which people know that a change has occurred in society, but forget how that change occurred.
• The Snowball Effect


  Once one person agrees, more will follow.
• Attitudes can be changed through these strategies (according to Moscovicci):


  Be consistent - clear messages with the audience in mind. Persuasive - have an influential leader. Commitment - strongly supporting the minority view. Flexibility - not being too radical in ones view.
• Heads Together


  A campaign designed to reduce stigma around mental health, launched in 2016. It was created by members of the royal family. Prince Harry has talked about his regret at not speaking more about his grief and depression when his mother died.
• Social change


  When societies as a whole adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. This process occurs continually but at a gradual pace, with a minority being the main driving force for social change.
• Applications: Minority influence


  Small groups of people changing the beliefs of majority groups. E.g. Nazis, Nelson Mandela, Suffragettes.
• NatCen criticisms - Participants may have been affected by social desirability


  Might have given answers they thought made them sound good. E.g. a person with a criminal background exaggerating their involvement or reasons behind it to make themselves sound tougher, or someone who did not get involved citing reasons such as believing it to be wrong, when the real reason was lack of opportunity.
• NatCen criticisms - People's memory of events are not always accurate


  Participants were interviewed 5 weeks after the event. Their memories of the event might have faded or been distorted by talking to others or media coverage of the event.
• NatCen criticisms - A distrust of authority may have affected honesty


  Many involved had an intense distrust for people they viewed as an authority figure. As the data relied on self-report, they might not have been honest about their involvement or reasons for involvement.
• NatCen - Conclusions

  Anti-social behaviour is influenced by:

  Collective behaviour/group processes

  Situational factors

  Dispositional factors

  Beliefs about right and wrong

  Assessment of the costs and benefits of involvement.
• NatCen - Results: Other

  A wide range of different people were involved: ages, gender etc. Two clear decision making processes influence whether they were involved: beliefs about right and wrong and assessment of the risks of involvement versus the benefits.
• NatCen - Results: Why were they involved?

  Getting back at the police, having the opportunity to acquire things without paying, and benefitting from an exciting experience.
• NatCen - Results: Who was involved?

  Non-involvedStay-aways - chose not to get involved or observe. Wannabes - Weren't there but would have liked to have been.
• NatCen - Results: Who was involved?

  LootersPeople involved in breaking into shops, raiding broken in shops or picking stolen goods up off the street. Opportunists - Young people who saw the chance to steal things for themselves or their families, or to sell on. Sellers: young people who planned their involvement to maximise 'profits'.
• NatCen - Results: Who was involved?

  RiotersPeople involved in the violent disturbances and vandalism. Protestors - acted due to specific grievances. Retaliators - acted to get their own back on the police or 'the system'.
• NatCen - Results: Who was involved?

  WatchersYoung people present at the incidents and observed but didn't join in. Bystanders - happened to be there. The curious - deliberately chose to see what was going on.
• NatCen - Procedure

  Interviewed individually or in groups of 2 or 4.
• NatCen - Sample

  36 participants interviewed. An even split between over and under 18s and a diversity of gender, ethnicity and work status.
• NatCen - Research method/design

  A report
• NatCen - Hypothesis

  Morrel et. al. wanted to know why young people got involved in the riots. They did not have a specific hypothesis so the report was broken down into: what occurred in Tottenham passed on police, media and eyewitness reports; who was involved; why and how young people were involved.
• NatCen - Aim

  To investigate the 2011 riots and the extent and nature of the youth involvement.
• NatCen - Background

  Rioting took place in London from 6 August to 11 August 2011. It started as a peaceful protest in response to the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by the police. Tottenham is an area of high unemployment: 48% of children living there are classified as living in poverty.
• Criticisms of dispositional factors - Authoritarian personality doesn't explain why people who have not experience harsh parenting are obedient.


  The theory is limited in that it only explains one reason why people obey. It cannot be generalised to people who haven't experienced harsh parenting.
• Criticisms of dispositional factors - Kohlburg's research is gender biased


  Kohlburg's research on moral development used an all male sample. The results were used to create his stages of morality. Females may view morality in a different way to males - males are more focused on justice, while females are more focused on caring. This means Kohlburg's theory may not offer a good view of why females act in pro- or anti-social ways.
• Criticisms of dispositional factors - reductionist

  Dispositional explanations of conformity ignore the evidence that suggests that we are also influenced by those around us. Therefore is down't give a complete picture of how and why we conform.
• The brain: faulty moral reasoning


  Research has also indicated a link between damage in the prefrontal cortex and faulty moral reasoning. People who suffered from damage to the prefrontal cortex as babies were unable to understand right or wrong behaviour.
• The brain: self-esteem


  People with low self-esteem tend to have reduced amounts of grey matter in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is associated with emotion and the ability to control stress levels. Therefore there may be a biological element to conformity.
• What stage is ant-social behaviour most common in?

  Stage 2 because morality is egocentric, meaning the focus is on what is right for the individual, not what is right for the society.
• Post-conventional

  Stage 5: social contract or legalistic orientation - doing what is right even if it is against the law because the law is too restrictive.

  Stage 6: universal ethics principle orientation - doing what is right because of our inner conscious which has absorbed the principles of justice and equality and sacredness of life.
• Conventional

  Stage 3: interpersonal concordance orientation - doing what is right according to the majority to be good.

  Stage 4: law and order orientation - doing what is right because it is your duty and helps society.
• Pre-conventional


  Stage 1: punishment and obedience orientation - doing what is right for fear of punishment.

  Stage 2: hedonistic orientation - doing what is right for personal gain e.g. reward.
• Kohlburg's 3 stages of moral development

  Pre-conventional, conventional, post conventional
• What did Adorno find out about people who score highly on the F-scale?

  They had often been subjected to a very strict and rigid upbringing, particularly their fathers, of whom they were afraid. He suggested that as they saw their father as a figure of authority, they were unable to express their negative feelings directly towards him. Instead they displace these feelings onto someone weaker.
• Adorno's Authoritarian personality is characterised by 4 traits (F scale)

  1) Blind respect for authority

  2) Hostility to people believed to be of lower status

  3) Respect for people believed to be of higher status

  4) A preoccupation with power
• External locus of control in crowd behaviour


  Males with an external locus of control in a large scale riot reported to be more likely to resort to violence to achieve their aims than those with an internal locus of control. Most people in the London 2011 Riots had an external locus of control.
• Internal locus of control in crowd behaviour

  They are less likely to be influenced by how the crowd is behaving - they believe they are in control of their behaviour. They are more likely to take part in protests as they feel they can have an influence over society.
• External locus of control

  Attribute success and failures to luck, chance and fate.
• Internal locus of control


  Believe they are responsible for their success and failures.
• Locus of control


  A personality dimension questionnaire.