social influence

• there are 3 types of influence: compliance, identification, and internalisation
• compliance is a where people change their behaviour to fit in with the majority publicly to gain approval or popularity
• identification is a public and private form but it is not maintained outside the situation
• internalisation is when we adopt the attitudes and values of others privately and maintain them even if they go against our own beliefs
• there are 2 explanations for conformity: normative social influence and informational social influence
• informational social influence is when people conform because they believe that the group has more knowledge than themselves
• normative social influence is when people conform because they want to be accepted by the group
• ISI happens in vague situations and leads to internalisation
• NSI happens when under surveillance and could lead to compliance or identification
• the Asch experiment was conducted on 100 students who were asked to judge which line matched another line (obviously all lines were different)
• the aim of Asch's study was to test if there would be a change in behaviour or opinions as a result of group pressure
• Asch found that 76% of participants conformed at least once, with only 25% never conforming
• participants who conformed did so due to NSI rather than ISI
• In Asch's study, the participant always answered last so had time to think about their answer
• in Asch's study 5% of ppts conformed every time
• there are three variations of Asch's study: group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• task difficulty - easier tasks led to less conformity
• unanimity - when all members agree, conformity increases
• Asch found that participants were more likely to conform if they thought others agreed with them
• group size - 3-10 confederates was the amount where the confederates were most likely to be able to influence the participant's behaviour
• conformity plateaued after 3 confederates
• one strength of Asch's study is that it was objective and quantifiable
• Asch's study gives evidence for NSI
• a weakness of Asch's study is that he used only male students as his sample which may not represent the general population
• a negative of Asch's study is that it is artificial so lacks ecological validity
• Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) investigated the effects of situational factors on obedience to authority figures
• Zimbardo's prison experiment had high control of variables as they randomly assigned roles to participants
• Zimbardo's experiment has real life application as it can be used to help understand how people can be influenced by their environment
• Zimbardo's study has many ethical issues e.g. the ppts were under psychological harm
• during Zimbardo's study the ppts were told they could not leave
• in his study Zimbardo played a dual role as both the prison warden and psychologist which was unethical
• Zimbardo's study suffered from demand characteristics as the main guard thought he was meant to act in an authoritarian way
• Zimbardo exaggerated his results as quite a few guards were not cruel
• the Stanford Prison Experiment is important because it shows that we are all capable of behaving badly if put into certain situations
• obedience means following the demands of others especially if this person is of authority
• Milgram's study had many ethical issues including causing psychological harm and inability for ppts to withdraw
• Milgram's study suffers from demand characteristics as participants may have known what they were expected to do
• Milgram's study has been criticised by some people who say that it lacks ecological validity as it doesn't reflect real life
• every ppts reached 300 volts
• 65% of ppts reached the max amount of voltage