Social support

• Conformity

  pressure to conform can be resisted if there are other people present who are also not conforming, in asch’s reseach when 1 confederate didn’t follow the majority, conformity dropped from 36% to 5%

  the fact someone else is not following the majority is social support, it enabled the naive participant to be free to follow their own conscience.

  the confederate acts as a model of independent behaviour
• obedience

  the pressure to obey can be resisted if is there is another person seen to disobey.

  In 1 of milgrams variations, the rate of obedience dropped from 65%to 10% when the genuine ppt was joined by a disobedient confederate, the other persons disobedience acts as a model of dissent for the participant, this frees him to act from his own conscience 
• one strength is research evidence for the positive effects of social support

  evaluation of teen fresh start USA, an eight week program to help pregnant adolescence aged 14 to 19, resist peer pressure to smoke

  Social support was provided by a slightly older mental or body at the end of the program

  adolescents who had a buddy were significantly less likely to smoke than a control group of participants who did not have buddy

  this shows social support can help young people resist social influence as part of an intervention in the real world
• A strength is research evidence to support the role of dissenting participants

  partisans were told to produce evidence that would be used to help an oil company run a smear campaign

  The resechers found higher levels of resistance in their study than milgram did in his, this was probably because the participants were in groups

  so could discuss

  88% of groups rebelled against their orders, suggesting social support can lead to disobedience