Social influence

• 3 Types of conformity

  compliance, identification and internalisation
• Compliance

  publicly conforming to the behaviour of others but privately maintaining ones own views
• Internalisation

  takes on the majority views, the behaviours becomes apart of your belief systems and remain even when the individual is gone
• Identification

  takes on the majority views but doesn't necessarily agree with them
• Normative conformity

  the desire to be like
• Informational conformity

  the desire to be right
• Asch 1956 


  asked volunteers to take part in visual discrimination task
• Asch's finding

  conformity rates were 33%
• Evaluation of Asch

  Small sample size, beta bias, cultural bias
• Variables of Asch

  Group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• Zimbardo 1973

  Conformity into social roles. He set up a fake prison in the basement of Stanford prison
• dehunamanised

  treated like animals eg deloused given a number
• deindividuated

  identity was removed eg dark glasses
• Evaluation of Zimbardo

  Beta bias, cultural differences, small sample size, demand characteristics
• Milgram

  looked into obedience. electric shocks
• Evaluation of Milgram

  right to withdraw was cloudy, lacks historical validity, deception, small sample size, beta bias
• Abu Ghraib prison

  Us arm detention centre, detainees were abused - "just following orders"
• situational variables which affect obedience

  Locations, proximity and uniform
• dispositional explanation 


  highlights the importance of the individuals personality
• Adorno et al

  dispositional factors influence obedience levels, created and piloted the f-scale
• Authorities personality

  high levels of obedience
• Rutter 1996

  locus of control = internal, I control my own destiny + external, others control my own destiny
• Evaluation of LOC

  Deterministic, decrease in religious beliefs causing internal as they are self-driven
• Moscovici

  green blue slides ( minority influence)
• Minority influence

  consistency, flexibility, commitment and snowball effect
• Snowball effect

  More people listen to the views and get convinced by the majority
• Agentic state

  a person sees themselves as an agent for carrying out another persons wishes
• autonomous state

  takes responsibility for their own actions
• agentic shift

  moving from the autonomous state to the agentic state
• Evaluation of agentic shift

  Real life application (abu Ghraib prison) reducationalist,
• dispositional factors 


  the individual or personal characteristics of a person that may affect how they behave/conform
• authoritian personalities 


  reinforces the role of authority + social division
• Adnoro et al 


  example of a dispositional factor - is the authoritarian personality as they are naturally more obedient found out through the F-scale

  example of situational factors is the environment + social context
• f-scale 


  2000 white middle class Americans
• Strengths of dispositional 


  Milgram + Elms found a positive correlation between authorities personality + obedience in a small sample of obedient individuals
• weaknesses of dispositional 


  low population validity eg only white

  include that correlation is not causation - other factors are more likely to influence obedience levels
• situational influences


  external factors that impact our behaviours + obedience
• types of situational 


  proxmity - closer you are more likely you are to follow

  status of authority - people of authority cause obedience levels to rise

  personal responsibility - if a person of authority tells you to do something you and someone asks you why you acted a certain way you will reply with the person of authority told you to do it