social influence

• Normative social influence (NSI)


  When a person conforms to be accepted and to feel like they belong to a group
• Informational Social Influence (ISI)


  When a person conforms to gain knowledge, or because they believe that someone else is 'right'
• Internalisation


  A person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs, on a long-term basis
• Asch's (1956) study into conformity


  1. Participants went along with the majority and provided an obviously incorrect answer on a line judgement task

  2. Participants said they changed their answer to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group

  3. When the pressure to publicly conform was removed, the conformity rates fell to 12.5%
• Perrin and Spencer (1980) conducted an Asch-style experiment and found a conformity level of 0.25%
• The lower levels of conformity in Perrin and Spencer's study may have been influenced by the participant's expertise in problem-solving tasks
• Jenness (1932) study


  1. Participants were asked to initially make independent judgements about the number of jelly beans contained in a jar

  2. Participants then discussed their estimates in a group

  3. Participants then made another individual private estimate which moved closer to the group estimate

  4. Females typically conformed more
• Jenness' experiment has been criticised for lacking ecological validity as estimating the number of beans in a jar is a mundane task with no social consequences
• Authoritarian personality


  • Those with such a personality are more likely to obey certain authority figures
  • Key features include respect for submission towards acknowledged authority, the need for a strong leader with uncompromising power, and a rigid black and white world view which resists creativity
  • These features can be a result of extremely strict parenting during childhood
• Adorno's study


  1. Got 2000 middle-class Americans to complete surveys concerning their personality and childhood experience

  2. Compiled the measures into the F-scale, which measured how authoritarian you were

  3. Found those who scored higher on this scale were more authoritarian and had similar strict childhoods and submission to parental figures
• The F-scale questionnaire was conducted only on American participants, so the basis of the authoritarian personality explanation may be culturally biased
• The authoritarian personality does not take into account various situational factors which also affect the extent of obedience, such as agency theory
• Normative Social Influence is the tendency to conform to what we believe others expect us to do, even if it goes against our own beliefs.
• Social norms are rules that govern behavior within a group or society.
• Informational Social Influence occurs when individuals seek information from others about how they should behave in certain situations.