Psychology paper 1

• Compliance


  Going along with the group behaviour publicly, even if you don't share their views privately. This usually happens due to normative social influence i.e. you do it to keep to the norms of the group so that you remain a member of the group.
• Internalisation


  Going along with the group behaviour because you actually share their views, you have accepted and internalised their views so that they are now your own. I.e. your public beliefs and private beliefs are the same. This is sometimes a part of informational social influence because it often happens when we are unsure of how to behave ourselves and so look to others for information on how to behave.
• Identification


  Conformity to the behaviour that is expected of you in a particular social role e.g. a teacher not acting inappropriately in front of students.
• Minority Influence


  When the minority influences and changes the beliefs of the majority.
• Asch's line study


  • Investigated normative social influence
  • Involved a naive participant being placed in a room with a group of confederates
  • Participants were asked to publicly judge the length of a standard line to 1 of 3 control lines
  • The confederates all purposely gave the incorrect answer before the naive participant had answered
  • Asch measured how many of the participants conformed and gave the wrong answer despite the task being unambiguous
• In the control trials, participants gave the wrong answer 0.7% of the time, demonstrating that the task is unambiguous.
• In the critical trials participants gave the wrong answer 37% of the time, with some participants stating after that they knowingly gave the wrong answer because they did not want to look different.
• Asch concluded that these results suggest that the naive participant conformed due to normative social influence.
• Advantages of Asch's lab study

  • The process was highly controlled, minimising the effects of extraneous variables and allowing Asch to more accurately assume cause and effect between social influence and conformity rates
  • The study is easily replicable, allowing other researchers to check the findings for reliability
• Disadvantages of Asch's lab study

  • The experiment took place in an artificial setting, which may lack ecological validity as the findings may not apply to conformity in the real world
  • There are ethical issues as participants were deceived throughout and could not have given informed consent
• Factors affecting conformity include group size
• Zimbardo's procedure


  1. Zimbardo selected 24 male volunteers

  2. Randomly allocated the role of prisoner and guard

  3. 10 guards and 14 prisoners

  4. Prisoners were arrested at home

  5. Dehumanised and stripped of their rights

  6. Prisoners called by a number not their names

  7. Guards given uniform, night stick and reflective sunglasses

  8. Instructed to use no physical violence

  9. Prisoners immediately rebelled and ripped off their numbers

  10. Guards punished them by taking away their beds and locking them in their cells

  11. By day 3 a prisoner had to be removed due to psychological trauma

  12. Showed guards and prisoners quickly conformed to their social roles

  13. Prisoners called each other by their numbers not their names

  14. Experiment lasted 6 days instead of 2 weeks