Social Influence

• Conformity


  Changing what we do, think, or say in response to the influence of real pr imagined pressure from others
• Explanations of conformity

  • Informational
  • Normative
• Normative social influence


  Conforming in order to gain liking or respect from others or to fit in with the group to avoid ridicule
• Informational social influence


  Conforming due to being unsure as what to do; copying the behaviour of the majority because you assume they know what they’re doing and you want to be correct
• Compliance


  Conforming in order to be liked or to avoid social exclusion. Conforming publicly but continuing to disagree in private
• Identification


  Conforming publicly as well as privately due to identifying with the group and feeling a sense of group membership; often temporary
• Internalisation


  Conforming publicly and privately due to having internalised and accepted the views of the group
• Normative/informational social influence evaluation

  • NSI supported by research into adolescent smoking
  • NSI has RWA - Nolan (2008) energy conservation
  • ISI can explain the development of prejudice
  • ISI explains how political opinions form
• Asch

  • Participants thought they were doing an eye test
  • Each participant was in a group with 7-9 confederates and was always last or second to last in the group
  • They had to say which line (A,B, or C) was the same length as the stimulus line
  • On ‘critical’ trials the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer
• Difficulty of task


  When comparison lines were more similar in length, more participants conformed as they were uncertain and looked to the confederates for help
• Size of task


  Conformity increases as group size increases: 3% conformity with one other, 13% with two others, 32% with three or more; 4 is considered the optimal group size
• Unanimity


  Conformity decreases when group unanimity is disturbed (when a confederate disagreed with the others)
• Asch evaluation

  • Only 2/3 conformed in critical trials; social influence may not be as strong as it seems
  • May lack temporal validity; conformity was high in the US at the time due to McCarthyism
  • Limited range of majority sizes
  • Cultural differences; Smith et al (1996): average conformity was 25% in individualist cultures and 37% in collectivist cultures
• Social roles


  The parts people play as members of social groups, accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role
• Stanford Prison Experiment Procedure

  1. Zimbardo converted the basement of Stanford University into a mock prison

  2. 75 applicants were interviews to eliminate those with psychological issues

  3. 24 men who were judged to be physically and mentally stable were chosen to participate

  4. Participants were randomly assigned to the role of guards or prisoners

  5. There were 10 prisoners and 11 guards, 2 reserved (1 person dropped out)

  6. Prisoners were arrested at their own homes, booked, etc.

  7. Guards were told to do whatever they felt necessary to maintain law and order in the prison but that physical violence was banned
• Zimbardo findings


  People readily conform to the roles they’re expected to play, especially if the roles are strongly stereotyped. Guards were increasingly abusive and violent over the course of the study and prisoners showed increasing levels of anxiety and stress. The experiment was called off after 6 days
• Stanford Prison Experiment Evaluation

  • Controversial but was approved by ethics committee at the university and participants were not deceived (they were told their ‘usual rights’ would be temporarily suspended)
  • Demand characteristics may mean it has low internal validity (students unfamiliar with the study could accurately guess aims and participant behaviour)
  • Conformity to social roles has RWA (Abu Ghraib)
• Obedience


  Acting in response to an order given by another person, usually someone of power or authority
• Obedience is from someone with power, conformity is from a peer group
• Conformity doesn’t involve an explicit demand to act in a certain way whilst obedience does
• People obey to avoid punishment and conform to be liked or accepted
• Milgram aim


  To investigate whether people obey an authority figure when the orders involve causing harm to another human being
• Milgram (1963)

  • Studied obedience by seeing if participants would give a series of increasingly severe electric shocks
  • Participants were told that they were being randomly assigned to the role of a teacher or a learner, but was always given the role of the teacher; the learner was a confederate
• Milgram findings


  He predicted that 0.01% of participants would deliver the maximum 450 volt shock, labelled ‘XXX’ when in reality 65% did and all 40 participants went to 300 volts
• Milgram consent


  He carried out presumptive consent
• Prediction of people (including psychiatrist and students) about results of Milgram’s study


  Most participants would refuse to administer shocks after 150 volts and less than 1% would go all the way
• Milgram’s situational factors

  • Change of location
  • Change on uniform
  • Change of proximity
• Change of location


  Experiment moved from Yale University to a rundown office block; conformity dropped to 47.5%
• Change of uniform


  Experimenter didn’t wear a lab coat; conformity rate was very low (around 15%)
• Change of proximity

  • Teachers and learners in the same room; conformity rate dropped to 40%
  • Teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto the shock plate; conformity dropped to 30%
• Milgram evaluation

  • Participants may not have believed the shocks were real
  • Ethical issues: deception and right to withdraw
  • Over 50 years old so may lack temporal validity; however Burger (2009) found almost identical levels of obedience
  • Mandel (1998) claims that the situational factors of Milgram’s research shows that obedience doesn’t occur in the real world
• Agentic state


  Defined by Milgram as being in a state in which we see ourselves ‘as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes’
• Agentic shift

  The process by which someone goes from being in an autonomous state to an agentic state
• Legitimate authority

  Someone who is perceived to be in a position of social control in a situation. For agentic shift to occur, we must view the person ordering us as a legitimate authority. For authority to be perceived as legitimate it must occur within an institutional structure
• For agentic shirt to occur, we must perceive the person telling us how to behave as a legitimate authority figure
• For authority to be considered legitimate, it must occur within some sort of institutional structure
• Agentic state research


  Hofling et al (1966)
• Hofling et al (1966)


  21/22 nurses unknowingly involved in an experiment obeyed the authorised instruction from the doctor and were about to give the dangerous drug and dosage to a participant before they were stopped by someone from the research team
• Legitimate authority evaluation

  • It can be dangerous to accept someones authority as legitimate; Tarrow (2000): in half of aircraft accidents in the US where flight crew actions were known to be a contributing factor, there was excessive dependence on the captain’s authority; one officer said he didn’t question the captain’s behaviour because he assumed the captain knew what he was doing
  • Can be used to justify harming others. When directed to engage in immoral actions by a legitimate authority figure, people are willing to do so
• Agentic state evaluation

  • Could explain bystander effect - Fennis and Aarts (2012): reduced personal control results in bystander apathy and greater obedience to authority
  • ‘Plain cruelty’ may explain obedience better than agentic shift - No authority figure in Stanford Prison Experiment