Social influence

• What are the factors that affect conformity in Asch's study?

  • size of the majority (up to seven in Asch's study)
  • Presence of a dissenter
  • public or private nature of responses
  • task difficulty
• What did presence of a dissenter drop conformity rates to?

  Near zero
• The more people in the majority the more likely an individual is to conform.
• What is the name given to a person who works for the researcher and is aware of the experiment but acts as a participant in order to manipulate a social situation as part of the research design?

  • confederate
• What are the cons to Asch's study?

  • Artificial situation
  • Deception
• What were the pros to Asch's study?

  Lab setting provided controlled variables so high repeatability.

  Influences of extraneous variables could be minimised.
• How did confidence effect Asch's study?

  • found that participants who had not conformed all displayed confidence
  • did not succumb to group pressure as easily.
• Other researchers carried out Asch's experiment on engineers and conformity rates were not as high. Showing confidence in decision making.
• Gender - researchers found men and woman show different levels of conformity due to social roles.

  Men less likely to conform due to expected to show independence and assertiveness.
• What percentage of participants conformed to group pressure at least once in Asch's study?

  75%
• What is normative social influence?

  • People conform to the group norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group.
  • In Asch's (1951) line judgement task, participants complied to fit in and avoid ridicule, an instance of normative social influence.
• What is informational social influence?

  • People conform because they believe the group is competent and has the correct information, particularly when the task or situation is ambiguous.
• What is a social role?

  A social role is a pattern of behaviour that is expected of a person in a given setting or group
• What is a social norm?

  A social norm is a group’s expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behaviour for its members
• Signs of conforming to social roles (Zimbardo)

  • prisoners revolted and guards threatened with night sticks.
  • guards harassed prisoners with lack of privacy, lack of basic comforts, degrading chores.
  • prisoners had severe anxiety and hopelessness
  • zimbardo began acting as if prison was real.
• • The guards and prisoners enacted their social roles by engaging in behaviours appropriate to the roles.
  • Social norms require guards to be authoritarian and prisoners to be submissive. When prisoners rebelled, they violated these social norms, which led to upheaval.
• How many days did the stanford prison experiment end after?

  6
• What was the orlando study?

  Mock psychiatric ward.
• Conclusions from orlando's study =

  • mock patients began acting like normal hospital patients.
  • lots of patients showed signs of havign withdrawal and depression
  • 6 patients tried to escape
• How many days was the mock psychiatric ward study?

  3 days
• Analysis of orlandos study?

  This study gives insight into real patients experiences in hospital. It also had influence in getting hospital staff to empathise more with patients.
• What did milgrams study investigate?

  Obedience
• What is obedience?

  • Obedience is the change of an individual’s behaviour to comply with a demand by an authority figure.
• What percentage of participants continued to maximum shock?

  65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive.
• What was the percentage of obedience when setting of experiment was moved to an office?

  48%
• When the researcher gave orders by phone, rate dropped to?

  23%
• Pros of milgram's experiment:

  • strict control of variables so should be able to establish cause and effect.
• Cons of milgram's experiment?

  • low ecological validity - artificial situation
  • deception - no informed consent
  • lack of protection - visible stress
  • potential low internal validity
• What is the agentic state?


  State in which an individual behaves as the agent of another person, allowing them to deny responsibility for their actions.
• What is autonomous state?


  When people have control and act according to their own wishes.
• What research was found that supported the agentic state in milgram's study?

  • In Milgram's (1963) famous study on obedience, he noted that during de-brief, participants admitted to feeling under ‘moral strain’, but still continued to obey. This is consistent with an agentic state.
• How did Milgram's research support the autonomous state?

  • He also found that when the researchers were not in the same room as the teachers and gave instructions via a telephone, obedience fell from 62.5% to 20.4%. This is consistent with an autonomous state.
• • People who are obedient accept the power and status of legitimate authority figures to give orders.
• What is agentic shift?

  When individuals shift from the autonomous to agentic state.
• • Participants in Milgram's (1963) study started the experiment in the autonomous state but shifted into the agentic state when they started taking orders.
• What factors did milgram think caused his participants to stay in the agentic state?

  • Insistence of authority
  • pressure of location
  • unwillingness to disrupt
• What are the three main things about the environment that can make obedience likely: 

  • proximity
  • location
  • uniforms
• How did Milgram's study show evidence for proximity?

  • Milgram found that when the teacher and the learner were in the same room, and the teacher could see the learners’ distress, obedience levels dropped to 40%.
• How did Milgram's study show evidence for location?

  • When Milgram carried out his study at the prestigious Yale University, obedience levels were higher than when he moved the experiment to an office block in a run-down part of town (62.5% to 47.5%).
• How did Milgram's study show evidence that uniforms influenced obedience?

  Made sure that the researcher wore a lab coat.