Social influence

• Internalisation: when an individual changes their behaviour to fit in with a group publicly while also agreeing with them privately -strongest form of conformity as the group beliefs become part of the individuals belief system
• Identification: when someone conforms to the demands of a social role in society.
• Compliance: when someone votes differently in public to when they vote privately.
• Factors that influence conformity: (social) the size of the majority (needs to be more than 3 and up to 7), the presence of a dissenter (with one dissenter conformity rates dropped to near 0), anonymity (less likely to conform in private), task difficulty (the harder the lines are to distinguish the more conformity) (dispositional) personality
• Sherif: ISI- looked at the autokinetic effect and asked participants how far they thought the light moved used 3 phases, 1) ask individually, 2) ask in groups of 3, 3) ask individually, participants went from a range of values to values constricted around a median found by different participants answers.
• Normative social influence: people conform to group norms in order to fit in with the group and be accepted, Asch's study. Informational social influence: people conform in order to be correct, generally occurs when the task/situation is considered ambiguous.
• Milgram's experiment results: 65% continued to the full 450v, when changed to an office building highest shock was 48%, when the learner was in the same room 40%, when their hands were touching it was 30%, when the researcher gave the orders by phone it was 23%.
• Staying in the agentic state: insistence of authority, pressure of location, unwillingness to disrupt.
• Locus of control: the extent to which people believe they are in control of their lives, internal: the belief that things happen as a result of our choices and decisions, external: the belief that things happen as a result of external forces
• Spector: found that people with an external LOC conformed more often with NSI than people with an internal LOC, neither conformed for ISI. Cultural differences Japanese had more of an external LOC than American
• Rotter: a 13-part questionnaire to measure LOC, high scores indicate external LOC
• Social cryptomnesia: the process whereby minority attitudes. behaviours and beliefs become majority held views. The snowball effect is a psychological term that explains how small actions can cause bigger and bigger actions ultimately resulting in a big impact
• conversion: the process where the majority gradually adopts a new minority viewpoint or behaviour. This new belief or behaviour becomes accepted both publically and privately. A type of internalisation occurring through ISI.
• Factors involved in minority influence: consistency (synchronic - the ideas are unchanging, diachronic- consistent over time), flexibility (need to be moderate, co-operative and reasonable in their views), commitment (resisting social pressures and abuse,
• Social impact theory: people change their behaviour if they're put under enough pressure, three factors cause social impact (immediacy, numbers, strength), minorities can cause social change if they have enough strenghth and immediact
• Moscovici: lab experiment, women split into groups of 6 with 2 confederates, one control group, groups were asked to identify the colour of 36 slides all different shades of blue. consistent confederate identified all slides as green, inconsistent identified 12 as blue 24 as green, consistent 8% identified slides as green, inconsistent 1% as green. minority groups have more influence when they behave consistently
• Nemeth et al: Two confederates per group, 3 conditions (confederates identified every slide as green, participants identified darker slides as green bright slides as green-blue, confederates randomly identified slides as green/green-blue. inconsistent behaviour didn't influence participants, every slide as green didn't have any influence, two colours had significant influence over participants C-strict consistency wasn't effective, flexible consistency is the most effective.