Psychology- social influence

• Asch's study


  - see whether people conform when asked to do an unambiguous task

  - 123 US university male students did a line matching test. 12/18 were critical trials in a lab environment

  - 75% conformed at least once with 36.8% conformed in each trial

  - when group size increased to 3, conformity increased about 30% due to group pressure

  - when task difficulty increases, conformity increases

  - when another participant gave the correct answer 33% decreased to 5.5%
• conformity


  the tendency to change behaviours and/or beliefs in response to perceived group pressure
• sherif's study


  - to understand the reason behind why people conform in an ambiguous situation

  - adult participants were asked to estimate travel distance of the autokinetic effect. They were 1st asked on their own then were placed in groups of 3

  - participants with the furthest prediction matched the answers of the others in a group

  - individuals would conform to others when they consider the others to have better knowledge
• evaluating asch


  - lacks generalisability

  - ethical issues with deception + informed consent

  - lacks ecological validity

  - lacks temporal validity
• types of conformity


  Compliance - going along with the group in order to fit in

  Identification - conforms publicly as well as privately when they share the same identity with the majority group

  Internalisation - conforms publicly and privately
• explanations of conformity


  Normative social influence - seeking approval

  informational social influence - looking for guidance
• zimbardo et al


  - whether people conformed to new social roles

  - 21 male uni student volunteers were allocated into 2 groups: guards and prisoners. Prisoners were arrested at their homes then they were stripped, deloused, given uniforms and numbers. They were meant to stay in their cells for 23 hrs a day

  -small mock cells had 3 prisoners each, they had 3 meals, 3 supervised toilet visits

  - guards wore sunglasses and uniforms and were told to run prison but not harm prisoners

  Zimbardo was superintendent

  - Guards started to assert authority by having prisoners do push ups and some stand on them which was used in Nazi concentration camps Prisoners adopted their roles as prisoner 8612 developed acute emotional disturbance and so he was easily raged

  - 2 week study stopped at 6 days

  - guards were deindividuated and so acted as a group and lost their sense of identity
• evaluating Zimbardo


  - low reliability - BBC prison study replicated it and the prisoners took control. The social identity theory explains that guards failed to develop the shared social identity as a group

  - low validity - Banuazizi and Mohavedi believes that they may have been play acting based on stereotypes on how they were supposed to. 1 guard based his role off the film cool hand Luke, This means they have demand characteristics which lowers internal validity

  - lacks generalisability - 21 male university students were used

  - unethical - there was deception and no protection from harm
• factors affecting conformity


  Group size, unanimity, task difficulty
• Milgram's Obedience Study


  - to investigate how far people would go in obeying an authority figure

  - asked 40 male volunteers to participate in a controlled experiment and were paid $4.50

  - A participant and confederate drew a lot and the participant always got the teacher while the confederate got the learner. Every time the learner got a question wrong then they would be shocked increasingly between 15v and 450v. If the teacher would not continue then they were given 4 prods

  - 65% administered a 450 volt shock and they all shocked over 300v. some participants showed extreme tension, sweat, tremble and seizures
• agency theory


  autonomous state - directing your own actions

  moral strain - the negative emotions experienced when we see the action as morally wrong but still has to obey

  agentic state - people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility to the authority figure

  defence mechanisms

  legitimacy of authority - determined by the society's social hierarchy who we learn to accept at an early age

  destructive authority - authority figure use their legitimate authority to order people and become in evil ways
• Evaluating the agency theory

  - Kilburn and Mann replicated Milgram's procedure om australia and found that only 16% of participants went to the top the other voltage scale while in Germany 85% of German gave max shocks

  - Hofling et al - nurses were called by a doctor they have never met and asked to give a patient double the dose allowed of a drug they had never heard of. 21/22 (95%) obeyed without hesitation

  - Kelman and Hamilton argued that a real world crime of obedience can be understood in terms of the power hierarchy of the US army. Commanding officers operate within a clearer legitimate hierarchy than hospital doctors and have a greater power to punish

  - Haslam argued through the social identity theory that participants would strongly identify themselves with the experiment when the first 3 prompts reinforced so therefore what they did was for the experiment
• situational variables affecting obedience

  Proximity:65%

  Proximity same room: 40%

  Location: 65%

  remote instruction: 47.5%

  Uniform: 65%

  No uniform: 20%
• evaluation of situational variables affecting obedience

  - Bickman

  - 3 uniforms: suits, milkman uniform and guard uniform

  - they were given orders by someone in each uniform

  - as a civilian the obedience rate was 33% but as a guard it was 89%
• dispositional explanations of obedience

  Authoritarian Personality (psychodynamic explanation)

  
  

  Adorno believed the AP developed at a young age from strict parenting and conditional love. This creates resentment and hostility in the child. They can't express it on their parents so they displace this on people weaker than them.

  - Studied 2000 m/c white americans did the F scale questionnaire and found that people who scored high showed stronger authoritarian trains
• Evaluating dispositional explanations for obedience (AP)

  - Elms and Milgram - investigated authoritarian personality using small sample of people in milgram's study. They did the F scale and found that 20 obedient participants scores significantly higher than 20 disobedient participants

  - There is political bias, it measures the tendency towards the extreme right ideology e.g. chinese maoism and so does not account for obedience across the political spectrum. It is reductionist

  - poor questionnaire design as anyone could just have response bias with a questionnaire
• resistance to social influence

  social support: In asch the present of a dissenter reduced conformity, it gave the participant social support making them feel more confident in their own decision

  
  

  Locus of control: those with external locus of control have greater resistance to social influence
• research support for resistance to social influence

  - In aschs study when the dissenter gave the correct answer the conformity rate dropped from 33% to 5%

  - oliner and oliner interviewed 2 groups of non jewish people who had lived through the holocaust and nazi germany . They found that the group who rescued the jews had scores demonstrating an internal locus of control (correlational)

  - Holland repeated Milgram's study and measured whether participants were internal or external. Found that 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock (external was 23%)
• minority influence + study

  A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours.

  - Moscovici asked 3 groups of 6 participants to look at a set of 36 slides that were all blew and identify if they were green or blue. 2 confederates to claim at some trials that the were green. in one group there were 36 critical trials and 8.42% claimed green but in 0 critical trials 0.25% claimed green
• factors of minority influence

  - consistency - the increase in consistency increases the amount of interest in others overtime. diachronic - consistency over time. synchronic consistency - consistency between members

  - commitment - when minorities engage in extreme activities to draw attention. Augmentation principle - when minorities are conducting risks to gain majority members attentions

  - flexibility - ability to be prepared for potential counterarguments

  - explaining the process of change - the more new arguments, the faster the rate of conversion - snowball effect
• evaluating research into minority influence

  - martin et al - presented a message supporting a particular viewpoint and measured participants' agreement. each group of participants heard a minority group agreed with the

  view. Participants were told the opposing view and attitudes were measured again. people were less willing to change their opinions if they had listened to a minority group than if they had listened to a majority group. participants engaged in deeper processing when presented a minority view.

  - the tasks involved are artificial e.g. moscovici

  -when Moscovici asked participants to write down their answers privately, they were more likely to agree with the minority view. participants might be experiencing the social influence from the minority and the majority simultaneously: while they might be convinced by the beliefs of the minorities, they might still be hesitant about agreeing with it in public (to be socially accepted by the crowd).
• minority influence in social change

  - drawing attention - social proof

  - consistency

  - deeper processing

  - augmentation principle - risking life

  - The Snowball effect

  - social cryptomnesia - people have changed their opinion but cannot remember how and when it happened
• social influence and social change

  conformity - a dissenter has the power to create social change by breaking the power of the majority

  social norm intervention - the use of conformity processes by appealing to normative social influence and by providing information on what other people are doing

  obedience - there needs to be a role model who is disobedient and standing up against authority which enables to think independently and resist to obey
• evaluation for social change

  - Nolan et al. (2008) hung critical messages on the doors of homes in California every week for a month. Some other residents received controlled messages. He found a significant decrease in behaviour of those received the experimental message. (energy usage)

  - Foxcroft et al. (2015) reviewed 70 studies where social norms

  approach was used to reduce student alcohol use. found only a small reduction in drinking quality and no effect on drinking frequency. possible that normative influence does not always

  produce long-term social change, which weakens the applicability of the theory.

  - Nemeth (1986) argued that people engage in divergent thinking when considering minority arguments. This type of thinking is broad and allowing thinkers to actively search for information for the options. Such thinking could lead to better decisions and more solutions to social issues.

  - research lacks mundane realism