social influence

• Conformity


  • A change in behaviour or opinion due to group pressure
  • Three types: Internalisation, Identification, Compliance
• Asch's research on conformity

  1. Used a laboratory experiment

  2. Confederates deliberately gave the wrong answer

  3. Saw if naive participant conformed

  4. 75% of participants conformed at least once to the incorrect answer
• Asch's research on group size

  • Varied the number of confederates
  • Conformity rates were 32% with 3 confederates
• Asch's research on unanimity

  • Made one confederate disagree with the other confederates
  • Conformity rate dropped to less than 25% of the unanimous level
• Asch's research on task difficulty

  • Made the lines more similar
  • Conformity rates increased
• Asch's study has been criticised as being a 'child of its time'
• Asch's method for studying conformity has become the accepted way of studying conformity by psychologists, known as a paradigm
• Informational social influence


  Someone conforms because they do not know what to do, but they want to be correct
• Normative social influence


  Someone conforms because they want to be liked and accepted by the group
• Some participants claimed their unambiguously wrong answer was in fact the correct answer, criticising the aforementioned explanations
• Stanford prison simulation study by Zimbardo

  1. Examined conformity to social roles

  2. Guards conformed to their perceived roles to such an extent that the study was discontinued after 6 days (it was meant to last 2 weeks)
• Zimbardo's findings haven't been replicated, for example in the BBC prison study
• Obedience


  The individual acts in response to a direct order from an authority figure
• Milgram's original study (1963)


  1. Participant was asked to carry out an unjust order

  2. All participants went up to 300 volts and 65% went to 450 volts (potentially fatal)
• Milgram's work was unethical as some participants were psychologically harmed
• Milgram dealt with the ethical issue of deception by debriefing participants after the experiment and informed them that their actions, whether obedient or not, were either normal or desirable
• Situational variables affecting obedience

  • Location: Obedience rates dropped to 47.5% when conducted in a run-down building
  • Uniform: Obedience rates dropped to 20% when experimenter was dressed in everyday clothes
  • Proximity: Obedience levels dropped to 40% when the teacher and learner were in the same room
• Bickman's research found that people were twice as likely to obey a confederate dressed as a security guard than one in a jacket and tie
• Agentic state


  People shift from an autonomous state to an agentic state where they feel they are not responsible for their actions
• The agentic state explanation doesn't explain why atrocities have been carried out despite the perpetrators not having direct orders, e.g. the men of Battalion 201
• A strength of the agentic state explanation is that there is research evidence from Milgram to support it as obedience rates fell to 20.5% when the researcher was not in the room
• Dispositional explanation for obedience

  It is the individual's personality characteristics which best explain obedience rather than situational variables
• Milgram found a correlation between those participants that were particularly obedient and those who scored the highest on the F-scale
• The F-scale is criticised by psychologists (Christie and Jahoda) for being right wing bias, and therefore the explanation is limited as it doesn't explain obedience across the whole political spectrum
• Resistance to social influence

  • Those with an internal locus of control are less likely to conform and obey
  • Social support gives the observer confidence to resist influence
• Twenge et al. (2004) found evidence that over a 40-year period people had become more resistant to obedience but also more external in their LOC
• Minority influence


  A small group or individual persuade others to change their behaviour, attitudes or beliefs leading to internalisation
• Factors in minority influence

  • Consistency: Diachronic and synchronic consistency
  • Commitment: The minority making a personal sacrifice to their position (augmentation principle)
  • Flexibility: Minorities also need to show flexibility
• Moscovic's research (1969) showed evidence for consistency as when the minority were consistent 8.2% agreed but when the minority was inconsistent only 1.25% agreed
• Studies proceeding the Moscovici et. al, experiment had found that if they are to influence the majority then they must not appear rigidly inflexible
• Clark's research into minority influence shows how the snowball effect can bring about social change