AO3 - Social Support

• Research to support social support as an explanation of resistance to social influence was conducted by Albrecht. He evaluated an 8 week programme to help pregnant adolescents resist peer pressure to smoke. Social support was provided by a slightly older mentor or 'buddy'. It was found that those with a 'buddy' were significantly less likely to smoke than those without a 'buddy'. Therefore supporting social support as a valid explanation of resistance to social influence and is a useful explanation as it can be used for intervention in the real world.
• Further research to support social support comes from Asch's variation study on unanimity. In Asch's original conformity study, the confederates all gave the same wrong answer, leading conformity rates to be 37%. However, when Asch varied his study to break unanimity, one confederate gave the right answer and conformity rates dropped to 5.5%. Therefore supporting social support as an explanation for resistance to conformity because it suggests that the confederate acted as an ally, meaning the participant had the confidence to remain independent in their behaviour.
• Research to support social support for resisting the pressure to obey comes from Milgram. In one of his variations, the real participant was placed with 2 additional confederates (who also played the role of teachers). The 2 additional confederates refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early. In this variation, the amount of participants who went to the full 450V dropped from 65% to 10%. Therefore supporting social support because it shows that if a real participant has support from a model of dissent they are more likely to resist obedience to the authority figure.