Explanations of resistance to social influence

• Social support (situational) In a variation of Milgram's study he showed that obedience reduces with the presence of an ally. In the variation, another participant who was giving shocks at the same time refused to obey. When this happened, obedience fell from 65% to 10%.
• Social support (situational)- This suggests that people find it easier to stand up to authority if they have support from others, because they no longer have to take full responsibility for rebelling.
• Social support- Asch's research on conformity also showed that participants were more likely to resist the pressure to conform if one of the confederates agreed with them. It seems that people are more likely to display independent behaviour if they've got support from others.
• locus of control (dispositional) Your resistance to social influence may also be affected by a personality characteristic called locus of control. Locus of control is the extent to which people feel they are in control of their behaviour.
• Internal locus - generally feel that they are in control of the events in their lives, and take responsibility for their own behaviour
• External locus - feel that the events in their lives are controlled by external forces e.g people or luck, they are also less likely to take responsibility for their behaviour.
• Locus of control- Research evidence generally shows that those with an internal LOC are more likely to show independent behaviour and resist social influence than those with an external LOC.
• people with loc have more self confidence to resist the pressure of social influence. Whereas those with an external LOC sometimes have a lower self esteem and need more social approval, making independent behaviour less likely.
• Measuring Locus of control is difficult e.g. people may give socially desirable answers in personality questionnaires i.e. answer in a way that shows them in a positive light ; this would reduce the validity of the results and therefore the theory itself.