Social Support

• Social support 


  from Asch and Milgram. It occurs when we observe others resisting social influence.
• Resisting conformity - Asch's variation

  In one variation, he introduces someone who also gave right answer which caused conformity to decrease from 33% to 5.5% as people feel more confident in their decision if someone is agreeing with them so will stick with their answer.
• Resisting Obedience - Milgram's variation

  Research has shown individuals are generally more confident in their ability to resist temptation to obey if they have someone who agrees with them opposing authority figure like they are doing.
• Evaluation

  +Real world application for social support: group of German women protested to let out 2000 Jewish men from prison. Women stood toe-to-toe and demanded release of the men. Nazi's threatened to open fire despite this the women's courage prevailed and men were set free.
• Evaluation

  +Social support does not have to be valid to be effective: one of Asch's variation, the one confederate gave correct answer in the line matching task, support with real PP. Didn't matter if confederate was wearing glasses or not, conformity decreases in both. This is because the PP was given social support which helps resist pressure.