Social influience

• Social Influence is when a persons behaviour or attitude is influenced by other people/groups.
• Compliance is when a person agrees in public, but privately they disagree.
• Internalisation is the deepest level of conformity, when you both privately and publicly agree with the group view.
• Identification is when a person conforms to the groups opinion because these is something about the group they value.
• Normative social influence is when a person conforms to fit in with the group because they don't want to be left out.
• Informational social influence is when a person conforms because they want to be right about something, so they conform to the opinions of those they believe hold more information than them.
• Asch's line study


  1. Groups of 5-7 participants

  2. Asked to say out loud which lines were the same length as the comparison line

  3. Unknown to participants, only 1 real participant, rest were confederates hired to give the wrong answer
• When the confederates all said the wrong answer, the participants conformed at least once 75% of the time
• Asch's line study

  Limitation) Lacks ecological validity

  -> based on peoples perception of lines, doesn't reflect real life conformity.

  Limitation) Sampling bias

  -> Only tested men, cannot generalise results to women

  Strength) Carried out in laboratory

  -> Carefully controlled environment, extraneous variables.
• Variables investigated by Asch

  1)Group Size: Curve-linear relationship where the size of the group affected conformity levels but only until a certain level (3 confeds).

  2)Unanimity: Introduced another confed which disagreed with the unanimous decision. The participant conformed less in the presence of the dissenter.

  3)Task Difficulty: The line task became harder, participants looked to the others for the right answer.
• Stanford prison experiment


  • 21 men, tested to be emotionally stable, were given randomly the role of 'prisoner' or 'guard'
  • Prisoners wore a loose smock, hat and were referred to as a number
  • Guards given tools and uniform
  • This caused a lack of personally identity called de-individualisation
  • Zimbardo did this so the participants were more likely to conform to their social role
• Findings of the Stanford prison experiment


  • The guards treated the prisoners very harshly
  • The prisoners became emotionally disturbed
  • 1 participant had to leave early
• Stanford prison experiment

  Limitation)Lack of realism

  -> Guards said they were acting like a character in a show they watched. Suggests that they weren't conforming to social roles but merely "play-acting".

  Limitation)Lacks population validity

  ->Only used male students, cannot generalise results to women.

  Strength) Control over key varaibles.

  ->Participants tested as emotionally stable and randomly assigned roles. Researches ruled out individual personality differences as an explanation for the findings.