Social influence p1

• what are the types of conformity


  Compliance

  Internalisation

  Identification
• compliance


  - when you go along with the majority to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval.

  - to fit in

  - does not lead to private attitude changes

  - emotional- based on your emotions

  - short term public change- when on your own you will go back to normal
• example of compliance


  a group of friends deciding where to go for dinner and you want Chinese but everyone else wants Italian so you agree to have Italian but privately you still want Chinese.
• internalisiation


  - you change your private attitudes

  - long term change

  - persists when the group is not present

  - cognitive - change in thinking
• example of internalisation


  - smoking/drinking
• identification


  - when you go along with others because you have accepted their point of view

  - because we value the group and want to be a part of it

  - we dont necessarily agree with everything the majority says

  - we privately and publicly accept their point of view but only while the group is present.
• Example of identification


  -if someone lived with a vegetarian at uni and then decides to also become one too because they agree with their friend's viewpoint

  - someone converting religions would also be a good example.
• Explanations for conformity


  - normative social influence

  - informational social influence
• normative social influence


  - the need to be liked

  - explains compliance

  - the emotional reaction of fear of rejection, makes us publicly express the majority's pov

  - we conform to a group because we want fit in

  - we are aware of the group norms and we and we have a desire to be accepted

  - privately we dont accept this pov

  - NSI is stronger amongst friends
• research support for NSI


  - Linkenbach and Perkins

  - Schultz
• Linkenbach and Perkins


  - adolescents exposed to the message that the majority of their age peers did not smoke were less likely to take up smoking

  
  

  - strength because it supports NSI. they are doing it to fit in with the group. everyone isnt smoking so we comply
• Schultz


  - hotel guests exposed to the message that 75% of guests reused their towel each day, reduced their own towel use to 25%

  - shows they complied to fit in with everyone else
• individual differences NSI


  - research shows that NSI doesnt effect everyones behaviour in the same way.

  - some people who are less concerned about being liked are less affected by NSI than those who care about being liked

  - described as nAffiliators - have a greater need for affiliation

  - mcghee and teevan found that students in high need of affiliation were more likely to conform

  - this shows that there are individual differences in the way that people respond
• applications of NSI


  - good application for health campaigns

  - shows them to use NSI, give the perception that everyone is doing it makes people more likely to follow according to NSI

  - strength because its an easy and cost effective way to change behaviour
• informational social influence


  - the need to be right

  - explains internalisation

  - go along with others because we believe them to be right - eg if you are in a new school you watch others in the canteen because we want to be right when we do it..

  - more pronounced if we think the group has better information than us

  - we change private and public attitudes

  - a cognitive process
• examples of isi


  - ambiguous situations like dinner- look around to see what cutlery you use

  - crisis situations like on a train if it went dark you would follow what others did

  - when we believe others to be experts like at a new school
• research support for isi


  - lucas et al

  - jenness
• lucas et al


  - found that when asking students to give answers to math problems, there was a greater conformity to incorrect answers when the problems were more difficult

  - as the problems got more difficult, people conform more because they are less sure of themselves and assume that others have more information than them.
• jenness


  - found that individuals private estimates of how many jellybeans in a jar moved towards the group estimate after a group discussion

  - people have more info than us so we are more likely to change our answer in a group
• application for isi


  - explains why product reviews persuade us

  - someone who already has the product have more info on it than us so we listen to them
• weakness of isi


  - individual differences

  - someone who has high self efficacy will be less influenced than someone with low self efficacy.

  - cant generalise to everyone
• A weakness of NSI and ISI


  - it is likely that they both have an effect on our behaviour

  - its difficult to say which is affecting our behaviour at any one time

  - doesnt agree with Deutsch and Gerrards two process approach

  - eg- in aschs study the presence of a dissenting participant could reduce the power of nsi because the dissenter provides social support . or it could reduce the power of isi because there is an alternative source of information

  - this shows that it isnt possible to be sure whether nsi or isi is at work.
• eagly and carl


  - conducted a meta-analysis and found that women are more compliant than men.

  - could be due to differences in sex roles- women are more interpersonal and more likely to conform

  - weakness because findings cannot be generalised to women
• Asch


  -1956

  - 123 male american undergraduates

  - asked participants to take a vision test

  - groups of participants were shown three lines of different lengths

  - they were asked to state which line was the same length as the original one

  - all but one participant were confederates

  - real participant always gave his answer last

  - on 12 of the 18 trials the confederates all gave the same wrong answer
• Asch results


  - in 36.8% of the 12 critical trials, the responses made by the participant were incorrect ( they conformed to the confederates)

  - only 1/4 of the participants never conformed

  - in control trials involving no confederates, participants only gave incorrect responses 1% of the time, confirming that the stimulus lines were unambiguous.
• what participants said after asch interviewed


  - most participants privately trusted their own perception but changed their public behaviour to avoid disapproval from the other group members - NSI

  
  

  - others felt unsure about the accuracy of their judgements and therefor went along with the majority- their judgement was distorted- ISI
• Variations of Asch's study

  Difficulty,

  size of the majority,

  unanimity of the majority
• difficulty variation of asch


  - when the task is made more difficult, conformity increases

  - increases isi because we think others have more info than us so we go along because we are unsure of our own beliefs
• size of majority variation of asch


  - there was little conformity when the majority consisted of only one of two individuals

  - conformity levels jumped to 30% with a majority of three and - further increases after three didn't significantly increase the rate of conformity

  - increases nsi because when theres less people theres less of a need to fit in

  - from 3 onwards there it is more difficult to stand out because they want to fit in and be liked.
• Variation of Asch:

  unanimity


  - when the participant has the support of another real participant, conformity levels dropped to 5.5%

  - this drop in conformity was also present when one confederate gave an answer that was diff from the majority but also diff to the real answer

  - social support breaks nsi
• eval of asch - temporal validity

  - weakness

  - low temporal validity

  - supported by perirn and spencer 1980. they replicated aschs study with engineering students in the uk and only one conformed in a total of 396 trials

  - due to the fact that asch study was in 1950s america which was in a conformist time and therefore participants followed the social norms

  - limitation because it means aschs effect is not consistent across situations and times

  
  

  
  

  - engineering students have higher self efficacy so the results cant be generalised wither due to individual differences. higher self efficacy= less conformity.
• eval of asch- realism


  - weakness

  - lack of realism

  - the task of identifying lines is unimportant and therfore there is no reason to conform.

  - when the task is meaningful eg talking about politics, we are less likely to conform

  - according to fisk 2014, aschs groups were not very groupy.

  
  

  - limitation because we cannot generalise aschs findings to everyday life for example irl when we are w friends we are more likely to conform more because we value their opinion
• eval of asch- men


  - weakness

  - all participants were male

  - research suggests that females are more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships

  - limitation because his findings only applied to men so they are not representative of the whole population
• eval of asch - ethics


  - weakness

  - unethical

  - participants were deceived because they thought everyone was part of the study

  - they were not protected from psychological harm which couldve occured when they disagreed with the majority
• social roles


  - parts we play as members of different social groups

  - includes expectation of how we are expected to behave in that role

  - as a society we have agreed standards of behaviour that we expect from different social roles
• Zimbardo's Prison Experiment aim


  to see if participants conformed to social roles
• Zimbardo's Prison Experiment procedure


  - he converted a basement in stanford university into a mock prison

  - he advertised asking for volunteers to participate

  - 75 initial participants were interviewed and given personality tests

  - 25 psychologically normal were chosen

  - they were randomly assigned the role of either prisoner or guard

  - when the prisoners arrived they were stripped, deloused and wore nighties which degraded them

  -they all worse nylon caps to replicate baldness to take their identity away from them.

  - the prisoners were only referred to by their number

  - guards had uniforms and glasses and were instructed to do whatever they felt was necessary but physical violence was not permitted
• Zimbardo's Prison Experiment findings


  -guards got into their role quick and easily becoming aggressive

  - prisoners threw an initial rebellion which the guards dealt with and after the prisoners became submissive
• prisoner 8612


  - after 3 days he began to suffer with emotional distress

  - once the guards met with him, he came out and told the other prisoners that they couldn't leave and he began to act out

  - the psychologists decided to remove him
• prisoner 819


  - broke down whilst talking to the priest

  - guards lined up other prisoners and made them chanty that prisoner 819 is bad

  - 819 heard them and began sobbing uncontrollably