Social Influence

• Conformity


  A type of social influence involving a change in a person's belief, opinion or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined group pressure
• Types of Conformity


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Compliance


  The person conforms publicly but continues to disagree privately. Shallowest form of conformity, temporary
• Identification


  The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group and feel a sense of group membership. Temporary
• Internalisation


  The person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and accepted the view of the group. It is the deepest form of conformity, permanent
• Explanations for Conformity


  • Normative Social Influence (NSI)
  • Informational Social Influence (ISI)
• Normative Social Influence (NSI)


  The desire to be liked. Conform to fit in the group to not appear foolish or be left out. Emotional rather than a cognitive process. People prefer social approval rather than rejection. Leads to compliance. Likely to occur in unfamiliar situations or when we are concerned about the social approval of friends
• Informational Social Influence (ISI)


  Desire to be right. Conform when unsure of the situation, so we look to others who we believe may have more information than us. Cognitive process - people generally want to be right. Leads to internalisation. Likely to occur in situations where there is some ambiguity. Decisions have to be made quickly, when we assume the group is likely to be right
• Research evidence supporting NSI
• Research evidence supporting ISI
• Individual differences in conformity
• ISI and NSI work together
• Line Judgement Task (Asch)


  To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform, even when the answer is unambiguous
• Line Judgement Task (Asch)


  Used a lab experiment to study conformity in American male students. Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates who had previously agreed what their response would be to the task. The real participant did not know this and was led to believe the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves. Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always unambiguous. The real participant gave their answer last but one. In 12 out of 18 trials the confederates gave the wrong answer
• Findings of Asch's Line Judgement Task
• Evaluations of Asch's experiment


  • Artificial Situation and Task
  • Limited Application
  • Research Support
  • Ethical Issues
• Variables that may affect conformity


  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Social roles


  Pattern of behaviour that is expected in a given setting or group
• Conformity to social roles (Zimbardo et al)


  Participants were all male voluntary psychology students at Stanford University in California and were tested for their psychological stability before the 2 week experiment. They were randomly allocated to two groups - prisoners and prison guards. The prison guards were there to keep order but they were not allowed to use physical force. Prisoners were stripped, deloused and given a prison uniform and prisoner number, which was the only thing they were referred by. The prison guards were given uniforms, including sticks and mirrored sunglasses
• Findings of Zimbardo's Conformity to Social Roles study
• Evaluations of Zimbardo's research


  • Control over key variables
  • Sample bias
  • Lack of realism
• Obedience


  Obedience is a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order. The person who gives the order usually has authority and the power to punish if the order is not obeyed
• Differences between conformity and obedience


  • Conformity: Implicit/explicit request to change behaviour, Pressure to change behaviour is usually from a large group

  Obedience: Direct request to change behaviour, Pressure to change behaviour is usually from one person
• Shock Experiment (Milgram)


  Voluntary male university students were paired with another person (confederate) and they drew lots to find out who would be the 'learner' and who would be the 'teacher'. The draw was fixed so the real participant was always the teacher. The learner was taken to another room where electrodes were attached to his arms connected to an electric shock generator in the teacher's room - the real participant was led to believe this was real as he was given a small electric shock. The learner had to remember word pairs and the teacher was told to administer an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. If the participant refused to administer a shock the experimenter (another confederate) was to give a list of probes to ensure they continued
• Findings of Milgram's Shock Experiment
• Evaluations of Milgram's experiment


  • Low internal validity
  • Good external validity
  • Supporting research replication
• Variations of Milgram's experiment


  • Location
  • Proximity
  • Uniform
• Agentic state


  When people allow others to direct their actions and pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders - act as agents for another person's will
• Autonomous state


  People act according to their own values and they take responsibility for the results of those actions
• Agentic shift


  When a fully obedient person undergoes a psychological adjustment or 'shift' and they see themselves as an agent of external authority
• Binding factors


  • The authority figure has greater power because they have a higher position in a social hierarchy
  • When acting against their moral values they experience high anxiety and moral strain as they realise that what they do is wrong but they feel powerless in disobeying
  • Remain in agentic state because of binding factors - aspects of the situation that mean the individual is able to take away their own moral strain and ignore their damaging behaviour
• Research support


  • Blass and Schmitt showed a film of Milgram's study to students asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the leaner
  • Found that the students blamed the experimenter rather than the participant and indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority as well as expert authority (because he was a scientist)