Social influence

• Types of Conformity


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Compliance


  In public you accent the views of the majority but in private you maintain your own views. To gain approval and disapproval. Not permanent- only conform when in presence of others.
• Compliance


  • Not eating animal products when with vegan friends but eating meat at home
• Identification


  Conforming to the opinions of a group because you value something about them. Changing the behaviour in public to achieve this goal but maintaining our opinions in private. Not permanent.
• Identification


  • Joining a football team, all members are vegan and because you value the shared group interest of the football you conform and follow a vegan diet when with them
• Internalisation


  Going along with others because you've accepted their view. Accepting the group's point of view publicly and privately.
• Internalisation


  • Converting to a vegan diet after listening to groups arguments about environmental impact
• Normative Social Influence


  Responding to group pressure in order to be accepted by the group. Desire to be liked. Compliance/identification. We don't want to appear foolish or be rejected so its an emotive rather than cognitive process. Because humans have a fear of rejection and a need for companionship. Can occur with strangers or with friends. Likely to be pronounced in stressful situation where there is a bigger need for social approval.
• Research support for Normative Social Influence
• Normative Social Influence


  • Hotel guests were given environmental benefit for reusing a towel. Half of the participants were also given normative info telling them that majority of the guests reused their towels. Participants who were given normative info reduced their need for towel.
• Normative Social Influence results in people changing their behaviour
• Normative Social Influence has high validity
• Normative Social Influence doesn't explain individual differences in conformity
• People who have high need for affiliation are more likely to conform
• Normative Social Influence can't be used to explain why all people conform
• Informational Social Influence


  Desire to be right- internalisation. Going along with someone because we genuinely think that they're right. The reason why individuals follow the behaviour of the majority is because people want to be right. Cognitive process as it has to do with what you think. Most likely to happen in new situations as we have no reference point for what is correct.
• Research support for Informational Social Influence
• Informational Social Influence


  • Students given maths problems to solve. Found out that students had greater conformity in questions which were more difficult and this was specifically true for students who rated their maths ability as poor. People conform in situations where they don't know the answer and in other situations they think that they better.
• Informational Social Influence


  • Participants were shown people's reactions to a televised US presidential debate on a screen. This produced a big shift in the participants judgements of the candidates performance.
• Informational Social Influence shows power of conformity
• Asch's research into conformity


  Asked volunteers to take part in a vision test however all but one of the participants in the test were confederates. Aim: to see if individuals will conform to the pressure from a group. Participants were seated in a room and asked to look at lines of different lengths and state which of the 3 lines is the same length as the standard line with an obvious answer. 75% conformed at least once. There was conformity of 37% in all 12 trials. Ash interviewed some of his participants and found out 3 reasons for conformity: distortion of perception- believe they're wrong, distortion of judgement- doubt their accuracy, distortion of action- don't want to look foolish.
• Asch's variations: task difficulty- the more difficult the more the conformity, size of majority -there was little conformity when the majority consisted of 1 or 2 people, unanimity- conformity reduced when participant gained a partner who broke the group consensus
• Asch's research has low ecological validity as the task of identifying lines is trivial so they had no reason not to conform, and the participants were strangers not friends which may not be true to real life situations
• Asch's research had ethical issues as participants were deceived and informed consent wouldn't have been possible
• Cultural factors affect conformity, with individualistic countries such as US showing lower levels of conformity than collectivist cultures such as Fiji and Japan
• Zimbardo's prison experiment


  Aim: if it was the characteristics of an individual that led to a behaviour, or the situation they were in. Procedures: Mock prison set in the basement of a psychology department. Male student volunteered to take part. Most stable one were chosen. Prisoners: given a number. Guards: given glasses, uniforms, whistles. Findings: Slow start but the prisoners became increasingly brutal. Some even worked unpaid hours. Within 2 days the prisoners rebelled against the guards. After the rebellion was put down the prisoners became depressed and anxious. The 14 day experiment had to end in 6 days. Conclusion: the power of situation to influence people's behaviour as all the prisoners and guards conformed to their roles as they were in a real prison.
• Zimbardo's prison experiment lacks ecological validity as the simulated prison is not realistic, and many aspects of prison life were absent
• Zimbardo's prison experiment may have demand characteristics as the participants may be just acting rather than conforming to the role
• Obedience


  Individual acts according to the order of an authority figure
• Milgram's research


  Aim: to find out whether people will obey the legitimate authority even if that involves harming another individual. Procedure: volunteer sample used to get 40 male participants from different backgrounds and occupations. The researcher explained that one person will randomly be assigned the role of the teacher and the other would be assigned the role of a learner. However in reality all the participants were assigned the role of the teacher. The participants would reads a series of word pairs and then the recall would be tested. Every time the learner got the answer wrong, the participants would shock them and the voltage of the shock would increase each time. If the researcher would ask to stop the experiment the researcher would respond with a series of prods such as 'you must continue'. Findings: Milgram found that all of the real participants went to at least 300 volts and 65% continued until the full 450 volts. Conclusion: He concluded that under the right circumstances ordinary people will obey unjust orders.
• Milgram's study has been criticised for lacking ecological validity as it tested obedience in a laboratory, which is very different to real-life situations of obedience
• Milgram deceived his participants and it was very difficult for them to withdraw from the experiment
• Milgram's research lacked population validity as it used a biased sample of 40 male volunteers
• Situational variables affecting obedience in Milgram's research


  • Proximity
  • Location
  • Uniform
• Proximity: Obedience dropped from 100% to 40% when the learner and the teacher were in the same room, and further to 30% when the participant had to force the learner's hands onto the shock plate. Obedience dropped to 21% when the experiment was in a different room to the teacher, giving instructions by phone.
• Location: Obedience dropped to 48% when the experiment was moved from Yale university to a run down building.
• Uniform: Obedience dropped to 20% when the experimenter in the lab coat got a phone call and left, and another confederate who acted as an ordinary member of the public took over.
• Milgram's research had ethical issues as participants were deceived and not protected from psychological harm
• Hofling et al (1966) found high levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors in a hospital ward, supporting the generalisability of Milgram's findings
• Agentic state


  An agentic state is when an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure and acts as their agent, with little personal responsibility. If the participants were told that they were responsible, it is possible that Milgram would have obtained very different results.