Social influence

• Reasons for social influence

  Normative social influence: to fit in ; Informational social influence: to avoid getting something wrong
• Zimbado’s prison study A03


  Zimbado conformed to his role as chief- lack of validity as could be researcher bias ; showed how social roles can influence behaviour (stereotyped characteristic are universal) ; demand characteristics ( ‘roleplaying‘ may have been guessed at what was being experimented so they pretended rather than acted as though they actually would in that situation)
• milgrams shock study A03


  Shows how situational factors can affect obedience (authority via uniform and proximity) ; participants felt pressured to carry on so may not have been realistic ; participants genuinely believed they were inflicting harm (validity)
• Asch line study A03


  Limited application ( individualist cultures may differ in results due to lower levels of conforming compared to collectivist cultures) ; demand characteristics (seen as trivial so no reason not to conform) ; levels of conformity changed over time (performed in 1950, research redone more recently and results differed due to less likelihood of conforming) ; gender/culture bias (androcentric)
• Types of conformity - Kelman

  Internalisation- private and public opinion changes (deep) ; identification- changes to fit in with public group (intermediate) ; compliance- goes along with group but personal opinions stay the same (shallow)
• conformity types/reasons A03

  dissent reduces power of ISI & NSI ; research support for ISI (Asch study) ; nAffiliators want to be liked more so becomes excessive
• Asch line study research findings


  75% conformed at least once, 32% was the overall rate of conformity, 5% did on all trials , said on an interview they conformed in order to avoid rejection
• Agency theory

  Agentic state: acts as an agent to somebody ; Autonomous: acts independently ; agentic shift: changing from autonomous to agentic states due to an authority figure’s presence
• Legitimacy of authority

  Hierarchy of authority in society (power)
• Dispositional explanations to obedience

  Authoritarian personality: Adorno’s F-scale to measure attitudes to authority, characteristics show extreme belief in authority and obey it blindly, can be result of harsh parenting
• Evaluation of authoritarian personality

  Milgrams study could be supporting evidence as shows authoritarian personality traits ; can’t explain changing levels of obedience over time ; cultural variations (cultures obtain different aspects)
• Zimbados study and findings

  Used a mock prison and assigned 11 prisoners and 10 guards as roles to portray in the environment to see if they conform to the stereotypical roles, made use of uniforms and rules to follow or command.

  Guards became brutal and aggressive, prisoners became compliant and withdrawn
• Situational variables of obedience

  Proximity (distance) ; uniform ; location
• Milgrams shock study findings 


  65% did 450V, 100% did 300V, showed nervous and worry signs (biting nails ans sweating), were briefed afterwards
• Resistance to social influence

  Social support: dissenters increase chances of them not conforming or obeying due to increasing confidence ; Locus of control: people with high internal control don’t obey others as have strong feelings towards self control
• Types of minority influence

  Consistency ; commitment (augmentation principle, example personal sacrifices shows reason to listen and attract attention) ; flexibility ; snowball effect (deeper thought into minority view can gather momentum to become majority)
• Minority influence A03

  Moscovicis research shows effects of consistency (draws attention when consistently dissenting) ; minority views have a longer effect as it requires deeper thought ; research into it is often trivial so has limited real-life application
• social change on social influence

  Minority influence has shown to have progression (eg civil rights movement in USA) ; NSI can lead to social change by drawing attention to what the majority is doing (social norms) ; disobedient role models can show reverse effect of obedience and conformity as people might see the thrill of disobeying as something to conform to
• Social Change A03

  Minority is indirect so doesn’t always have its effects ; majority views are usually more deeper processed than minority ; NSI is a valid explanation of social change
• Asch’s conformity research

  Variations: task difficulty (more difficult task means more likely to conform (ISI)), group size (smaller amount of people feel less obliged to conform) and unanimity (presence of someone else that isn’t conforming);
• Asch Line Study 


  Tested matching a set ambiguous line to other versions as a comparison match, 123 American males, 6/8 confederates in each group who persistently gave incorrect answers 12/18 trials
• Milgram’s shock study 


  Tampered role assignment to be a learner or teacher (all participants were the teacher, confederate as the learner), tested against repeating back words and confederate purposely said it wrong to result in inflicting harm via shocks (increased voltage each time), researcher present in a white coat and vaguely prompted them to carry on (recognising authority)
• Socio-psychological factors of obedience

  Binding factors: refusal to acknowledge the guilt/consequence of actions, for example by pushing the blame onto someone else ; destructive obedience: following a bad influential authority figure resulting in destructive behaviour
• Socio-psychological factors of obedience A03

  • Blass and Schmitt: showed film of Milgrams study and asked to identify who they felt was responsible for harm to the learner, they said the ‘experimenter’ meaning they recognise authority does effect obedience
  • Hofling et al: nurses obeyed breaching instructions over the phone off doctor even though they knew they shouldn’t, proves legitimacy of authority has control over obedience and applies binding factors