Resisting social influence

• Social support

  seeing others resist social influence reduces pressure to obey or conform increasing individuals confidence
• Social support AO3

  + research support - Asch's variations - one confederate gave correct answer throughout and conformity rates dropped to 5%

  + research support - Milgrams variations - real participant paired with two additional confederates who played role of the teacher - both withdrew early - number of participants who continued to full 450v dropped from 65% to 10%
• locus of control - Rotter

  internal locus of control - people account for their own actions and control their own lives

  external locus of control - lives are controlled by external forces
• Locus of control AO3 support

  + research support - Spector - 157 students and found those with a high internal LOC were less likely to conform and those with a high external LOC were likely to conform but only in situations of informational social influence

  + research support - Oliner and Oliner - interviewed non-Jewish survivors of WW2 and compared with those who resisted orders to protect jews from nazis and those who hadn't - 406 'rescuers' were more likely to have high internal LOC vs 126 who followed orders
• Locus of control AO3 weakness

  -contradictory evidence - Twenge - meta analysis over 4 decades, over time people had become more external in their loc but also more resistant to obedience