Social Influence

• What is conformity?


  Yielding to group pressure, or the influence a group has over an individual. While most people see themselves as autonomous, they still tend to conform to social norms which can be explicit (e.g signs) or implicit (e.g not standing too close)
• We conform to social norms which may be either E_______ or I_______

  explicit, implicit
• How did David Myers (1999) define conformity?

  "A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure"
• What are Kelman's 3 types of conformity?

  Compliance

  
  

  Identification

  
  

  Internalisation
• What is Compliance in conformity?

  "temporary conformity"

  
  

  .Publicly conforming to the behaviour or views of others but privately maintaining ones own views
• What is Identification in conformity?

  "Part-time conformity"

  
  

  .A type of conformity in which people change their beliefs to fit in with a group, although they do not keep these views after leaving the group
• What is Internalisation in conformity?

  "Full-time conformity"

  
  

  .A conversion of private views to match a group.
• A true _______________ of views will survive even if contact is lost with the influencer

  internalisation
• What was the aim of Asch's study?

  To see if participants would conform to majority social influence to give incorrect answers in a situation where the correct answer was obvious.
• What did the total sample of real participants contain in Asch's study?

  123 male college students
• How many confederates did Asch use in each study?

  6
• Outline the procedure of Asch's study


  .1 participant and 6 confederates looked at two cards

  .One card showed a verticial line, the other showed 3 lines of different lengths

  .Participants had to call out which of the 3 lines were the same as the test line.

  .Real Participants answered last

  .Confederates gave unanimous wrong answers on critical trials
• In Asch's study __/__ trials were critical

  12/18
• What % of critical trials did participants conform on?

  32%
• What % of participants conformed at least once in Asch's study?

  76%
• __% of participants never conformed in Asch's study

  24%
• What conclusion did Asch reach?

  Even in ambiguous situations there may be group pressure to conform especially if the group is a unanimous majority.
• What, did Asch conclude, are reasons for conformity?

  Normative and informational social influence
• Positively evaluate Asch's study into Majority influence


  .Highly-controlled lab experiment
• Negatively evaluate Asch's study into majority social influence

  .Lacks ecological validity - Artificial task, places with srangers

  
  

  .Lacks Temporal Validity due to Mcarthyism, so the Asch effect may not be a fundamental part of humans

  
  

  .Confederates may not have been convincing

  
  

  LOw popuation validity
• WHo compared conformity rates across cultures?

  smith et al
• What is the conformity rate in individualist cultures?

  25%
• What is the conformity rate in collectivist cultures?

  37%
• Asch's study was conducted in ____

  1951
• Outline the procedure of Perrin and Spencer's study


  .Repeated Asch with engineering students in the 1980 in the UK
• Perrin and Spencer found that _ student conformed in ___ trials

  1, 396
• How did Mori and Arai overcome the issue of how convincing the confederates were?

  .Only used true Participants, wearing glasses with polarising filters. 3 wore identical glasses and a 4th saw different lines through different glasses
• What did Mori and Arai find

  36% of participants conformed on 12 trials
• What is normative social influence and which of the 3 types of conformity does it link to?

  .Influence based on a desire to be liked.

  
  

  .Linked to compliance.
• What is an important factor for normative social influence to take place?

  People believe they are under serveillance by a group
• What is informational social influence? Which of the 3 types of conformity does it link to?

  .Based on a desire to be right. This type of influence is stronger in ambiguous situations or when we perceive the majority as experts

  
  

  .Linked to identification and Internalisation.
• Informational social influence is stronger in situations where we perceive others as _______

  ambiguous, experts
• Positively evaluate explanations of conformity


  .Research support for informational social influence from a musical variation of Asch's study
• Outline the procedure of a variation of Asch which used musical notes

  .Participants asked to judge which comparison musical note was the same as the standard note

  .Only 1 confederate

  .confederate sometimes introduced himself as a music expert
• What were the findings of the variation of Asch which used musical notes?

  Higher conformity when the confederate introduced himself as a musical expert
• Negatively evaluate explanations of conformity


  .Individual differences in normative social influence (Doesn't affect everyone the same)

  
  

  .Normative and informational social influence often overlap
• ______ and ______ found that students high in need of affiliation were ____ likely to conform

  Mcghee and Teevan, more
• Give an example of how NSI and ISI often overlap

  Dissenters in Asch's study may have reduced the majorities power either by Social support (NSI) or by being an alternative source of information (ISI)
• What 3 factors affect conformity?

  Group Size

  
  

  Unanimity

  
  

  Task difficulty
• How did Asch investigate the effect of group size on conformity?

  Manipulated the size of the group of confederates using 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10 and 15