Social Influence

• What is Social Influence?

  How our behaviours, attitudes and ideas can be affected by people around us.
• What is Conformity?

  When people change their behaviour, attitudes and ideas because of other members in a group.
• What are the three different types of conformity?

  Compliance; Internalisation and Identification.
• Define compliance.

  When an individual changes their public view or behaviour but their private views remain the same.
• Define Internalisation.

  When an individual changes their public view and their private beliefs also change in accordance with the beliefs of a group.
• Define Identification.

  When an individual adjusts their behaviour and opinions to a group because membership of the group is desirable.
• What was the aim of Asch's line study?

  To investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers. 
• Describe the procedure of Asch's line study. (1)

  123 American male student volunteers took part in what they were told was a study of visual perception.
• Describe the procedure of Asch's line study. (2)

  Individual participants were placed in groups with between six and eight others, sat either in a line or around a table, who in reality were fake participants (confederates).
• Describe the procedure of Asch's line study. (3)

  The task was to say which comparison line, A, B or C, was the same as a stimulus line on 18 different trials.
• Describe the procedure of Asch's line study. (4)

  12 of these were critical trials, where confederates gave identical wrong answers and the real participant always answered last or last but one.
• Describe the procedure of Asch's line study. (5)

  There was also a control group of 36 participants who were tested individually on 20 trials to see accurate individual judgements were.
• What were the quantitive findings of Asch's study?

  36.8% conformed overall

  75% of the participants conformed at least once.

  5% conformed on every trial.

  The control group had an error rate of less than 0.5% which shows how obvious the correct answers were (an unambiguous task)
• Why did Asch repeat his study?

  To investigate factors that affected levels of conformity, Asch repeated his original study but added variations to the procedure to see its impact on conformity rates.
• What were the three changed variables in Asch's study?

  Task difficulty; group size and breaking the agreement (unanimity) of the group.
• What was the procedure for task difficulty and its findings?

  Asch made the task more difficult by making the line lengths more similar and he found that conformity levels increased.
• What was the procedure for group size and its findings?

  Asch changed the number of confederates to vary the size of the majority. He found that a majority of 2 gave a low conformity rate of 13%. A majority of three confederates the conformity rate was 32% which was similar to the original study. Adding more to the majority made little difference after a majority of 3.
• What was the procedure for breaking the agreement of the group and its findings?

  Asch had one confederate give the correct answer, to break the agreement of the group. He found that conformity decreased to 5.5%. Then, Asch had one confederate gave a different wrong answer. He found that conformity rates decreased to 9%.
• Another AO3 para for Asch.

  Weakness - ethical issues - deception - (confederates; aim)

  Psychological harm - embarrassed/humiliated when true aim was told.
• What is meant by Normative Social Influence?

  People conform because they want others to like and respect them, not to ridicule and reject them.  This is an emotional process.  This does not mean that people truly agree with the group and is temporary.
• What is meant by Informational social influence?

  When people are motivated to conform to a majority because of the desire to be right. When individuals are uncertain about something, they look at the behaviour and opinions of others and this helps shape their own thoughts and behaviours.  This generally occurs in unfamiliar situations or situations where there is no obvious correct answer. (ambiguous).
• What does ACCATS stand for?

  Attention; Consistency; Commitment; Augmentation Principle; The Snowball Effect and Social Cryptomnesia.
• Agentic shift


  When people are in the presence of an authority figure the agentic shift occurs.
• Milgram Obedience Procedure


  An experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram to study the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructs them to perform acts that conflict with their personal conscience
• Participants


  • 40 American males aged 20-50 who responded to a newspaper advert to volunteer for a study of memory and learning at Yale University Psychology department
  • Paid $4.50 for participating
• Learner


  • Confederate called 'Mr Wallace' who the real participant thought was another participant
• Experiment procedure

  1. Participants told they would either be a 'Teacher or a 'Learner'

  2. Experimenter explained the punishments would involve increasingly severe electric shocks

  3. All three went into an adjoining room

  4. Real participant received a real shock of 45 volts to convince them the shocks were authentic

  5. Shocks started at 15V and went up in 15V increments to 450V

  6. Shocks labelled 'slight shock', 'intense shock' all the way through to 'danger-severe shock'

  7. 'Learner' had to learn word pair associations

  8. Each time 'Learner' gave an incorrect answer, experimenter instructed participant Teacher to give an electric shock, increasing the voltage by 15V each time

  9. 'Learner' began to protest at 150V and demanded to be released

  10. Protests became louder until at 300V the 'Learner' refused to answer Qs, saying he had heart problems

  11. At 315v 'Learner' screamed loudly and 330V became silent

  12. Each time participant questioned the procedure, experimenter gave 'prods' and said "The experiment requires that you continue" or "You have no choice, you must go on"
• Milgram's findings.


  65% of participants continued to the highest level of 450 volts;

  100% participants continued to at least 300 volts;

  12.5% of participants stopped at 300 volts;

  Many participants showed distress (sweating/trembling/stuttering), 3 participants had  ‘full blown seizures’
• What was Zimbardo's aim?

  -To investigate the extent to which people would conform to the social roles of prisoner and guard in a simulation of prison life.

  -To test the dispositional versus situational hypothesis of prison violence.
• Zimbardo's procedure


  1. Basement of the psychology department at Stanford University converted into a 'mock prison'

  2. Participants checked for violent and criminal behaviour

  3. 24 students rated as the most physically and mentally stable, mature and free from anti-social and criminal tendencies were selected

  4. Guard and prisoner roles randomly allocated

  5. Zimbardo played the role of the prison 'Superintendent'

  6. Controlled, participant observation

  7. 'Prisoners' arrested by the real local police and then fingerprinted

  8. 'Prisoners' referred to by number

  9. 'Guards' wore khaki uniforms, reflective sunglasses and were issued with handcuffs, keys and truncheons (although physical punishment was not permitted)

  10. Study planned to run for two weeks but stopped after 6 days
• What were Zimbardo's findings?

  1. Both the guards and prisoners settled quickly into their social roles
  2. After the guards put a stop to an initial prisoner rebellion, the guards taunted prisoners, giving them meaningless, boring and degrading tasks such as cleaning out the toilets with their bare hands.
  3. Prisoners referred to each other and themselves by their prison numbers instead of names
  4. After 36 hours, one prisoner had to be released because of fits of crying and rage
  5. A fifth prisoner asked for ‘parole’ instead of asking to leave the experiment and developed a rash when his parole was denied.