social influence

• Types of conformity


  Compliance, Internalisation, Identification
• Compliance


  The weakest form of conformity where individuals go along with the group to gain approval or avoid disapproval
• Internalisation


  The strongest form of conformity where individuals accept the group's viewpoint both publicly and privately
• Identification


  A form of conformity that has traits of both compliance and internalisation, where individuals accept influence to be associated with the group
• Informational social influence


  Conformity that occurs when an individual accepts information from others as evidence about reality
• Normative social influence


  Conformity that occurs when people go along with the group majority without personally accepting their point of view
• Variables affecting conformity


  • Group size, Unanimity, Task difficulty
• Asch's line study


  1. Participants shown a stimulus line and 3 other lines labelled A, B or C and asked to say which matched the stimulus

  2. All except one participant were confederates primed to give the same incorrect responses

  3. Real participant always answered last or second to last
• Asch's line study found that in control trials, participants gave incorrect responses 0.7% of the time, but in critical trials over one third (37%) of real participants conformed to the majority's incorrect answer
• Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment aimed to observe the interaction between two groups in different social roles in the absence of an obvious authority figure
• Zimbardo set up a mock prison at Stanford University with male student volunteers randomly allocated to play either the role of "prisoner" or "guard"
• Stanford Prison Study 1973


  Psychological study conducted at Stanford University in the basement of the psychology department
• Male student volunteers were psychologically and physically screened and 24 of the most stable students with no criminal tendencies were identified and randomly allocated to play either the role of a "prisoner" or "guard"
• Prisoner role


  1. Unexpectedly arrested at their home

  2. Deloused and given a prison uniform

  3. Assigned an ID number

  4. Referred to only by assigned ID number
• Guard role


  • Wore khaki uniforms
  • Wore reflective sunglasses (preventing eye-contact)
  • Issued handcuffs, truncheons and keys
• Prisoners were allowed certain rights such as 3 meals per day and 3 supervised visits to the toilet. They were also allowed to be visited 3 times per week. Each cell was allocated 3 prisoners from a total of 9
• The study was originally planned to last two weeks
• Individual differences


  • Not all the guards were sadistic and brutal, some opted to be fair or not exert control over the prisoners
• The behaviour between the prisoners was not identical either which makes generalising the findings difficult
• The study was recreated by the BBC (BBC Prison Study, Reicher and Haslam 2006)
• BBC prison study findings

  • The guards did not identify with their roles
  • The prisoners challenged their authority which undermines Zimbardo's findings
• Haslam and Reicher point out this shows the guards were choosing to behave this way rather than simply conforming to the social role itself
• Real-world applications


  Improving the conditions in young offender institutes
• Zimbardo believes the study was a failure as the condition of prisons in the US are according to him, worse than ever
• Demand characteristics


  Participants may have simply been "acting up" in their roles
• Banuazizi and Movahedi (1975) presented the procedure for Zimbardo's study to a large sample of people and the vast majority of them were able to guess the true nature of the study (that people would conform to their assigned roles)
• Participants also predicted the guards would likely be hostile while the prisoners would behave passively
• Some participants reacted by crying, rage and anxiety and even Zimbardo acknowledged the study should have been ended sooner
• The ethical concerns are the study could have long-term psychological effects on participants although Zimbardo offered debriefings for several years after
• The study was approved by the Stanford ethics committee
• The study offers insight as to why some of the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib as they may have been subject to situational factors making abuse more likely
• The study offers the possibility to reduce this with training and procedures for greater accountability
• Free will


  Not everyone conforms so freely as the BBC study demonstrated, this appears to be completely ignored in determining behaviour by Zimbardo which undermines his study
• Possible questions on conformity to social roles includes: Outline Zimbardo's study of conformity to social roles and its findings (6 marks) Outline how one study of conformity to social roles was conducted (4 marks) Outline the findings of one study of conformity to social roles (4 marks) Outline and evaluate Zimbardo's research into conformity to social roles (12 marks for AS and 16 marks for A-level)
• Situational variables that can affect obedience such as proximity, location and uniform as investigated by Milgram
• Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment 1963

  A landmark study into why people obey authority
• Milgram's experiment was interested in trying to understand the circumstances under which people may act against their consciences and inflict harm on others
• Milgram's method


  1. Placed an advert in the local paper looking for male volunteers

  2. From the volunteers who applied, 40 were eventually selected

  3. Volunteers were deceived and told they were taking part in a study on memory and learning

  4. Volunteers were invited individually and on arrival were introduced to an experimenter in a white coat and another middle-aged man who they were led to believe was another volunteer named "Mr Wallace"

  5. The real volunteer and Mr Wallace drew lots to decide which role they would play however this was rigged with so the real volunteer would always be the teacher and Mr Wallace (the confederate) was always the learner

  6. The real participant who was the designated teacher was instructed to apply shocks of increasing levels to the learner every time a question was answered incorrectly by them

  7. The real participant was given a shock of 45 volts to convince him this was authentic and the confederate (Mr Wallace) was strapped to the chair in the room next door

  8. The voltages increased from 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts in increments

  9. In truth, the learner received no electric shocks unknown to the real participant and he was instructed to give mostly incorrect answers

  10. Each time he was "shocked" by the real participant for an incorrect response, varied recorded responses were played

  11. At 150 volts the learner would begin to protest and refuse to take part further in the study complaining of heart problems

  12. At 315 volts, he would scream loudly and from 330 volts and upwards, he would not respond at all

  13. If the teacher (real participant) objected or displayed resistance to continue, they were given a series of verbal "prods" by the experimenter to continue the experiment
• Milgram's study found that out of 40 participants, 65% of them (25 people) went on to give the maximum shock of 450 volts. 100% of the participants went up to at least 300 volts. Only 12.5% (five) participants stopped administering shocks at 300 volts
• Some participants even began to show signs of distress such as laughing nervously or sweating while others showed no signs of distress focusing on only administering the shocks