social influence studies

• CONFORMITY


  - ASCH COLE - participants shown a standard line next to 3 comparison lines and asked to identify which line matched standard line - 6 confederates purposely answered wrong on 12/18 trials - found that participants conformed 37% of the time, 75% conformed at least once and 5% conformed every time to wrong answer - in control group participants only answered wrong 1% of the time

  
  

  - JENNESS JELLYBEAN - participants asked privately to guess number of jellybeans in a jar, then put into groups and asked to guess again, when later privately asked to guess number of jellybeans, found most participants answers to be closer to the group than their original answer
• VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY


  ASCH VARIATIONS

  GROUP SIZE - found that conformity rates increased as number of confederates increased up to 3, then no further effect on conformity was seen when adding more confederates

  
  

  UNANIMITY OF MAJORITY -elms & milgram interviewed a small sample of milgram's original participants who had fully obeyed, and found they scored significantly higher on the f-scale test than participants who had disobeyed

  
  

  TASK DIFFICULTY - found that when asch made the lines more similar length, increasing task difficulty, conformity rates increased
• CONFORMITY TO SOCIAL ROLES

  ZIMBARDO - stanford prison experiment - 21 volunteer participants after undergoing psychiatric assessment, randomly assigned 11 prisoners and 10 guards

  - prisoners 'arrested' taken to underground of stanford university and sripped, deloused and given identification number

  - guards given uniform and sunglasses

  - set to last 14 days, prisoners growing increasingly submissive and guards increasingly aggressive, cancelled after 6 days
• OBEDIENCE


  MILGRAM - obedience study - participants told they were investigating punishment on learning, and instructed to give electric shock to a 'learner' confederate participant every time they gave a wrong answer 100% of participants gave shocks up to 300v, 65% gave shocks up to 450v
• SITUATIONAL VARIABLES AFFECTING OBEDIENCE

  PROXIMITY - milgram found that when the teacher and learner were in the same room so the 'teacher' could see the learner getting shocked and becoming distressed, obedience rates declined from 65% to 40%

  
  

  LOCATION - Milgram performed a variation of his study and found that when the study took place in a run down office block, obedience dropped from 65% (when in yale university) to 47.5%

  
  

  UNIFORM - Bickman (1974) found that 38% would obey a stranger in security guard uniform when asked to do a mundane task, such a pick up rubbish/walk somewhere else, compared to 19% when in civilian clothes
• AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY


  - ADORNO ET AL - created the 'f-scale' questionnaire, which comprised of 30 questions designed to measure the extent of an individual's authoritarian personality - studying 2000 white middle class americans - found that people who scored higher held contempt for the weak, showed more admiration for high status individuals and exhibited 'black and white' views

  
  

  - ELMS & MILGRAM interviewed a small sample of milgram's original participants who had fully obeyed, and found they scored significantly higher on the f-scale test than participants who had disobeyed
• SOCIAL SUPPORT AS RESISTANCE TO SOCIAL INFLUENCE

  ASCH - conducted variation of COLE study by having one confederate placed before participants give correct answer, whilst all others still gave incorrect answers - found conformity dropped from the original 37% to 5.5%- found even when the confederate also gave a wrong answer but a DIFFERENT wrong answer to the other confederates, conformity still dropped to 9%
• LOCUS OF CONTROL AS RESISTANCE TO SOCIAL INFLUENCE

  ATVGIS (1998) performed a meta-anaylsis of studies looking into LOC and conformity, and found that individuals who scored higher for having an external locus of control were more easily persuaded and more likely to conform
• MINORITY INFLUENCE


  MOSCOVICI - - a lab experiment where participants were in a group with two confederates (the minority) and four naive participants (the majority). participants were shown 36 blue slides, each a different shade of blue and were asked to say whether the slide was blue or green.- confederates deliberately said they were green on two-thirds of the trials, thus producing a consistent minority view- a control group was also used consisting of participants only - no confederates -found that when the confederates answered consistently wrongly, participants conformed 8.2% of the time (saying the slides were green), however when the confederates were inconsistent, conformity rates dropped to 1%

  
  

  WOOD ET AL - conducted a meta-analysis of over 97 minority groups and their influence.- found that those who remained the most consistent were seen to have the most level of influence supporting consistency as a valuable trait for minority influence to occur
• SOCIAL CHANGE


  - REAL LIFE APPLICATIONS

  
  

  - SUFFRAGETTE MOVEMENT FOR SNOWBALL EFFECT

  
  

  - NELSON MANDELA FOR AUGMENTATION PRINCIPLE