social influence

• identification

  private and public views only change within the group
• internalisation


  private and public views change to match the group
• compliance


  opinions change publicly but not privately
• normative social influence 


  desire to be liked-individual wants to appear to be normal
• informational social influence

  driven by desire to be correct
• Asch study- groups from 8-10 (123 under grads in total) with only 1 real participant and the rest being confederates there where 12 trials where participants are asked which line matches the shown line- confederates gave wrong answers to see if the participant would conform
• asch study findings: 75% of participants conformed to the majority view once: overall was 32%:5% conformed every time
• group size: 10-12 participants, 1-2 researchers, 1-2 observers-conformity increased with group size
• unanimity:when one confederate gave the correct answer
• task difficulty: the harder the task the more likely people where to conform
• acsh evaluation: took place at a time where conformity was high-when repeated (396 trials) conformity dropped to 15%
• asch evaluation: low generalisability- only used on one particular group of people- cannot be generalised to women/ older people
• asch evaluation: low ecological validity-particapants where looking at lines- doesnt happen in real life-cannot be applied to real life scenarios
• Zimbardo's experiment into social roles: fake prison set up in the basement of Sandford university using 24 male volunteer student participants: they where randomly allocated being prisoners or guards: participants conformed to their roles with guards becoming aggressive and prisoners showing high signs of stress: experiment was cancelled after 6 days due to the prisoners showing high signs of mental discomfort.
• Zimbardo evaluation: some guards didn't conform into these sadistic roles: participants chose how to behave
• Zimbardo evaluation: psychological harm to prisoners- experiment should of been stopped sooner-participants received many debriefing sessions for no long lasting effects-experiment was repeated by other researchers but minimised amount of emotional harm the pisoners would face
• Zimbardo evaluation: low generalisability due to no women/ different ages
• agentic state


  state of mind where a person believes they have no responsibility for their actions
• legitimacy of authority 


  individuals learn the social hierarchy and to obey to people above them
• mailgrams experiment: involved 40 participants: used to measure obedience: two confeds and 1 real participant
• milgram findings that lowered obedience: location 48%: learner in the room 40%: teacher pushing had down 30%: experimenter over phone 21%: participant with fake participant saying no 10%
• social support


  seeing other people resist reduces pressure to conform
• externality


  tend to believe their behaviour and experience is caused by events outside their control
• internality


  tend to believe that they are responsible for their behaviours/ experiences
• locus of control


  people differ on what they believe effects the outcomes of their actions
• consistency


  minorities are more effective if they repeat the same message over time
• commitment 


  if minority suffers for their views people are more likely to take them seriously
• flexibility 


  a willingness to compromise when expressing a position
• snowball effect


  where a minority influence spreads more widely until reaching a tipping point which leads to a wide scale social change