social influence

Cards (84)

  • conformity
    The tendency for people to adopt the behaviours, attitudes, and values of other members of a reference group (Zimbardo et al)
  • what are the 3 types of conformity (Kelman)
    • internalisation
    • identification
    • compliance
  • internalisation
    deepest level of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct and likely to be a permanent change
  • internalisation examples
    external - giving up meat at uni as your vegetarian friend convinced you is important 
    internal - when you go home to visit your family you only eat meat-free food
  • identification
    A moderate type of conformity is where we act in the same way as the group because we value it and want to be part of it. But we don't necessarily agree with everything the majority believes
  • identification examples
    external - going to T.S concert with school friends + having a great time
    internal - going to different concerts with work friends and having a great time
  • compliance
    a superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. The change in our behaviour only lasts as long as the group is monitoring us
  • compliance examples
    external - at work everyone wears a poppy for remembrance day
    internal - you disagree with this as you are a pacifist
  • explanations of conformity
    • normative social influence 
    • informational social influence
  • normative social influence

    comes from our desire to be liked and accepted. we look to others whom we admire or want to be like to guide us in how to behave. 
    it is strongest when the group is important to us and we spend a lot of time with them 
    e.g phoning a friend to see what they are wearing at a party
  • informational social influence
    comes from our desire to do what is right. we look to others whom we believe to be correct to guide us in how to behave. strongest in ambiguous situations but also when it's an emergency or an expert is present
    e.g. looking at a teacher when the alarm goes off
  • research support for normative social influence
    • research by Schulz (1999) supports normative social influence 
    • in Schulz's recycling study households were exposed to pleas to increase recycling by informative messages or data on neighbourhood recycling behaviours 
    • this led to a change in informative conditions however a sharp rise in recycling behaviour
    • this supports normative social influence as they changed their behaviour of recycling to be accepted into the neighbourhood suggesting behavioural changes can have positive impacts
  • further research support for normative social influence
    • research by Asch (1951) shows the power of normative social influence when in a group situation 
    • pps in this study conformed to the answers given by a majority group of confederates when asked to estimate the length of a line 
    • what is significant is that the answer given was very clearly incorrect yet PPs still went along with the majority 
    • this shows that the pressure to be accepted by the group is strong enough to change people's responses - even when they know they are right
  • research support for informational social influence
    • research into informational social influence is supported by Lucas (2006
    • pps gave answers to a range of mathematical problems to rate their mathematical ability/understanding 
    • more difficult problems led to more conformity, especially for those rating maths understanding as 'poor' 
    • this supports informational social influence as pps changed behaviour due to their desire to be correct and lack of confidence in their ability
  • variations of asch support for normative and information social influence
    • group size - 2-5
    • unanimity - break unanimity than conformity is reduced 
    • the difficulty of the task - correct or more difficult support information social influence
  • Asch line study (aims)
    Asch's (1951) aim was to demonstrate the power of conformity within groups
  • Asch line study (procedures)
    one card was a standard and the other had 3 comparisons lines 
    • one was the same length as the standard + and the other two were clearly different. the participant was asked which of the 3 lines matched the standard 
    • the participants in the study were 123 American male undergraduates each participant was tested individually with 6-8 confederates 
    • 18 trials and 12 critical confederates gave wrong answers
  • Asch line study (findings)
    • naive pps gave wrong answers 36.8% of the time 
    • overall 25% of pps didn't conform meaning 75% conformed at least once 
    • the term Asch effect has been used to describe this result - the extent to which pps conform is unambiguous most pps conform to avoid rejection (normative social influence)
  • Asch line study (variations)
    • group size - 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8% but adding further made little difference 
    • unanimity - confederate (I) gave the correct answer therefore social conformity dropped to 5%
    • the difficulty of the task - made line judging more difficult and found that conformity rose under these conditions. suggests informational social influence plays a role in challenging tasks
  • limitation of Asch study (temporal validity)
    • one critique of Asch's study is that people now would not react in the same way and would be much less likely to conform 
    • this was shown in Perrin and Spencer's 1980 replication of Asch which was conducted in the UK and used engineering students
    • there was a significant reduction in conformity with only 1 of the 369 pps conforming
    • this shows that the original study lacks temporal validity as the conformity displayed was not consistent 30 years later. this may be due to a shift in social norms and different political context
  • limitation of Asch study
    • early research into conformity used participants from a small percentage of the population 
    • for example, Asch used all male students from an individualist culture in his research 
    • this is not ideal as there may be gender differences in conformity, similarly, we would expect cultural differences with collectivist cultures being more conformist as the group is more important than the individual 
    • for this reason, it is difficult to generalise data collected from this group to females, to collect cultures, to non-students etc meaning it has limited generalisability
  • limitation of Asch study (ecological validity)
    • the research of Asch should be criticised for lacking ecological validity 
    • the task set would have been novel to the participants as people would rarely be asked to compare sizes/lengths
    • therefore their behaviour would probably have been less natural than if the task were a more mundane one such as Schultz's where participants were measured on recycling behaviour 
    • this reduces the application of the research and means that the behaviour observed may have been affected by the unusualness of the task set
  • supporting research for Asch study
    • Deutsche and Gerrard's (1955) study adds validity to Asch's research by showing how his PPs were experiencing normative social influence 
    • in this variation of Asch, they asked PPs to write their answers to the task and then throw the paper away 
    • conformity dropped to 5% in this variation which had a similar sample as Asch and was carried out at a similar time 
    • this shows that individuals in Asch were conforming due to the desire to be liked rather than the desire to be right as when answering privately they gave the obvious right answer
  • zimbardo study (aims)
    Zimbardo (1973) examines whether people conform to social roles when placed in a mock prison environment. whether the behaviour is due to internal or external factors
  • zimbardo study (procedure)
    • set up a mock prison in the basement of the psych department at Stanford
    • advertised to students selecting the emotionally stable pps and these students were assigned a role randomly (prisoner or guard)
    • heighten realism so prisoners were arrested in their own homes and delivered to the prison (issued uniform and number only number used)
    • the social roles of the prisoner + and guards were strictly divided and prisoners had 16 rules to follow enforced by the guards
    • guards had complete control + underlining the role (handcuffs, uniform and mirror shades)
  • zimbardo study (findings)
    • guards' behaviour became a threat to prisoners' psychological and physical health so the study stopped on day 6/14
    • within 2 days prisoners rebelled against harsh treatment but this was stopped by abusive guards dehumanising prisoners (sadistic)
    • 5 prisoners were released early due to reactions to physical + and mental torment and the experiment was terminated after 6 days as inhumane
  • zimbardo study (conclusion)

    the simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence people's behaviour. guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their roles. These roles were easily taken even volunteers found themselves behaving as if they were in a prison rather than a psychological study
  • supporting research for zimbardo study (hospital)
    • supporting research comes from Orlando (1973) who used hospital staff as PPs in the psychiatric unit where they worked 
    • within the short term, the behaviour of the mock patients was almost identical to that of real patients in the hospital
    • some suffered withdrawal, depression and weeping. others tried to escape
    • this supports Zimbardo's suggestion that people will readily conform to the role they are given
  • limitation of zimbardo study
    • the BBC prison study challenges Zimbardo's argument that his PPs easily conformed to their roles
    • this recreation found prisoners did not conform to their expected role. actually ended up harassing the guards as they had a shared social identity
    • this creates a sense of togetherness between group members.leads to increased perceptions of trust, cooperation and social support
    • showing that the pps in the Zimbardo study were not conforming due to the social roles they were given but rather they had a shared sense of identity likely missing for the prisoners
  • limitation of zimbardo study (ethical issues)
    • Zimbardo had many criticisms levelled at him - not least the ethical issues he contravened 
    • many of the PPs suffered psychological harm during the experiment, experiencing issues of humiliation and distress 
    • additionally, Zimbardo's role as superintendent meant he was unable to remain objective and his priority was the effective running of the prison as opposed to the welfare of his PPs
    • this is unacceptable and were these issues ever violated by a psychologist today they would be heavily reprimanded and ousted from the psychological community
  • limitation of zimbardo study
    • another criticism directed at Zimbardo was his exaggeration of the power of situational factors while minimising the effect of dispositional factors 
    • as only one-third of guards acted in a brutal manner this would suggest that there must have been factors other than the situation which led to the behaviour
    • therefore, we should not ignore the role personality factors played in this experiment 
    • the difference in the guard's behaviour suggests that we can still behave in a way we deem right or wrong despite whatever social role we are fulfilling
  • milgram (aims)
    how far people would go in obeying an instruction that involved harming people - obeying an authority figure (1963)
  • milgram (procedures)
    • 40 male pps aged between 20-50 from a range of professions were paid $4.50 to participant 
    • Participants said it was an experiment to see the effect of punishment on learning 
    • it was fixed so pps gave the role of a teacher while the actor had the role of a learner. learner + teacher was in separate rooms, and the learner had to answer questions (wrong answer = shocked)
    • voltage started at 15V increasing in 15V increments to 450V - participants recieved 45V example shock 
    • when the teacher showed reluctance to give 4 props 'it is absolutely essential that you continue'
  • milgram (findings)
    • no pps stopped below 300 volts
    • 12.5% stopped at 300v
    • 65% continued to the highest level of 450v
    • pps showed signs of tension - 'sweat, tremble, stutter, bite lips,
    • 84% were glad they participated
  • milgram (conclusion)
    • obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up
    • ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure even to the extent of killing an individual
  • supporting reseach for milgram (external validity)
    • supporting research comes from a field experiment by Hofling et al (1966) who investigated the obedience levels of nurses in a hospital ward
    • they studied how the nurses responded to unjustified demands from doctors such as giving twice the recommended dosage of a drug to a patient 
    • they found high levels of obedience as 21 of the 22 nurses obeyed the doctor
    • this adds external validity to Milgram's experiment - a factor he was criticised for lacking in his original, lab-based study
  • supporting research for milgram
    • Milgram's work has also been criticised for lacing internal validity as it has been suggested his participants did not truly believe they went delivering these shocks 
    • this was reinforced by the work of Perry who analysed tape recordings from the experiment and found many PPs expressed doubts about the authenticity of the task 
    • however, Sheridan + King conducted a study in which real puppies were genuinely shocked and found equally high levels of obedience (20/26)
    • this suggests that PPs in Milgram's study genuinely believed they were giving shocks
  • limitation of Milgram (population validity)
    • another reason Milgram was criticised was for his lack of population validity as he used males 
    • there may be gender differences in obedience levels with women more/less likely to obey 
    • this is supported by the findings of the Sheridan + King study where 100% of women obeyed and only 54% of men did 
    • this would suggest Milgram was wrong to exclude females. Yet when he replicated his study on women he found they gave the same level of obedience
  • limitation of Milgram (ethics)
    • Milgram has been viciously criticised for his lack of consideration of ethics 
    • he deceived the PPs about the fact they were not actually delivering electric shocks and this had a knock-on effect on informed consent (they could not give it)
    • additionally, he did not protect his PPs from psychological harm as they experienced trauma in delivering the shocks and humiliation upon finding out the extent of the deceit 
    • this is not acceptable and such research would never be approved today
  • what causes obedience
    • situational factors 
    • socio-psychological factors
    • dispositional factors