Social influence

• Internalisation

  Making the views or values of others as your own
• Informational social influence is a form of internalisation where you use the preknowledge of others as your own in a behavioural or social setting
• Compliance

  Conforming to the views of others out of others despite not agreeing normative social influence is a form of compliance in which a person does this to appear normal
• Identification

  Conforming to a social role and doing what’s expected of you
• Sheriff(1935) effects of informational social influence

  black room with a stationary light the participants were told it was and had to guess how it’s was moved

  • when tested alone they formed personal norms but when in groups their estimates began to converge into a group estimate and became more alike and developed a group norm
  • conclusion shows how people use informational social influence to make a judgement
  • lab exp so it lacks ecological validuty as its artificial and can’t be applied to real life
  • ethical issuers as it deceived the participants
• Asch (1951) conformity on an unambiguous task match stick exp

  • Participant given a stick as a standard length there was only one participant out of eight the rest were confederate and always went 7th or 8th
  • 12/18 critical groups confederates said the match most different from standard length
  • control groups made their choice privately and guessed wrong 0.7% of the time
  • in the critical they conformed 37% of the time and 75% at least once
  • conclusion shows how people will change their behaviour in order to appear normal
  • conclusions lab exp and low eco validity
• Situational factors are the external factors that influence the behaviour of an individual.

  dispositional factors are persons internal characteristics that can affect conformity
• Asch found that those with more confidence in their own judgement were more likely to nit conform

  Perrin and Spencer (1980)

  replicated Aschs experiment with engineers and had less conformity which may be due to confidence in accurate observations
• Eagly and carli (1980) found there was a noticed difference in when there is group pressure from and audience

  Eagly (1987) argued women and men’s different social roles explain the diffene in conformity

  men like assertiveness and independence so they‘re less likely to conform than women who like group unity and harmony so maintaining your own opinion under pressure fits with percieved male roles
• Most people in society can hold several social roles at the once

  social roles are set behavioural and expectations that come with holding a position e.g a mother is expected to watch a child when we accept a social role we internalise it and allow it to shape our behaviour
• milgrams agency theory (1973) explains obedience

  when a person behaves on the behalf of an external authority they’re said to enter an agentic state acting on the behalf of a third party rather than one’s own personal reason
• The Agentin theory states when acting on the wishes of other we feel less responsible for our actions

  in the Yale experiment the participant would ask who would be responsible for any actions the researcher claimed it and had most participants continue after this answer
• Evaluation of agency theory

  • the theory doesn’t explain why some exhibit independent behaviour
  • people are more likely to be obedient to legitimate authority and socialised to recognise it e.g having a defined social role which is respected as it may be one of knowledge or legal power
• Bickman (1974)

  • people were asked to pick up litter by people of different authority the guard uniform received higher rates of obedience than per day a milkman or suit
• Adornos theory of authoritarian personalities is a dispositional explanation for obedience

  Adorno et al (1950)

  • propose over strict parenting created a child conditioned to obey authority unquestioned
  • developed to argue strict parenting creates prejudice the child is trapped which can lead to aggression in later life but also afraid of discipline
• Authoritarian personality


  a collection of traits they thought resulted from over strict parenting
• The F(facism) - scale developed by Adorno et Al (1950) as a scale to measure how strong a persons authoritarian traits are it was done at the end of WWII to find an acclamation for the persecution of Jews by nazis
• Am and milgram (1966) found participants who scored higher on the f-scale were more willing to give the shocks

  • however this does not mean authoritarian traits and over strict parenting result in obedience
  • factors such as education can cause this
  • milgram found situational factors such as proximity had a bigger effect on obedience but doesn’t explain how whole societies become obedient
• Resistance is affected by a locus control , a personality characteristic

  • that people with more control in likely to resist
  • dispositional factors for resistance
  • internal locus is when you believe life is a result of your own actions and choices
  • external locus believe events are because of luck and third party actions people like these are more likely to be obedient and conform
  • Someone with a sense of control than someone with an external locus are more likely to display independent behaviour
• Minority doesn’t always comply and dissent is and gain mass influence changing the thinking of the majority this would be internalisation , this occurs when the minority is consistent
• What was the main focus of the Moscovici et al (1969) study?


  The influence of consistent versus inconsistent minorities
• How many women participated in the Moscovici et al (1969) study?

  192 women
• How were the participants grouped in the Moscovici et al (1969) experiment?


  In groups of six at a time
• What task were the participants asked to perform in the study?

  To judge the color of 36 slides that were all blue with varying brightness
• How many confederates were present in each group during the Moscovici et al (1969) study?

  2 out of 6
• In the consistent condition of the experiment, what color did the confederates consistently call all 36 slides?

  Green
• What percentage of the time did participants call the slides green when confederates consistently called them green?

  8.4%
• In the inconsistent condition, how many slides did the confederates call green and how many did they call blue?

  24 green and 12 blue
• What percentage of the time did participants call the slides green in the inconsistent condition?

  1.25%
• What was the control condition in the Moscovici et al (1969) study?


  A condition with no confederates present
• What percentage of the time did participants call the slides green in the control condition?

  0.25%
• What conclusion can be drawn from the Moscovici et al (1969) study regarding minority influence?


  • Minority influence is stronger when the minority is consistent.
  • Inconsistent minorities have less impact on the majority's judgments.
• What are some limitations of the Moscovici et al (1969) study?


  • Conducted in a lab setting, which may lack ecological validity.
  • Results may not be applicable to men, as the study only involved women.
• nemeth et al (1974) reproduced moscovicis study and found that the same results were obtained but also that the minority had beneath proposed being rigid is unrealistic so its less effective
• Moscovicis conversion theory

  • minority and majority influence are different processes
  • majority - involves compliance their behaviour changes in order to fit in
  • minority - when consistent a person may examine their beliefs in detail to understand why minority view and convert however social pressure to conform means their behaviour may not change at first
• Consistency and commitment can be factors initially minority views are to be seen as wrong as they don’t fit the social norm at the time

  • consistency in the minority shows a clear view that is committed and unwilling to compromise
  • this conflicts what moscovici calls the validation process being faced with a consistent minority and questioning of their right and changing your view if there is no visible faults you see and not acting selfishly you begin to move in to their position
• Latane and wolf (1981) social impact theory argues three factors can cause social influence

  • strengths , levels of power knowledge and consistency in the group
  • numbers , how many people
  • immediacy , how close are you to the source of influence physically or relationship
  • latane and wolf say the minority and majority are the same just a balance of factors thst create social influence
  • the minority can become the majority via snowball effect
• Van - avermaet (1996)

  • says it requires you to go from privately accepting the minority view publicly expressing them
• Social crypto amnesia 


  public opinion changes gradually changes over time until it’s accepted as a norm but people forget where it originated
• Minority can cause social change

  • e. g MLK and the gays activism and expressing publicly over time