Resistance to Social Influence

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  • Resistance to social support
    • Social support
      • Social support and resisting conformity:
        • Asch found that the presence of social support enables an individual to resist conformity pressure from the majority
          • In one variation of the study the introduction of an ally who also gives the right answer caused conformity levels to drop from 33% to 5.5%
        • Social support breaks the unanimity of the majority as it raises the possibility of other ways to respond
        • Presence of an ally provides independent assessment of reality so they are more confident in their answer
      • Social support and resisting obedience:
        • Research has shown that individuals are a generally more confident in their ability to resist the temptation to obey if they can find an ally
        • Disobedient peers are therefore act as role models on which the individual can model their own behaviour
        • Individuals are able to use defiance of peers as an opportunity to extricate themselves from further harming the victim as a result of their obedience
          • E.g one of Milgrams variations the PP's was one of 3 testing the learner the other 2 confederates who refused to continue shocking the victim and withdrew
            • Their defiance influenced the real PP's with only 10% continued to max voltage
    • Locus of Control
      • The Nature of Locus of Control:
        • Locus of control = a persons perception of personal control over their own behaviour
        • Measured along a dimension of high internal to high external
          • Strong internal LOC is associated with the belief that we can control events in our life and that what happens is due to their own ability and effort
            • They are more likely to display independence in thought and behaviour and they rely less on the opinion of others and are able to resist social influence
          • Strong external LOC tend to believe that what happens is determined by external factors e.g influence of others or luck and that these thing just happen to them
            • Approach  events with a passive and fatalistic attitude taking less personal responsibility for their actions and are less likely to display independent behaviour and accept influence from others
      • Internality and resistance to social influence:
        • 1. High internals are active seekers of information that is useful to them and so are less likely to rely on the opinions of others meaning they are less vulnerable to social influence
        • LOC research has uncovered a number of characteristics that have a relevance to resisting social influence for internals
        • 2. Tend to be more achievement oriented and consequently more likely to become leaders
        • 3. Better able to resist coercion from others
    • Evaluation
      • Social support: the importance of response order:
        • Allen and Levine studied whether the response position of the person providing social support made a difference to a PP's resisting the majority
          • In one condition that  a confederate answered first giving the right answer while the rest gave the same wrong answer and the real PP's always answered last
          • In a second condition the confederate answered fourth. This was less effective  than position one
        • Researchers suggest that a correct answer first confirms the PP's own judgement and produces an initial commitment to the correct answer even though the rest disagree
      • Social support: support may not have to be valid to be effective:
        • Allen and Levine looked at whether social support that was not particularly valid would also be affective in helping PP's resist conformity
          • Condition 1 - the confederate that provided support wore glasses with thick lenses therefore providing invalid social support given the nature of the test
          • Condition 2 - the supporter had normal vision therefore providing valid social support
          • Both conditions reduced the amount of conformity but the valid supporter had more impact showing that an ally is helpful in resisting conformity but more so if they are seen to offer valid support
      • LOC is related to normative but not informational influence:
        • Spector measured LOC and predisposition to normative and informational influence in under 157 undergraduate students
          • Found a significant correlation between LOC and predisposition to normative SI - externals more likely to conform to this form of influence than internals
            • However found no such relationship for predisposition to informational social influence with LOC not appearing to be significant factor in this type of conformity
      • LOC: people are more external than they used to be:
        • Meta analysis by Twenge found that young Americans increasingly believed that their fate was determined more by luck and powerful others rather than their own actions.
          • Twenge interprets this trend towards increasing externality in terms of the alienation experienced by young people and the tendency to explain misfortunes on outside forces
        • In the studies of the analysis researchers found that LOC scores had become substainally more external in student and child samples between 1960 and 2002
      • Social support in the real world: the Rosenstrasse protest:
        • In 1943  a group of German women protested in Berlin where the nazi secret police (gestapo) held 2000 jewish men who were married to non-jewish partners or were the male children of these marriages
          • The women stood toe to toe with the Gestapo and demanded the realises of the jewish men despite the threat of the Gestapo
            • Their courage eventually prevailed and the men were set free the protest is a stark illustration of Milgrams research
              • He found that the presence of disobedient peers gave the PP's the confidence and courage to resist the authority order
      • Research support: LOC
        • Avtgis carried out a meta-analysis of studies of the relationship between LOC and different forms of social influence including conformity
          • This showed a significant positive correlation for the relationship between scores of integrality /externality and scores on measure of persuasion, social influence and conformity
            • The analysis showed that individuals who scored higher individuals who scored higher on external LOC tend to be more easily persuaded, influenced and more conforming than those who score as internal in terms of LOC

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