Social Influence
- Created by: CG24601
- Created on: 12-05-19 12:08
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- Social Influence
- Conformity: types and explanations
- Internalisation
- complete acceptance of group norms
- Identification
- change of behaviour to fit in with a group we identify with
- Compliance
- going along publicly but no private change
- Informational Social Influence (ISI)
- conform to be right working on the assumption that others know better than us
- research support: Lucas, more conformity to more difficult questions, especially when not confident
- Normative Social Influence (NSI)
- conform to be accepted or liked by group
- individual differences - nAffiliators want to be liked more
- NSI and ISI work together - dissenter may reduce power of both
- Informational Social Influence (ISI)
- conform to be right working on the assumption that others know better than us
- research support: Lucas, more conformity to more difficult questions, especially when not confident
- Informational Social Influence (ISI)
- Internalisation
- Conformity: Asch
- Procedure
- confederates deliberately give wrong answers to see whether participants conform
- Findings
- naive participants conform on 37% trials
- 25% never conformed
- Variations
- Group size - no need for majority larger than 3
- Unanimity - dissenter reduces conformity
- Task difficulty - conformity increased when the task was harder
- Procedure
- Conformity to social roles: Zimbardo
- Procedure
- mock prison, Stamford Uni, students randomly assigned guard or prisoner
- random assignment increases validity
- mock prison, Stamford Uni, students randomly assigned guard or prisoner
- Findings
- Guards became increasingly brutal
- Play acting - roles based on media stereotypes: lack realism
- dispositional influences - only a third of guards were brutal - a third were indifferent and a third sympathetic
- Prisoners became increasingly withdrawn + depressed
- Play acting - roles based on media stereotypes: lack realism
- Guards became increasingly brutal
- Conclusions
- participants conformed to their roles
- Procedure
- Obedience: Milgram
- procedure
- participants gave fake electric shocks to 'learner' in obedience to instructions from the 'experimenter'
- low internal validity: participants may have noticed the shocks were fake and simply went along with the demands of the situation
- replications with real shocks (on dogs) gave similar results
- participants gave fake electric shocks to 'learner' in obedience to instructions from the 'experimenter'
- findings
- 65% went all the way to 450V
- all went up to 300V at least
- many showed signs of anxiety
- findings generalise to hospitals (Hofling et al.)
- Supporting replication: Game of Death - 80% gave maximum shock and similar behaviour to Milgram
- procedure
- Obedience: Situational Variables
- Location
- obedience decreases to 47.5% in run-down office block
- Proximity
- obedience decreases to 40% when teacher could hear learner
- decreases to 30% in touch proximity
- Uniform
- obedience decreases to 20% when experimenter is replaced by 'member of the public'
- Bickman's field expt. milkman, security guard and jacket and tie guy
- Cross-cultural replications support though all western cultures so don't generalise
- Milgram controlled his variables extremely well
- Location
- Obedience: Social-Psychological Factors
- Agentic State
- acting as an agent of another
- autonomous state - free to act by ones conscience
- Agentic shift - going from autonomy to agency
- Binding factors - allow an individual to ignore the damaging effects of their obedience
- Blass and Schmitt found people do really blame legitimate authority
- does not explain disobedience in Milgram or the lack of moral strain in Hofling's
- Legitimacy of Authority
- created by hierarchical nature of society
- destructive authority - problems arise i.e. Hitler
- cultural differences - different societal structures and ways of raising children
- Agentic State
- Obedience: Dispositional Explanations
- The Authoritarian Personality
- Procedure
- Adorno et al. uses F-Scale to study unconscious attitudes to racial groups
- Findings
- authoritarian personalities identify with the 'strong', look down on the 'weak' and have a fixed, black and white cognitive style
- Origin
- Harsh parenting resulting in displaced hostility
- Features
- extreme respect and obedience to authority
- Some of Milgram's participants had this kind of personality
- Does not explain obedience across a country (the Germans at Jews) - better explanation: social identity theory
- right-wing bias, ignores left-wing authoritarians
- Procedure
- The Authoritarian Personality
- Resistance to Social Influence
- Social Support
- Conformity - reduced by presence of dissenter
- Obedience - decreases in presence of disobedient peer who acts as a model
- Allen and Levine glasses guy Asch repeat - conformity decreases even when dissenter not credible
- Gamson et al. conformity decreases when disobedient role-models are present
- Locus of Control
- people with high internal LoC more likely to resist
- Holland - internals less likely to obey in Milgram-type study
- Contradictory research Twenge - we're becoming more external and more resistant - we'd expect internal
- Social Support
- Minority Influence
- Flexibility
- convincing if they accept some counter-arguments
- Commitment
- augmentation principle - personal sacrifices show commitment and attract attention
- Process
- make majority think more deeply
- Snowball effect - gathers momentum until becomes majority
- Consistency
- maintains view, attracts attention of majority over time
- Moscovici's green-blue slides
- minority views have longer effect as they are deeply processed
- artificial tasks
- Flexibility
- Conformity: types and explanations
- Social Influence and Social Change
- special role of minority influence
- example - AA Civil Rights movement
- only indirectly effective - results indirect and appear later
- lessons from conformity research
- NSI can lead to social change by drawing attention to what majority is doing
- NSI valid explanation i.e. Nolan et al. reducing energy
- lessons from obedience research
- disobedient role models
- gradual commitment leads to change
- special role of minority influence
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