Social Influence

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  • Created by: Hema
  • Created on: 30-04-15 19:53
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  • Social Influence
    • Conformity
      • Internalisation: Deep conformity, views of the group are taken on permanently eg. becoming vegetarian after listening to animal right activists
      • Compliance: Superficial, Conforms publicly, Privately disagree, eg. laugh at a joke that you dont find funny
      • WHY do we conform?
        • Normative: desire to be liked, gain approval, not seen as deviant, usually compliance                       McCarthyism - comply so as not to be seen as devient
        • Informational: desire to be right, for help to reduce ambiguity of task, usually internalisation                                      Bond + Smith said that the more ambiguous the task, the more conform
      • ASCH
        • straight forward, unambiguous study judging length of straight lines
        • ambiguity tested in pilot study - pps made 3 mistakes out of 720 trials
        • All  confederates but 1 pp always last/ but 1. confeds answered wrong in 12/18 trials
        • 123 American male undergrads shown a series of line - standard + comparisons
        • MEAN conformity rate- 37% - in this: 5%  everytime, 25%  completely independant
        • found a stable phenomenon - minority group are faced with consistent wrong majority they will conform - The Asch Effect.
        • WEAKNESS: lack of population validity american male undergrads, cant apply results to women
        • WEAKNESS: lack of temporal validity, Mcarthyism, didn't wanna be accused communist conform not to stand out
        • STRENGTH: Perrin and Spencer replicated with youths + probation officers and found similar results
    • Independance
      • Why we don't OBEY + eg. Milgram
        • Lack of authority if authority figure is not seen as legit people will be less likely to obey. when experiment was in run down office block obedience dropped
        • Humanisation less likely to obey to harm someone if we see them as a person, when learner was in the same room, 20.5% went to 450
        • presence of allies easier to resist authority if youve got back up, see disobedience as acceptable if someone else is doing it. when 2 confederate teachers refused, almost all pps did
      • Why we don't CONFORM + eg. Asch
        • Withdrawal of a true partner, if confed answering correctly defects back halfway through - mean conformity rate goes from 5.5% to 28.5%
        • Unanimous majority, in ASCH more naive pps, mean conformity changes from 37% to 10%. they are reassured that theyre right by others
        • ambiguous task, if majority are giving clearly wrong answers, pps less likely to conform - when lines made more similar in length conformity increased
      • Locus of control ROTTER
        • Weakness: Williams and Warchal, gave students conformity tasks- people who conformed got same LoC but different assertiveness
        • STRENGTH: Atgis, meta analysis of studies looking at relationship between LoC + conformity. external were more easily persuaded - strong positive correlation
        • INTERNAL: personal control - resist coercion from others, seek info, leaders
        • EXTERNAL: Behaviour is controlled by others or luck. easily persuaded, more passive.
    • Social change
      • Moscovicci
        • 172 pps with good eyesight, group of 6 estimate colour of 36 slides, all blue diff brightness. 2 confeds + 2 conditions- consistent: all slides green + inconsistent- 24green and 12blue
        • consistent: pps said the slides were green in 8.4% of trials and 32% called it green at least once.                        inconsistent pps called it green 1.4% of trials
        • in conclusion- its important to be consistent if a minority wants to change views of majority
        • Aim to see if consistant minority could influence majority
        • W: gynocentric sample- only female pps unrepresentitive, cant generalise
        • S: lab exp- conrol
        • S: easy to replicate- reliable
      • Milgram argues that  if people disobey power crumbles so change can be achieved through disobedience
      • Snowball effect: once a few members of the majority start to agree with minority, more people can get other people to join then social cryptoamnesia- forget what caused alternative view
      • Rosa Parks- refused to obey unjust law, arrested, sparkes a chain of events
      • Minority must: draw attention to message, be consistent, make personal sacrifices
      • Suffrogettes- minority of women wanted ability to vote
    • Obedience
      • Milgram
        • Aimed to test the hypothesis 'germans are different'
        • 40 male pps at yale uni
        • shocks ranged from 15V to 450V - milgram wanted to see how far pps would go
        • confederate - learner and pps- teacher fake set up where teacher was instructed by an authority figure to give electric shocks to learner for incorrect answers
        • pps argued and showed extreme tension
        • ALL pps went upto at least 300V and 65% went to 450V
        • so germans are not different, we are all capable of blind obedience to unjust orders from authority
        • STRENGTH: conrolled ex variables lab exp high internal val
        • WEAKNESS: Lack of mundane realism - unrealistic task may encourage demand characteristi
        • WEAKNESS: ethical issues deception, lack of informed consent, lack of protection
      • Why do we obey?
        • Dehumanisation: more able to harm someone if we distance ourself from them as a person.                              when they were in the same room 20.5% went to 450V + when teacher placed learners hand 30%
        • Gradual Commitment: foot in the door technique, once theyve made some sort of commitment its hard to go back                               pps had to increase shock by 15V
        • agentic shift: deny responsibility assume authority will we are agents. we obey because of: external authority + internal authority                            researcher left + spoke through phone 20% went to 450V
        • Legitimate Authority:  obey legit authority because we trust them or they have power to punish                              Researcher was dressed in a lab coat so appearance gave authority 65% - 450V

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