Social influence

-A change in a person's behaviour/opinions as a result of a real/imagined pressure from someone else or a group of people

Why does conformity happen?

1. Normative social influence

-Changing your behaviour/opinion because you want to be liked eg. Asch's line study (people say the same answer as others becaus they don't want to be aliented), Sherif's autokinetic study (light 'moving' on a wall, asked to estimate how much it was moving. Answers varied if asked individually, but group norm was created if they were in a group environment)

2. Informational social influence

-Changing your behaviour/opinion because you want to be right eg. Lucas et al (the harder the maths problem, the more people conform), Jenness (when asked to estimate number of jelly beans individually, answers varied. When discussed in a group, answer tended to conform closer to the group estimate)

1. Compliance:

-Going along with others in public but privately not changing personal opinions and/or behaviour. Usually a singular occurrence. eg. Asch's study

2.   Identification:

-Conforming to the opinions/behaviour of a group because there is something about the group we value and want to be part of.

-This includes publicly changing your opinions/behaviour to achieve this, even if we don’t privately agree with everything the group stands for. eg. Zimbardo's study

3.   Internalisation:

-When a person genuinely accepts the group norms. Results in a private as well as public change of opinions/behaviour. The change is likely to be permanent. eg. Sherif's Autokinetic study

-Do people still conform with the answer is not ambiguous? (Unlike Sherif's study)

-123 self-selected male participants (androcentric)

-7 participants:9 confederates per group, participants sat one from the end

-Participants asked to state which line matched the original line

-1 person opposing participant's opinion: 4% conformity

-2 opposing: 14%

-3 opposing: 32%

-4 opposing: 37%

-1/3 participants conformed the majority of the time 

-25% participants didn't conform at all, 75% conformed at least once

Advantages

-Lab experiment= extraneous variables controlled

-Consent given as self-selected. Also means no researcher bias.

-Large sample

Disadvantages

-Androcentric sample as only used male college students, possibly MC

-Artificial stimulus= may lack external validity and mundane realism

-Refuted by Perrin and Spencer in the 1980s UK. Barely any conformity= lacks cultural and temporal validity

-Deception as participants were told it was a study on eyesight. But may increase internal validity

-Do prison guards act sadistically because of their personalities or the situation they are put in?

-Stanford Uni, 24 self-selected male students took part. Tested for any psychological instabilities- only completely mentally healthy participants took part.

-Participants randomly assigned roles of prison guard/prisoner

-Intended to last 2 weeks but was stopped after 6 days

-Prisoners were dehumanised: deloused, stripped, referred to as a number, had to wear a uniform, chain on foot, forced to do excessive exercise, sprayed with a fire extinguisher and were turned against each other, not allowed to use the toilet. One prisoner had to be released even earlier because he had a mental breakdown.

-Prison guards were given uniforms, sunglasses that covered their eyes, whistles and told to control the prisoners but without using violence.

Advantages

-Can be used to explain the mistreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib

-Lab experiment= extraneous variables controlled

-10 year extensive debrief to come to terms with what had happened

-Consent

Disadvantages

-Refuted by Haslam and Reicher in 2006 who found that when they replicated the study, it was the prisoners who tried to take control of the prison. Lacks cultural and temporal validity.

-Extreme psychological harm

-Deception of parents and family members who were made to think everything was okay

-Breach of privacy, some prisoners were forced to stay. Demand characterisrics. 

-Why did the German population follow Hitler's orders in WW2?

-40 self-selected male participants

-Confederate as a learner, participant as a teacher, confederate as the experimenter

1. Learned strapped to a chair and wired up to electrodes

2. Teacher had to ask learner questions. If they got the answer wrong, they had to be 'shocked', with the voltage increasing every time. 

3. At 300V, the learner acted in extreme pain. At 315, the learner stopped responding

4. Maximum voltage was a lethal 450 volts. 

-65% continued to 450V.

-Only 12.5% stopped at 300V

Advantages

-Consent and no researcher bias

-Lab experiment=extraneous variables controlled

-Applied to how Hitler controlled his population in WW2

Disadvantages

-Androcentric 

-Demand characters as participants were paid

-Psychological harm. Some participants reacted in extreme distress eg. hysterical laughter. 

1. Proximity

-Teacher and learner in the same room: 40% obedience (instead of 65%)

-Placing learner's hand on electroshock plate: 30%

-Instructions given via telephone: 20.5% (refuted by Hofling's nurse study- 21/11 obeyed)

-Supports agentic shift theory

2. Location

-Run down office building instead of Yate: 47.5%

3. Uniform

-Experimenter not in a lab coat: 20%

1. Agentic state:

-Someone feels extreme distress about doing something but feels powerless to obey

-Autonomy= someone is in control of their actions, feels responsibile

-Shift from autonomy to agency= agentic shift

-This occurs when someone feels that someone else is in control of them and their actions

-Binding factors= reasoning the agent uses to stay in an agentic state eg. blaming the participant for volunteering, so they don't have to blame themselves

2. Legitimacy of authority

-We see someone as having a legitimate and rightful power over us

-We hand over our actions and responsibility to someone who we see as an authority figure

-Destructive authority: Someone uses their perceived legitimate authority for evil eg. Hitler

1. The Authoritarian personality

-Adorno (1950s) gave a questionnaire to 2000 MC, white Americans to see how they view minority groups.

-He called this questionnaire the F-Scale

-Those high on the F-Scale were authoritarian, identifying with the 'strong' and having negative opinions of the 'weak'

-Extreme respect for authority, disgust towards minority groups, highly conventional attitudes and inflexible of their own views

-Adorno concluded that this comes from having a very harsh and strict upbringing, where you were expected to obey authorities eg. parents. High emphasis on loyality, impossibly high standards and extreme criticism of perceived failings

-This causes the child to hate their parents, which they are told they cannot feel, so they displace it onto people they perceive as 'weak' or different/inferior. (psychodynamic)

Advantages

-Milgram: There is a correlation between obedience and people who score highly on the F-Scale. However, this is only a correlation. There may be a third, untested variable. 

Disadvantages

-Limited explanation. Almost impossible that millions of Germans in WW2 had authoritarian personalities and that's why they obeyed Hitler and hated Jews. 

-Political bias. Adorno's questionnaire was based very much on a left-wing criteria, and saw anything right-wing as bad. People could have an authoritarian personality and be extremely left-wing.

Locus of control

-Rotter: External LOC- people who see their actions and what happens to them as out of their control, belief in fate and destiny. More likely to obey.

-Internal LOC- people who see their actions and what happens to them as completely in their control, and they are responsible for everything they do. Less likely to obey. 

-Although this varies for different people who are on a continuum, not strictly one or the other

-Eval: Although people are becoming more resistant to obedience, they are also becoming more external

Social support

-If someone else doesn't conform, then you are less likely to conform (Asch)

-If someone else doesn't obey, you are less likely to obey (Milgram)

-When one person/minority group of people influence the behaviour/beliefs of the majority

-Likely to lead to internalisation

-Moscovici: Participants asked to view 36 blue-green slides and say whether they were blue or green. 2 confederates said that the slides were green on 2/3 of the trials. 32% of participants gave the same answer as the confederates at least once. This increased when they wrote the answers down and could be anonymous in their answer.

1. Consistency: Increases interest

2. Commitment: Draws attention. Augmentation principle.

3.  Flexibility: Prepares for compromise, more likely that their views will be accepted as rational and correct. 

4. Process of change= deeper processing, snowball effect as views are taken on quickly and suddenly, Social cryptomnesia as people know a change has happened but can't remember how or when it happened. 

eg. American civil rights movements

1. Drawing attention. Used social proof that black and white people were segregated and black people were discriminated against eg. water fountains, separate schools

2. Consistency. Went on many marches to protest against their mistreatment and fight for equal rights. 

3. Deeper processing. Martin Luther King Jr used his role as a Baptist minister to encourage the white clergy to see how injust they were being. 

4. The augmentation principle. Freedom riders physically fought back, and were beaten for their belief that black people should be equal.

5. The snowball effect. The US Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. 

6. Social cryptomnesia: people know that a change has happened but don't know how. 

-Nolan et al found that if told other people were doing it, people will try to save energy