Social influence

Internalisation - A private as well as public change of behaviour. This is the deepest level of conformity where the beliefs of the group become part of the individuals own belief system

Compliance - Where a person may agree in public with a group but the person actually privately disagrees. This is a temporary change

Identification - Where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be part of it but we don't neccessarily agree with everything they believe

Informational social influence - The desire to be right - when we conform because we are unsure of the situation or lack knowledge so we look to others. This may lead to internalisation

Normative social influence - The desire to be liked - when we conform to fit in with the group because we don't want to appear foolish or be left out

Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious

Procedure:  Each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. Participants had to say which comparison line was the same length as the standard line. In each group there was only one true participant the remaining 6 were confederates. The confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials

Findings: The true partcipant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. 75% conformed to the majority on at least one trial

Asch wanted to investigate the conditions which may lead to an increase or decrease in conformity by carrying out variations of his orignal procedure

Group size: Asch altered the number of confederates and found that conformity increases with each extra confederate in the group. However, conformity did not increase much after the group size was about 4

Unanimity: Asch introduced a confederate who disgareed with the others. He found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority reduced conformity levels

Task difficulty: Asch made the task more difficult by making the standard line and the comparison lines more similar in length. He found that because it was harder to judge the correct answer conformity increased. This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder

• P - Lacks ecological validtiy
• E - The task used artificial stimuli
• E - As it was based on peoples’ perception of lines
• L - It means findings may not be able to be generalised to everyday situations and the study may tell us very little about how people conform in real life cases as this does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity

• P - Lacks population validity
• E - The study was only carried out on men thus the sample was gender bias
• L - He didn't take into account gender differences therefore the results may not be able to be applied to women

Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to social roles

Procedure: He converted a basement of the Stantford university into a mock prison. Participants were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard. Prisoners were issued a uniform and a number and were referred to only by their number. Guards were issued a uniform complete with handcuffs, wooden clubs and dark glasses to avoid eye contact with prisoners

Findings: He found that within a short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their roles. The guards harrassed the prisoners for example waking them up in the middle of the night for unneccessary head counts. One prisoner was released on the first day because he showed signs of psychological disturbance. Another prisoner went on a hunger strike. The guards attempted to force feed him and punished him by putting him in a tiny dark closet. The study was stopped after six days instead of the intended fourteen days

• P - Lacks population validity
• E - The study was only carried out on men thus the sample was gender bias
• L - He didn't take into account gender differences therefore the results may not be able to be applied to women

• P - Lacks ecological validity
• E - The findings of the study could be explained through demand characteristics
• E - The guards and prisoners were playing a role based on their stereotypes of how they're supposed to behave
• L - The study may not be able to be generalised to real life prison settings

Milgram wanted to see whether people would obey a legitmate authority figure when given instructions to harm another human being

Procedure: A confederate named Mr Wallace was the learner and the true participant was a teacher. There was also another confederate who was the experimenter and wore a lab coat. The teacher was required to give the learner a (fake) electric shock each time they gave a wrong answer on the learning task. The 'shocks' increased every time the learner gave a wrong answer from 15-450 volts. When the participant refused to administer a shock the experimenter would read out a series of orders.

Findings: He found that no participant stopped below 300 volts amd 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts

• P - Lacks population validity
• E - The study was only carried out on men thus the sample was gender bias
• L - He didn't take into account gender differences therefore the results may not be able to be applied to women

• P - Lacks ecological validtiy
• E - The task was carried out in a lab under artificial conditions
• E - It has been argued that participants showed demand characteristic as they knew the shocks weren't real
• L - It means findings may not be able to be generalised to everyday situations and the study may tell us very little about how people obey in real life cases

Milgram wanted to investigate the conditions which may lead to an increase or decrease in obedience by carrying out variations of his orignal procedure

Location: Milgram's original study was conducted at Yale, a prestigious university. The high status of the university gave the study credibility and respect in the eyes of the participants, thus making them more likely to obey. When Milgram moved his experiment to a set of run down offices obedience dropped from 65% to 47.5%

Uniform: In the original study the experimenter wore a lab coat as a symbol of scientific expertise which gave him a high status. In his varition an experimenter dressed in everyday clothes which reduced obedience to 20%

Proximity: In the original study the experimenter was in the same room as the participant. When the experimenter instructed the teacher by telephone from another room, obedience fell to 20.5%. 

Adorno felt that personality factors rather than situational factors could explain obedience.

Procedure: He investigated 2,000 middle class white Americans and their uncocscious attitudes towards other racial groups by using the F-scale to measure authoritarian personality

Findings: He found that those who scored high on the F-scale were hostile to those who are of inferior status, but obedient of people with high status.

Conformity - In one of Asch’s variation he showed that the presence of a a confederate who didn't conform led to a decrease in the conformity levels in true participants – this is thought to be because the presence of a non-conforming confederate gave the true participant social support and made them feel more confident in their own decision and more confident in rejecting the majority position

Obedience - Social support also decreases obedience to authority. In a variation of Milgram's study a confederate was also a teacher but refused to obey. The presence of a disobedient confederate reduced the level of obedience to 10%

The term ‘Locus of control’ refers to how much control a person feels they have in their own behaviour. A person can either have an internal locus of control or an external locus of control.

Internal - sees themselve as having a great deal of personal control over their behaviour and are therefore more likely to take responsibility for the way they behave

External - sees their behaviours as being a result of something without their control or luck

People with an internal locus of control tend to be less conforming and less obedient i.e. more independent. They are better at resisting social pressure to conform or obey because they feel responsible for their actions

Minority influence occurs when a small group influences the opinion of a much larger group. This can happen when the minority behaves in the following ways:

Consistency: Being unchanging in a view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent and keeps changing their mind. This might be by agreement between people in the group (synchronic consistency) or consistency over time (diachronic consistency)

Commitment: When the majority is confronted with someone with dedication and refuses to back down, they may assume that the minority has a point

Flexibility: If they appear flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as cooperative and reasonable. As a result, they will have a better chance of changing majority views

• Drawing attention
• Consistency
• Deeper processing
• The augmentation principle
• The snowball effect
• Social cryptomnesia