Social Influence

Internalisation - we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct, leads to a permanent change in behaviour 

Identification - we act in a way that is expected as we value the group, we don't necasserily agree with everything the group believes.

Compliance - we go along with the group even if we disagree so we aren't excluded, out of the group the behavious stops.

Deutsch and Gerard 

• Agree because we believe is is correct
• Leads to internalisation
• Crisis situation
• Lucas et al (2006) - conformity answering maths questions
• Evidence - variation of Asch study where increased difficulty increased conformity

• Agree to be accepted and liked
• Leads to compliance
• Situations with strangers of people we want social approval from
• Naffiliators 
• Evidence  - Asch Study

• Shown an original line then three otehr lines and asked to say which is the same length as the original, all but one member of the group is told to give the same incorrect answer.
• Naive participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
• More than 3 confederates didn't effect conformity
• Having soemone else disagree reduced conformity by 25%

Perrin and Spencer

• "child of its time"
• Used engineering chemistry, maths students. only 1 in 396 conformed.

Smith and Bond

• Collectivist countries - 37% conformed
• Individualist countries - 25% conformed

Results

• Guards gave cruel punishments e.g. waking in the night, pushups 
  
• Prisoners became passive and obedient
• Ended after 6 days instead of 14

Conclusion

• Social roles influence our behavious
• Well balanced men can become aggresive 

Evaluation

• Good control of all factors
• Artifical experiment so can't be generalised to real life
• Ethical issues

Procedure

• Teacher read out word pairs
• Learner had to give the correct matching pair
• If they were wrong teacher gave a shock of 15v to 450
• At 300v learner pounded on the wall and screamed followed by silence

Results

• 26 out of 40 went up to 450v
• All went to 300v

Consequences

• Extreme nervous tension
• asking for reassurance
• Epileptic fit

Debriefing

• Told their behavious was normal
• Told the true purpose of the experiment
• Checked on 1 year later and there were no psychological problems

Ethial rules broken

• Deception
• Informed consent
• Right to withdraw
• Physical and psychological harm

Conclusion

• We are obedient due to the agentic state
• Many professions can't plead obedince anymore 

Physical force  - 30% obeyed

Support from teachers  - 10% obeyed

Someone else flicked the switch - 92.5% obeyed

Obedience of spanish students - 90%

David Mandel - said situational factors is used as an excuse for evil behavious e.g. holocaust

Adolf Eichmann - Nazi death camp leader, claimed he was "obeying orders"

Agentic shift -  change from autonoous state to agentic state when confronted with authority figure

Evaluation

• Blass and Schmitt - participants were agents of authority
• Hitorical events have shown normal people can act in inhumane ways
• Personality can cause people to obey rather than situational factors
• Doesn't explain why 1/3 of Milgram's participants disobeyed authority

More likely to obey people we percieve to have aithority over us 

Kelman and Hamilton explanation for obedience

• Legitimacy of the system
• Legitimacy of authority within the system
• Legitimacy of demands or orders given

Example

• My Lai Massacre 

Obedient, inflexible, need strong leaders, traditional values

Causes- harsh parenting, expectations to be completely loyal, unconditional love or parents

Adorno et al  -  measured 2000 middle class white americans and their attitude towards racial groups using the F-Scale.

Evaluation

• self report which is unreliable
• Acquiescence bias (tick the same line of boxes)
• Doesn't explain obedience of entire social groups

Hyman and Sheatsley - authoritarians are common in less educated and poor, this is inconsistet with idea that the poor are rebillious and not oppressive

Conclusion - personality might not be needed to explain obedience 

A person's perception of personal control over their own behavious.

Internal - determined by their own decisions and efforts

External - life is determined by fate, luck and external factors

High internals - less reliant on others, more achievement orientated, can resist pressure

High externals - influenced by others

Evidence social support helps resist authority:

• Ash 
• Milgram
• Allen and Levine (asch like study, non conforming confederate with thick glasses)

Gamson et al

• asked people to produce a smear campaign against a man with "questionable life choices"
• 88% of groups didn't do it

Serge Moscovici - blue slide green slide experiment

• Groups of 4 participants and 2 confederates shown 36 blue slides and asked to state the colour out loud
• Confederates said green 100% of the time , 8.42% of naive participants said green
• Confederates said green 24/ 36 times, 1.25% of naive participants said green

Factors affecting minority influence 

• Consistency
• Commitment
• Flexibility - Nemeth set up mock jury of 3 participants and 1 confederate, when confederate was inflexible in the amount of compensation to give a ski lift accident victim the majority stuck to a high amount 

Cristicism of these experiments

• Artificial, lack external validity, don't captire the commitment of minority groups