Social Influence

*Individuals tend to compare themselves with others and will often adjust their own actions to fit in with others.

*They do this because identification with the majority is desirable. If there is a difference between the individuals point of view and that of the majority, they may simply go along with the majority without analysing why such a difference exists.

*This results in public compliance, with little or no private attitude change.

*When exposed to the views of other members of a group, individuals engage in a validation process, examining their own beliefs to see if they or the others are right.

*Close examination of the groups position may convince the individual that they are wrong and the group it right, particularly if an individual has tended to go along with the group on previous occasions.

*This can lead to acceptance of the group's point of view both publicly and privately and the change will be permanent.

*This is when we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be part of it, but we don't necessarily agree with everything the majority believes. It has elements of compliance and internalisation, but the purpose is to be accepted by the group.

*Body Shape
*Fashion
*Music
*Smoking
*Alcohol

Procedure:

*123 student volunteers

*Using the line judgement task, Asch put a naive participant into a room with 7 confederates. The participants were led to believe they were taking part in a vision test.

*The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task. The real participant didn't know this and was led to believe that the other 7 participants were also real participants like themselves.

*Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.

*In some trials, the 7 confederates gave the wrong answer. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trials. Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.

*Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (37%) sometimes quoted as 32% of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority. Over the 18 trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% of participants never conformed. Nobody conformed on 100% of trials and 13 out of the original 50 never conformed at all.

*It was conducted that people conform for two main reasons; because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence).

*Asch made the differences between line lengths much smaller (harder to see the correct line).
*Found that the levels of conformity increased.
*Lucas et al (2006): Found that people who were high in self efficacy remained more independant in their judgement. This shows that situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self efficacy) are both important in determining conformity.

*Asch manipulated changes to the size of the majority.

*Found that when the majority consisted of 2 people, conformity dropped to 12.8% of their total judgements. Best conformity effects (32%) were found with a majority of 3. Increasing the size beyond 3 did not increase the levels of conformity.

*Baron and Byrne (1997): Suggest that people may suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond 3 or 4. When only 1 confederate was used, no conformity effects were found.

*Asch wanted to see what would happen if the unanimity was disturbed. And also if a lone 'dissenter' gave an answer that was both different from the majority and different from the true answers.
*When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answer, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing errors from 32% to just 5.5%. In this case conformity rates dropped from 32% to 9%.
*This led to Asch to conclude that it was breaking the group's consensus that was the major factor in conformity reduction.

*A native participant starts with a 'partner' who responds correctly to begin with but who 'deserts' to the majority in the middle of the procedure.
*This results in conformity levels of 28.5%. However, when a participant who had started the procedure as a minority of one, received a 'partner' part way through, conformity was reduced 8.7%.
*This suggests that the participant might have gained some 'confidence' in retaining independance in the presence of someone else in the group who was able to resist conforming to the majority.

*To see if the levels of conformity shown in Asch's experiment were a result of behavioural norms at the time reproduced the work of Asch in 1981 and found that in a standard group only 1 in 396 conformed. Therefore the conformity seen in Asch's study may be due to the conformity levels at this time as the replication clearly shows that as time has passed conformity levels have dropped.

*To see if the levels of conformity shown in Asch's experiment were as a result of the participants culture. Smith and Bond (1993) conducted a meta-analysis of individualistic and collectivist cultures. Fiji a collectivist culture, showed the highest rates of conformity at 58% and Belgium an individualistic culture showed the lowest levels at 15%, this indicates that the way people are expected to behave in their culture affects the levels of conformity shown.

*NSI is based on the desire to be liked and accepted. Because humans are social species and have a need for companionship and a fear of rejection.

*It leads to compliance, where people will conform because they want to accepted and liked and not thought of as deviant or peculiar.

*They conform in public, but not private.

Normative Social Influence tends to occur through a majority influence. E.g. If many people do the same thing, others will do it as well.

*Need to be liked or accepted - Others are able to reward or punish us - Compliance.

*Sometimes we go along with others, because we genuinely believe them to be right.
*This results in not just compliance, but internalisation because we have changed our own viewpoint in line with the position of others.
*Our attitudes are changed in public and in private. This might be as a result of majority influence, but is usually as a result of minority influence.

*We do it when the situation is ambiguous - where the right course of action isn't clear.
*When the situation is a crisis and rapid action is required.
*When we believe others to be experts and that they will know what to do.

Need to be certain - Seek information to reduce our uncertainty - Internalisation.

*The role of normative and information social Influence can be praised as it has been supported by research studies. For example Asch, through interviews with participants after the experiment, they also investigated why the participants conformed with the majority. Some participants admitted that they conformed, because they did not want to stand out from the group, thus showing normative social influence. Despite this, some participants doubted their perception and so conformed to look to others for the correct response, thus showing informational social influence. Therefore this supporting research sugges that their is some validity to the explantions of conformity.

The role of normative social Influence can be praised for having supporting research. For example Garandeau and Cillessen in 2006, used NSI to explain bullying amongst children. They found from a study using self selected focus groups that children who had a greater need for social acceptance were the most likley to comply to pressure exerted by a bullying group. They bullied so that they would be accepted by other group members in order to maintain their friendship regardless of how they felt in private towards bullying. Therefore this supporting research suggests that the NSI is a valid way of explaining conformity.

The role of informative social influence can be praised for having support research. For example Sherif. The task was more ambiguous than Asch's study (There was no right or wrong answer). This led to the snowball effects, where individuals gradually converged to the majority views, because they were unsure and thought the others were more likely to be right. Therefore this shows ISI as they were unsure of the correct answer, suggesting that ISI is a valid explanation of conformity.

The role of informative social influence can be praised for having supporting research. For example Lucas et al (2006) asked students to give answers to mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than when they were easier. This was most true for students who rated their mathematical ability as poor. The study shows that people confirm in situations where they feel they don't know the answer, which is exactly the outcome predicted by ISI explanation, we look to other people and assume they know better than us. Therefore this suggests that ISI is a complete way of explaining conformity.