Social Influence

Internalisation

• A person genuinely accepts group norms
• Results in a private as well as public change in behaviour. It is more likely to persist in the absence of the group as the attitudes have become part of how the person thinks. 

Identification

• Occurs when someone wants to be part of the group, so publicly changes their opinions/behaviour as they want to be accepted
• Changes are mostly public - the person may not privately agree with everything the group stands for

Compliance

• The most superficial kind of conformity as it results in only a superficial change in behaviour - ‘going along’ with others in public but privately not changing opinions/behaviour
• Tends to cease in the absence of the group. 

Informational social influence

• Concerned with information, a desire to be right - a cognitive process
• Likely to occur in new or ambiguous situations, as we believe others will have better information than us
• May happen when decisions have to be made quickly, or where one person is regarded as an expert
• Usually leads to internalisation

Normative social influence

• Concerned with what is considered ‘normal’ or typical behavior for a social group
• Can lead to identification or compliance, as people adopt the norms of others in order to fit in or to prevent ridicule
• It is an emotional process - people want to be accepted
• Often occurs when someone wants to avoid the embarrassing situation of someone going against the majority

ISI - (+) Research support

• Lucas et al - more conformity to incorrect answers when maths questions were harder 

ISI - (-) Individual differences

• Asch - students less conformist (28%), Perrin + Spencer - engineering students less conformist

NSI - (+) Research support

• Some of Asch's participants said they felt self conscious and were afraid of disapproval
• When Asch asked participants to write down their answers conformity rates fell to 12.5%

NSI - (-) Individual differences

• McGhee and Teevan - nAffiliators were more likely to conform

• Participants who were placed in groups of six - one ‘naive’ participant and three confederates.
• Group presented with 4 lines - one standard line and three lines which varied in length
• Asked to state which line was the same length as the standard line
• The real participant would answer either last or second to last
• The confederates gave the wrong answer on 12/18 trials
• Naive participants gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time - shows a high level of conformity
• Known as the Asch effect, it shows the extent to which people will conform to a wrong answer in a seemingly unambiguous situation
• Considerable individual differences - 25% of participants never gave a wrong answer
• Most participants said they conformed due to fear of rejection (NSI) while continuing to privately trust their own opinion (compliance)

Variables:

• Group size: two confederates - conformity = 13.6%, rose to 31.8% with three. 4 = optimum
• Unanimity: introduced a dissenting confederate - conformity reduced to 25%
• Task difficulty: increased the similarity between the stimulus line and the comparison lines. Conformity increased - ISI

(+) High internal validity

• Etrict control over EVs
• Participants did the experiment before without confederates, removing CV of lack of knowledge and bad eyesight - only 1% of participants gave a wrong answer
• Valid and reliable ‘cause and effect’ relationships + valid conclusions.

(-) May be a 'child of its time'

• Perrin and Spencer - engineering students less conformist
• 1950s = an especially conformist time in America - Asch’s findings are not an enduring feature of human behaviour

(-) Situation and task were artificial

• Participants knew they were in a study - demand characteristics
• Task was trivial (no reason not to conform), group did not really reflect groups in everyday life
• Generalisability - in real life, consequences of conformity are more important and we interact with groups more directly

• 24 ‘emotionally stable’ volunteers randomly assigned them to the roles of guard or prisoner
• Prisoners were issued a uniform and a number, and were only referred to by that number in order to create a sense of deindividuation
• Guards were also issued with a uniform including mirrored sunglasses, which also created deindividuation as well as making eye contact with prisoners impossible and to reinforce the boundaries between the two social roles within the established social hierarchy
• The guards were told they had complete power over the prisoners, controlling all aspects of their behaviour, including when they were able to go to the toilet. 
• Zimbardo found that both the prisoners and the guards identified with their roles very quickly
• The guards became more demanding of obedience and assertiveness towards the prisoners while the prisoners become more submissive
• Suggests that the respective social roles became increasingly internalised
• Prisoners became increasingly depressed, especially following a failed rebellion, and as a result the study had to be terminated after 6 days instead of the planned 8 days

(+) Some control over variables

• Participants emotional stability assessed and were randomly assigned their social roles
• Participants only had those roles by chance, no CV of underlying mental issues
• Behaviour was a result of the pressures of the situation and not their personalities

(-) May have underestimated the role of dispositional influences

• Only 1/3 of the guards behaved brutally - 1/3 applied the rules fairly, and the rest supported the prisoners
• Shows the guards could exercise a right of wrong choice despite the pressure to conform from the situation

(-) Major ethical issues

• Zimbardo’s dual role of researcher and prison superintendent prevented Zimbardo from preventing the participants from harm

• Participants drew lots for their role
• A confederate (‘Mr Wallace’) was always the ‘learner’ while the true participant was always the ‘teacher’
• The ‘learner’ was instructed by an ‘experimenter’ to give a shock to Mr Wallace each time he gave an incorrect response
• Shocks started at 15v (marked intense shock) and went up to 450v (labelled danger - severe shock)
• At 300 and 315v Mr Wallace pounded on the wall, and the participant was told no response should be treated as an incorrect answer
• Mr Wallace gave no further response after 315v. If the teacher felt unsure about continuing, the experimenter gave 4 standard ‘prods’ to encourage the participant to continue
• No participant stopped below 300v. 12.5% stopped at 300v. 65% continued to 450v
• Participants shows signs of extreme tension - many were seen to sweat and tremble, and three had ‘full blown seizures’
• In a follow up questionnaire, 84% of participants reported they were glad to have taken part, and 74% felt they had learnt something of personal importance

(+) Good external validity

• Lab-based relationship between the experimenter and the participant reflected real life authority relationships
• Hofling et al - levels of obedience on a hospital ward to unjustified demands by doctors were very high (21/22 nurses obeyed)

(+) Supported by replications

• In a French documentary, 80% gave the maximum 450v to an apparently unconscious man
• Many participants showed anxious behaviour, similar to in Milgram’s original study

(-) Milgram's conclusions can also be explained by SIT

• SIT suggests that obedience fell when the participant identified more with the victim, rather than the initial identification with the experimenter
• The first three ‘prods’ used are appeals for help with science
• The fourth prod is the only one which explicitly demands obedience, and every time this was used the participant quit

Proximity 

• When the participant was in the same room as the learner, obedience - 40%
• When the participant had to force the learner’s hand onto a plate, obedience - 30%
• Experimenter gave instructions over the phone, obedience - 20.5%, participants pretended to give more severe shocks
• People are more likely to obey when they can't see the negative consequences of their actions and are in closer proximity to the authority figure - increases the pressure to obey, decreases the pressure to resist

Uniform

• When the experimenter was replaced by an ‘ordinary member of the public (in everyday clothes) obedience dropped to 20% - suggests that uniform acts as a cue to obey

Location

• Milgram changed the location of the study from Yale University to a run-down building, and found obedience decreased to 47.5%. This suggests that the experimenter had less authority in this setting

(-) Variations lack internal validity

• Orne and Holland suggest the extra manipulation meant participants were more likely to realise the shocks were fake
• Milgram recognised that the uniform variation was so contrived that some participants may have worked it out - may have play acted

(+) Conclusions on uniform have been supported by additional research

• Bickman - confederate dressed as either a milkman, a security guard or in a jacket/tie
• The confederate asked passers by to provide a coin for a parking meter, for example
• People were twice as likely to obey the ‘security guard’ than the ‘jacket/tie’ confederate

(+) Findings replicated in other cultures

• Miranda et al - over 90% obedience in Spanish students
• However: Smith and Bond - most replications have taken place in Western cultures

• Milgram proposed that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person becomes an ‘agent’ - they act for or in place of another
• Agency theory is the idea that people are more likely to obey when they are in the agentic state as they do not believe they will suffer the consequences of those actions.
• Milgram suggests the shift from autonomous (independent) to an agentic state occurs because we perceive someone else as an authority figure, who has power over us due to their position in the social hierarchy
• The ‘moral strain’ of obeying immoral orders is reduced by binding factors - include shifting responsibility to the victims, or denying the damage done to the victims. They allow the person in the agentic state to ignore or minimise the damaging effects of the behaviour

(+) Research support

• Blass and Schmitt - showed students a film of Milgram’s study and asked them to identify who was responsible for harm to the learner - blamd the 'experimenter'
• Shows the students did not view the participant is responsible for their actions - shows that outsiders view the person in an agentic state as not being able to behave according to their own principles, and can understand why this would lead to obedience

(-) Doesn't explain many research findings

• Some of Milgram’s participants did not obey - as all humans are social animals in social hierarchies, they should all obey according to this theory as they should all undergo an agentic shift
• In Hofling’s study nurses should have shown greater anxiety as they gave responsibility to the doctor, because they understood their role in a destructive process, but this was not the case

• Refers to how credible the authority is
• Suggests that people are more likely to obey the authority figure if they are seen as credible in terms of being morally good/right, and legitimate
• This is why students are more likely to listen to their parents or teachers than other unknown adults
• Authorities have legitimacy due through society's agreement - we give up some of our independence to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately (eg. police, judges etc. who are given the power to punish others)
• History has too often shown that leaders (eg. Hitler, Stalin) use legitimate authority destructively, ordering people to behave in a dangerous way
• In Milgram’s study, the people saw the experimenter as legitimate as they knew he was a scientist and therefore is likely to be knowledgeable and responsible - expert authority
• This authority was legitimate (justified) because the researcher held the highest position within the social hierarchy of the experimental scenario

(+) Can account for cultural differences in obedience

• In Milgram-type studies, 16% of Australians went to the top of the voltage scale, compared to 85% of German participants
• Authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate in some cultures - reflects how different societies are structured to raise children to perceive authority figures

(+) Can explain real life obedience

• Kelman and Hamilton suggest that the My Lai massacre is explained by the power hierarchy of the US army
  
• The army has authority recognised by the US government and the law - soldiers assume orders given by the hierarchy are legal

• People with an authoritarian personality are especially obedience to authority
• They have exaggerated respect for authority and submissiveness to it, express contempt for people of inferior social status and have conventional attitudes to race and gender
• It is thought the authoritarian personality originates in childhood due to overly-strict parenting and is characterised by conditional love
• Individuals with an authoritarian personality displace hostility against their parents onto those who they view as socially inferior

Adorno et al

• Investigated the unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups of more than 2000 middle-class white Americans through scales such as the F-scale
• Participants were asked to state how much they agreed with statements such as ‘obedience and respect to authority are the most important virtues for a child to learn’
• It was found that authoritarians (who scored high on the F-scale) identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous of the ‘weak’
• They were excessively aware of the status of themselves and others, and had a fixed cognitive style with distinctive stereotypes about other groups

(+) Research support

• Elms and Milgram - all fully obedient paticipants scored highly on the F-scale
• However: just a correlation - may be third factor eg. low education

(-) Based on a flawed methodology

• F-scale prone to acquisition bias - participants always responding in the same way regardless of the scales used

(-) Low ecological validity

• Can't explain the Holocaust - unlikely the entire German population had an authoritarian personality
• More likely they displaced fear about the future onto the Jews, rather than hostility towards parents 

• Conformity is reduced by a dissenting peer. The peer does not have to give the right answer, as shown by Asch, but the fact that someone else is not following the majority allows others to follow their own conscience - the dissenter acts as a ‘model’
• Obedience is also reduced by one other dissenting partner - pressure to obey can be reduced if another person is seen to disobey eg. in Milgram’s study where obedience fell by 10% in the presence of a disobedient partner. This shows that the social support from other participants gave the original participant to reject the authority figure and disobey

(+) Research support for social support + conformity

• Allen and Levine found - independence increased with one dissenter in an Asch-type study, even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and said he had problems with vision
• Shows that resistance was not motivated by following what someone else says but social support enables someone to be free of the pressure of the group

(+) Research support for social support + obedience

• Gamson et al found higher levels of rebellion (ie. independent behaviour) than Milgram did - participants were in groups to produce evidence that would be used to run a smear campaign
• 88% of participants rebelled, compared to the obedience rate of 65% in Milgram’s study where there was no social support
• Shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance

• Suggests that people’s susceptibility to social influence is dependent on their location on the continuum of locus of control
• People who have an internal locus of control believe that things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves, and as a result are more likely to resist pressures to conform or obey as they are more likely to base their decisions on their own beliefs
• People with high internal LOC are more self-orientated, have higher confidence and less need for social approval, and these traits lead to greater resistance
• People who have an external locus of control believe things happen outside of their control. In the case of obedience, for example, they are more likely to act on behalf of another (agentic shift), and are therefore less resistant to social influence

(+) Research support for the link between LOC and resistence to obedience

• Atgiss conducted a meta analysis considering locus of control and likeliness to conform - found that those that scored highest on external LOC were more easily persuaded and more likely to conform

(-) Not all evidence supports this link

• Twenge et al analysed data from American LOC studies over 40 years (1960 - 2002) - found that people have become more independent but also more external.
• If resistance was linked to internal LOC we would have expected people to have become more internal 

• Consistency - makes the opposition think that the views of the minority are real and serious enough to pay attention to it if the minority are so determined to stay consistent across time (diachronic) and within the group (synchronic) - it increases interest in the minority view
• Commitment - helps gain attention to the minorities’ view. When the minority have so much passion and confidence in their point of view to carry out risky activities, it suggests to the majority that their view must somehow be valid, and it encourages the majority to explore why; offering more opportunity to be influenced.
• Flexibility - the minority should avoid being too consistent as this can suggest that the minority is inflexible and irrational, which will decrease the appeal to the majority. If they appear flexible, they are more likely to seem reasonable and adaptable, which will increase the likelihood of the majority reconsidering their beliefs
• Snowball effect - over time, more people become 'converted' and the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. Gradually, the minority view becomes the majority and social change has occured

• In Moscovici et al.’s study, a group of 6 people viewed a set of 36 blue-green coloured slides varying in intensity, then stated whether the slides were blue or green
• The study had three conditions - confederates who consistently said the slides were green, confederates who were inconsistent about the colour of the slides, and a control group with no confederates
• In the consistent minority condition, participants gave the same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials; 32% gave the same wrong answer on at least one trial
• In the inconsistent minority condition, agreement fell to 1.25% and in the control group participants wrongly identified the colour 0.25% of the time 

(+) Additional research for the importance of consistency

• Wood et al - conducted a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential
• Large sample size increases confidence in Moscovici's findings

(-) Studies often involve artificial tasks

• Lacks mundane realism - the tasks do not reflect the scenarios within which minority groups would act in real life
• May be greater resistance to the minority view in real life as beliefs may be more significant

(-) Applications of minority influence research are limited

• Studies make clear a distinction between majority and minority - real-life situations are more complicated
• Majorities usually have power and status, minorities are committed and tight knit groups whose members know and support each other
• Minority influence research rarely reflects these dynamics 

Lessons from minority influence research - US civil rights movement

• Civil rights marches drew attention to the situation by providing social proof of the problem (eg. black separation in schools)
• They demonstrated consistency by carrying out many marches and had many people taking part - led to deeper processing of the issue
• They took advantage of the augmentation principle during a number of incidents where individuals risked their lives eg. ‘freedom riders’
• The movement began to snowball - activists such as MLK continued to press for changes that gradually got the attention of US govt., and the Civil Rights Act was passed
• This marked the change from minority to majority support
• Social cryptomnesia occurred 

Lessons from conformity and obedience research

• Dissenters/disobedient role models make social change more likely
• In Asch’s study, in a variation where one confederate always give correct answers, the power of the majority was broken and others were encouraged to dissent
• In Milgram’s research disobedient models reduced the rate of obedience in genuine participants

(+) Research support for the role of NSI in social change

• Nolan et al hung messages on front doors of houses with the key message that most residents are trying to reduce energy usage
• There was a significant decrease in energy use compared to a control group

(-) Minority influence is only indirectly effective in producing social change

• Nemeth - minority influence = slow and produces fragile effects
• The majority are not exposed to the main issue at hand - the main issue is not resolved, and effects are delayed, therefore social change through minority influence cannot be relied upon to bring about long-standing changes in society

(-) Methodological issues in this area of research

• Explanations of social change rely on studies by Moscovici, Asch and Milgram, which can be evaluated in terms of methodology, mainly over the artificial nature of the tasks 
• These criticism apply mainly to the evaluation of explanations for the link between social influence processes and social change