Social influence

Types of Conformity:

• Compliance - conforming to gain approval
• Internalisation - conforming becuase of an acceptance to their views
• Identification - accepting influence because of a desire to be associated with a group
• Identification has elements of compliance and internalisation

Explanations for Conformity:

• Normative Social Influence - conformity based on the desire for approval
• More likely to occur when an individual believes they are under surviellance by the group
• Informational Social Influence - based on an acceptance of information from others as evidence about reality
• More likely if the situation is ambiguous or where others are experts

Evaluation and Discussion:

• Difficulties distinguishing between compliance and internalisation
• Research support for normative influence (Smoking take-up - Linkenbach and Perkins)
• Research support for informational influence (Attitudes about African Americans - Wittenbrink and Henely)
• People underestimate the impact of normative influence on their behaviour (Nolan et al.)
• Informational influence is moderated by type of task (Laughlin)

Key Study (Asch, 1956)

• Procedure - participants viewed lines of different lengths and compared them to a standard line
• Group contained confederates with participants answering second to last
• Confederates gave the same wrong answer on 12 out of 18 trails
• Findings - conformity rate was approx 33%
• Without confederates, participants made mistakes 1% of the time
• Participants conformed to avoid disapproval

Variables Affecting Conformity:

• Group size - increased to 30% with the majority of 3
• Campbell and Fairey - group size has a different effect depending on the type of judgement and motivation
• Unanimity of the majority - with one dissenter giving the right answer, conformity was 5.5%
• Dissenter giving the wrong answer conformity was 9%
• Difficulty of the task - if correct answer less obvious, conformity was higher
• Lucas et al. - influence of task difficulty moderated by an individual's self - efficacy

• Asch's research is called a 'child of it's time' (Perrin and Spencer)
• We know very little about the effects of larger majority sizes on conformity levels
• Independent behaviour rather than conformity - participantsmaintained their independence on two-thirds of the trail
• Independent behaviour rather than conformity - participants maintained their independence on 2/3 trials
• Unconvincing confederates - Mori and Aari overcame this problem. Similar results to Asch
• Cultural differences in conformity - Smith et al. found conformity rates higher in collectivist cultures

Key Study: The Stanford Prison Experiment:

• Procedure - male volunteers assigned roles of either prisoners or guards
• Prisoners reffered to by numbers only, guards given uniforms and power to make rules
• Findings - guards became tyrannical and abusive with the prisoners
• Prisoners conformed to their role with some showing extreme reactions of crying and rage

BBC Prison Study (Reicher and Haslam):

• Procedure - male volunteers, matched on social and clinical measures, assigned roles of prisoners or guards
• Findings - unlike SPE, neither guards nor prisoners conformed to their assigned role
• Prisoners worked collectievly to challenge authority of the guards, resulting in a power shift

• Conformity to roles is not automatic - Haslam and Reicher argue that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role
• Demand characteristics - Banuazizi and Movahedi argue that participants' behaviour in the SPE was a response to powerful demand characteristics
• Zimbardo's study followed ethical guidelines but participants still suffered. Greater steps to minimise potential harm to participants in the BBC study
• The SPE and its relevance to Abu Ghraib - similarities between the SPE and prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib
• Zimbardo claims that unthinking conformity can lead to a drift into tyranny - disputed by Reicher and Haslam

Key Study: Milgram (1963)

• Procedure - 40 volunteer participants in each condition
• Real participant acted as 'teacher', confederate as 'learner' 
• Teacher administered increasing shock levels up to 450v
• All participants went to 300v level

Situational Factors in Obedience

• Proximity - obedience levels decreased with increasing proximity
• Location - obedience levels dropped to 48% in lower-status setting
• The power of uniform - people more likely to obey someone in a uniform (Bushman)

• Internal Validity - Orne and Holland claim many participants saw through the deception
• Historical validity - Milgram's findings still as relevant today. No relationship between year of study and obedience levels found (Blass)
• Proximity - Reserve Police Battalion 101
• Location - high levels of obedience not surprising
• The power of uniform - research support

The Agentic State

• Person acts as an agent to carry out another person's wishes
• Blinding factors operate to maintain obedience (social ettiquette)
• Demonstrated in actions at My Lai

Legitimacy of Authority

• Person must percieve an individual in a position of social control

• People accept definitions of a situation offered by legitimate authority figure
• Legitimate commands arise from institutions (a university or the military)

• The agentic state does not explain gradual transitions found in Nazi doctors
• Obedient behaviour may be due to a desire to inflict harm on others
• Agentic shift is a common response when a person loses self-control (Fennis and Aarts)
• Legitimacy can serve as the basis for justifying harm to others
• Tarnmow provides support for power of legitmate authority in aircraft cockpits

The Authoritarian Personality

• People scoring high on the F scale raised within authoritarian family background (Adorno et al.)
• RWA- conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression (Altemeyer)

Key Stusy: Elms and Milgram (1966)

• Procedure - 20 'obedient' participants and 20 'defiant' participants
• Completed MMPI and F scale, and asked open-ended questions
• Findings - little difference between obedient and defiant participants on MMPI
• Higher levels of authoritarianism in obedient participants
• Obedient participants reported being less close to their fathers

• Research evidence - correlation between RWA scores and maximum voltage shock (Dambrun and Vatine)
• Social context explanations are more flexible
• Differences - many fully obedient participants had good relationships with their parents
• Education may determine authoritarianism and obedience (Middendorp and Meloen)
• Left-wing views associated with lower levels of obedience (Begue et al.) 

Social Support

• Presence of social support enables the individual to resist conformity (Asch)
• Social support breaks unanimity and provides an independent assessment of reality
• Disobedient peers act as role models
• Obedience rates dropped to 10% when two confederates defied experimenter (Milgram)

Locus of Control

• Internal LOC- greater independence and less reliance on the opinions of others

• External LOC- more passive attitude and greater acceptance of the influence of others
• High Internals are less vulnerable to influence and better able to resist coercion (Hutchins and Etsey)

• Social support in conformity studies more effective when it was from first responder in group
• Research demonstrates importance of social support in resisting pressure to drink (Rees and Wallace)
• The Rosentrasse protest showed power of social support
• Locus of control related to normative but not informational influence (Spector)
• Young people are far more external than in the 1960s (Twenge et al.)
• Research support - people high in externality more easily persuaded and more likely to conform (Avtgis)

Minority Influence and Behavioural Style

• Minority influence effective with a consistent, committed and flexible style
• Wood et al. - minorities who were especially consistent were most influencial 
• Commitment important as it suggests certainty and confidence
• Flexibility more effective at changing opinion than rigid arguments

Key Study: Moscovici et al. (1969)

• Procedure - groups of four naive participants and two confederates

• Shown blue slides varying in intensity but confederates called them green
• Group 1 confederates answered consistentley, Group 2 confederates answered inconsistentley
• Findings - consistent minority influenced naive participants to say green on 8% of trails
• Inconsistent minority extered very little influence

• Research support for flexibility (Nemeth and Brillmayer)
• The real value of minority influence is that it 'opens the mind' (Nemeth)
• Mackie argues that it is the majority rather than the minority that processes information more
• Percentage of committed opinion holders necessary to 'tip' the majority was 10% (Xie et al.)
• Minority influence in name only - difficult to convince people of the value of dissent

Social Change through Minority Influence

• Drawing attention to an issue
• Minority creates a conflict between majority position and minority position
• Minorities more influencial when they express their views consistentley 
• Augmentation principle - minorities are more influencial if they suffer for their views
• The snowball effect - an intitial small effect spreads more widely until it reaches a 'tipping point'

Social Change through Majority Influence

• If people percieve something as normal, they alter their behaviour to fit that norm
• Correcting misperceptions about 'actual' norms using social norms interventions ('Most of us Dont Drink and Drive' campaign; which resulted in a drop of drink driving by 13.7%)

• Social change through minority influence is gradual
• Being percieved as 'deviant' limits the influence of minorities
• Social norms interventions have their limitations - not all have led to social change (DeJong et al.)
• Social norms and the boomerang effect (Scgultz et al. with electricity usage)
• The Communist Manifesto - overcame issues that typically limit the influence of minorities