Social Influence

Conformity: A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people.

Types of Conformity:

Compliance: A person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs. This is often a short-term change that only occurs in the presence of the group.

Identification: An individual changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs, but only while in the presence of the group, meaning that this is often a short-term change. Identification takes place when surrounded by a particular group as we change our private beliefs in the presence of the group, but this does not tend to last when away from the group.

Internalisation: A person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs. This is often a long-term change that the individual continues with even when they are away from the pressure of the group.

Explanations for Conformity:

Normative Social Influence (NSI): This is when a person conforms to be accepted or to belong to a group. It is to do with ‘norms’, meaning what is normal or typical behaviour of a social group. A person conforms because it is socially rewarding or to avoid social punishment, such as being mocked for not ‘fitting in’, meaning that NSI is more of an emotional process. It is associated with compliance and identification.

Informational Social Influence (ISI): This is when a person conforms to gain knowledge or because they believe someone else is right. An individual follows the group in this situation because they want to be right, meaning that ISI is more of a cognitive process, as it is to do with what we think.

One strength of ISI as an explanation of conformity is that it is supported by research evidence. For example, Lucas et al. (2006) asked students to answer mathematical problems and found that conformity to incorrect answers was higher when the questions were difficult than when the questions were easy. This was most true for students who rated their maths ability as poor. This study therefore shows that people conform in situations where they don’t know the answer, as they assume other people must be right. This therefore supports ISI as it shows individuals conform as they want to be right.

A limitation of the NSI explanation of conformity is that there are individual differences in how people behave. For example, research has shown that people who are less concerned about being liked are less affected by NSI than those that care more about being liked, who are known as nAffiliators. nAffiliators have a greater need for ’affiliation’, a need for being in relationship with others and are therefore more likely to conform, as found by McGhee and Teevan (1967). Therefore, individual differences affect how people respond to NSI and therefore how likely they are to conform, which this explanation of conformity does not account for.

A limitation of the ISI explanation of conformity is that there are individual differences in how people behave. For example, research by Perrin and Spencer (1980) used science and engineering students in an experiment and found low levels of conformity. As these students were experts in their fields, it is possible that they were confident that they were right when completing the task, meaning that they would not look to anybody else for guidance on this task. Therefore the ISI explanation of conformity is limited as it does not apply to all individuals in all situations, where an individual may be an expert for example, meaning that it cannot explain fully why people conform.

The two-process approach suggests that behaviour is either due to NSI or ISI, when in fact quite often both processes are involved. For example, Asch carried out an experiment and found that conformity was reduced when someone else disagreed with the group as well as the participant. It was unclear however if this was because it may reduce the power of NSI (because the dissenter provided social support) or because it may reduce the power of ISI (because there is another source of information). Therefore it is not always possible to tell whether it is NSI or ISI or a combination of both at work when an individual conforms. This means that the two-process approach to explaining conformity is limited as research suggests the two processes are not separate like the theory suggests.

Procedure: Solomon Asch (1951, 1955) tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards at a time. On one card was a ‘standard line’ and on the other card there were three ‘comparison lines’. One of the three lines was the same length as the standard and the other two were always substantially different. The participant was asked which of the three lines matched the standard. The participants in this study were 123 American male undergraduates. Each participant was tested individually with a group of between six and eight confederates. The participant was not aware that the others were confederates. On the first few trials all the confederates gave the right answers but then they started making errors. All the confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer. Altogether each participant took part in 18 trials and on 12 ‘critical trials’ the confederates gave the wrong answer.

Findings: The participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials, which means that 75% conformed at least once. The term Asch effect has been used to describe this result – the extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous. When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid rejection.

Asch was further interested in the conditions that might lead to an increase or a decrease in conformity. He investigated these by carrying out some variations of his original procedure.

• Group size: He wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. Asch found that with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. But the addition of further confederates made little difference. This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but there is no need for a majority of more than three.
• Unanimity: Asch also wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the participant’s conformity. To test this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others – sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes he gave the wrong one. The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the participant to behave more independently. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous.
• Task difficulty: Asch made the line-judging task more difficult.He found that conformity increased under these conditions. This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong.

One limitation of Asch’s research is that there are ethical issues. The British Psychological Society outlines six key guidelines all psychology research must follow in order to be considered ethical, including informed consent, deception, protection from harm, right to withdraw, debriefing and right to anonymity. In Asch’s study, participant were told they were participating in an investigation into visual perception, whereas in reality they were being studied on whether they conformed to the group. This breaks the guidelines of no deception, as participants were not told the truth, and informed consent, as participants were not informed of the true aim of the study. Therefore, Asch's study can be considered as limited due to the ethical problems it exposed participants to.

One limitation of Asch’s research is that there are cultural differences in conformity rates around the world. Smith et al. (2006) investigated cultural differences in conformity through a meta-analysis and found that on average conformity was 31.2%, however when comparing collectivist and individualist cultures, key differences were found. Individualist cultures were found to have a conformity rate of 25% whereas collectivist cultures were found to have a conformity rate of 37%, nearer to what Ash originally found. This is a problem for Asch’s study as it shows that we cannot generalise Asch’s findings to other cultures outside the USA, as this would be an imposed etic. Later research has shown that Asch’s study is not an accurate representation of conformity rates in all cultures. Therefore one limitation of Asch’s study is that it is only an indication of conformity rates in the US and cannot be generalised to other cultures.

One strength of Asch’s research is its application to real-life situations. For example, research has shown that in over 95% of cases, the first vote of the jury determines the final verdict. This is a strength for Asch’s study, as by understanding the situations in which individuals conform, we can apply this knowledge to a wide range of scenarios. Therefore one strength of Asch’s study is its application to real-life.

A final limitation of Asch’s study is that it lacks temporal validity. Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s study in the UK and found when using students, there was only one conforming response out of 396 trials. However when they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as confederates, they found similar levels of conformity to Asch. This indicates that the perceived costs of conforming may affect an individual’s likelihood to conform. In the time which Asch’s study was conducted, McCarthyism was high in America, and there was therefore risks associated with not conforming to the group, which may explain why Asch’s conformity rates were so high. Therefore Asch’s study is limited as we cannot apply it to other time periods than the one it was conducted in due to the specific circumstances in which it took place.

Following reports of brutality by guards in prisons across America in the late 1960s, Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues wanted to answer this question – do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation that creates such behaviour?

Procedure:

Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University. They advertised for students willing to volunteer and selected those who were deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after extensive psychological testing. The students were randomly assigned the roles of guards or prisoners. To heighten the realism of the study, the ‘prisoners’ were arrested in their homes by the local police and were then delivered to the ‘prison’. They were blindfolded, *****-searched, deloused and issued a uniform and number. The social roles of the prisoners and the guards were strictly divided. The prisoners’ daily routines were heavily regulated. There were 16 rules they had to follow, which were enforced by the guards who worked in shifts, three at a time. The prisoners’ names were never used, only their numbers. The guards, to underline their role, had their own uniform, complete with wooden club, handcuffs, keys and mirror shades. They were told they had complete power over the prisoners, for instance even deciding when they could go to the toilet.

Findings:

After a slow start to the simulation, the guards took up their roles with enthusiasm. Their behaviour became a threat to the prisoners’ psychological and physical health, and the study was stopped after six days instead of the intended 14. Within two days, the prisoners rebelled against their harsh treatment by the guards. They ripped their uniforms, and shouted and swore at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers. The guards employed ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics by playing the prisoners off against each other. They harassed the prisoners constantly, to remind them they were being monitored all the time. For example, they conducted frequent headcounts, sometimes in the middle of the night, when the prisoners would stand in line and call out their numbers. The guards highlighted the differences in social roles by creating plenty of opportunities to enforce the rules and punish even the smallest misdemeanour. After their rebellion was put down, the prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious. One prisoner was released on the first day because he showed symptoms of psychological disturbance. Two more were released on the fourth day. One prisoner went on a hunger strike. The guards attempted to force-feed him and then punished him by putting him in ‘the hole’, a tiny dark closet. Instead of being considered a hero, he was shunned by the other prisoners. The guards identified more and more closely with their role. Their behaviour became more brutal and aggressive, with some of them appearing to enjoy the power they had over the prisoners.

Conclusion:

The simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour. Guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their roles within the prison. These roles were very easily taken on by the participants – even volunteers who came in to perform certain functions such as the ‘prison chaplain’ found themselves behaving as if they were in a prison rather than in a psychological study.

Zimbardo’s main aim was to find out whether our behaviours are mainly formed through dispositional or situational motivation.

Dispositional = Due to our personality, our ‘self’

Situational = Due to our social surroundings

Zimbardo showed that the guards were very willing to conform to the social role they were given. They conformed to their roles to the extent that they acted in ways which they were later shocked and disgusted by. This shows us that identification with a role can be a powerful determinant of our behaviour. The SPE revealed the power of the situation to influence people’s behaviour.

Zimbardo’s study was considered ethical because it followed the guidelines of the Stanford University ethics committee that had approved it. There was, for example, no deception, with all participants being told in advance that many of their usual rights would be suspended. However, Zimbardo acknowledges that perhaps the study should have been stopped earlier as so many of the participants were experiencing emotional distress. Also, while participants did consent to take part, they did not consent to being arrested at their own homes. He attempted to make amends for this by carrying out debriefing sessions for several years afterwards and concluded that there were no lasting negative effects.

Zimbardo believed that conformity to roles was an automatic behaviour. That is, the guards’ sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role, which in turn suppressed their ability to understand or see that what they were doing was wrong. Not all the guards responded in the same way. Behaviour varied from fully sadistic to being ‘good’ guards. The ‘good’ guards did not degrade or harass the prisoners, and even did small favours for them. Haslam and Reicher (2012) argue that this shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role, showing individual differences in behaviour.

Abu Ghraib was a military prison in Iraq, notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in 2003 and 2004. Zimbardo believed that the guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely. He suggests that situational factors such as lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority were present both in SPE and Abu Ghraib. These, combined with an opportunity to misuse the power associated with the assigned role of ‘guard’ led to the prisoner abuses in both situations. Therefore this research has real-world application as it has helped us to understand how seemingly normal people can behave in atrocious ways when they are conforming to social roles.

Banuazizi and Mohavedi (1975) argued the participants were merely play-acting rather than genuinely conforming to a role. Their performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. For example, one of the guards claimed he had based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke. This would also explain why the prisoners rioted – because they thought that was what real prisoners did. But Zimbardo pointed to evidence that the situation was very real to the participants. Quantitative data gathered during the procedure showed that 90% of the prisoners’ conversations were about prison life. ‘Prisoner 416’ expressed the view that the prison was a real one, but run by psychologists rather than the government. On balance, it seems that the situation was real to the participants, which gives the study a high degree of internal validity.

Obedience is complying with or deferring to a request or order from a legitimate authority.

Stanley Milgram (1963) sought an answer to the question of why the German population had followed the orders of Hitler and slaughtered over 10 million Jews, Gypsies and members of other social groups in the Holocaust during the Second World War. He wanted to know if Germans were more obedient. He established a method to study obedience. His first, original study is the one against which all the others are compared, which is why it is sometimes called the ‘baseline’ study.

Procedure: Milgram recruited 40 male participants. The participants recruited were aged between 20 and 50 years, and their jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. When participants arrived at Milgram’s lab there was a rigged draw for their role. A confederate, ‘Mr. Wallace’, always ended up as the ‘learner’ while the true participant was the ‘teacher’. There was also another confederate playing an ‘experimenter’ dressed in a lab coat, played by an actor. Participants were told they could leave the study at any time. The learner was strapped in a chair in another room and wired with electrodes. The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task. The shocks were demonstrated to the teacher. Thereafter the shocks were not real. The shock level started at 15  and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts. When the teacher got to 300 volts  the learner pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question. After the 315-volt shock the learner pounded on the wall again but after that there was no further response from the learner. 

The experimenter gave a standard instruction: ‘An absence of response should be treated as a wrong answer’. If the teacher felt unsure about continuing, the experimenter used a sequence of four standard ‘prods’, which were repeated if necessary:

• Prod 1 – ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on'
• Prod 2 – ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
• Prod 3 – ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
• Prod 4 – ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’

Findings: No participants stopped below 300 volts, 12.5% stopped at 300 volts, 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts. Qualitative data were also collected, such as observations that the participants showed signs of extreme tension; many of them were seen to ‘sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into their hands’. Three even had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’.

Conclusion: People have the capacity to follow orders which lead to inflicting harm on others. This may be because of the ‘agentic state’, in they feel that it is the authority figure who takes responsibility for their actions.

Internal validity – whether the results were due to the manipulation of the IV rather than other factors such as extraneous variables or demand characteristics. Orne & Holland (1968) claimed that participants in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know that the true purpose of the study may be disguised. In Milgram’s study, despite the fact that the learner cried out in pain, the experimenter remained cool and distant. This led the participant to suppose that the ‘victim’ could not really be suffering any real harm. Perry (2012) discovered that many of Milgram’s participants had been sceptical at the time about whether the shocks were real. One of Milgram’s research assistants, Taketo Murata, had divided the participants into what he called ‘doubters’ and ‘believers’. He found that the ‘believers’ were more likely to disobey the experimenter and give only low intensity shocks. Milgram responded by saying the participants believed it was real. They showed physiological signs of distress, e.g. sweating, clenched fists etc.

Blass (1999) carried out a statistical analysis of all Milgram’s obedience experiments and studies by other researchers between 1961 and 1985. The later studies found no less obedience than the earlier studies. Burger (2009) also found almost identical levels of obedience between his findings and the findings of Milgram 46 years earlier. Therefore a strength of Milgram’s study is that it has high historical validity as it appears that the findings are still applicable today.

Commonly assumed women would be more susceptible to social influence than men (Eagly, 1978). Milgram had one condition in which participants were female – he found that self-reported tension in women that went to the maximum shock level was significantly higher than was for men but that their rate of obedience was the same as men in comparable condition. Blass (1999) studied nine replications of Milgram’s study that had both male and female participants and found no evidence of any gender differences in obedience.

Diana Baumrind (1964) criticised Milgram for his apparent lack of concern for the well-being of his research participants. For example, Milgram deceived his participants by telling them they were involved in a study on the effects of punishment on learning, rather than telling them the true purpose of the study. This made it impossible for participants to make an informed decision before giving their consent to participate in the study. Part of giving informed consent is allowing participants the right to withdraw if at any point they change their mind about participating. Milgram claimed that participants were free to leave at any time. Baumrind stated the ‘prods’ from the experimenter made it very difficult for some participants who felt they had no choice but continuing.

After Stanley Milgram conducted his first study on obedience, described on the previous spread, he carried out a large number of variations in order to consider the situational variables that might create greater or lesser obedience.

Proximity: In the proximity variation, the teacher and the learner were in the same room. The obedience rate dropped from 65% to 40%. In an even more dramatic variation, the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto an ‘electroshock plate’ when he refused to answer a question. In this touch proximity condition, the obedience rate dropped further to 30%. In a third proximity variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions to the teacher by telephone. In this remote instruction condition time proximity was reduced. The outcome was a further reduction in obedience to 20.5%. The participants also frequently pretended to give shocks or gave weaker ones than they were ordered to.

Location: In another kind of variation Milgram changed the location of the obedience study. He conducted a variation of the study in a run-down building rather than the prestigious university setting where it was originally conducted. In such a situation the experimenter had less authority. Obedience fell to 47.5%. This is still quite a high level of obedience but it is less than the original 65% in the original baseline study.

Other studies have demonstrated the influence of these situational variables on obedience. In a field experiment in New York City, Bickman (1974) had three confederates dress in three different outfits – jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit, and a security guard’s uniform. The confederates stood in the street and asked passers-by to perform tasks such as picking up litter or giving the confederate a coin for the parking meter. People were twice as likely to obey the assistant dressed as a security guard than the one dressed in jacket and tie. This supports Milgram’s conclusion that a uniform conveys the authority of its wearer and is a situational factor likely to produce obedience.

Orne and Holland’s criticism of Milgram’s original study was that many of the participants worked out that the procedure was faked. It is even more likely that participants in Milgram’s variations realised this because of the extra manipulation. A good example is the variation where the experimenter is replaced by a ‘member of the public’. This is a limitation of all Milgram’s studies because it is unclear whether the results are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the participants saw through the deception and acted accordingly.

Agentic State: Stanley Milgram’s initial interest in obedience was sparked by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for war crimes. Eichmann had been in charge of the Nazi death camps and his defence was that he was only obeying orders. This led Milgram to propose that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsibility. Instead they believe they are acting for someone else.

Autonomous State: The opposite of being in an agentic state is being in an autonomous state. ‘Autonomy’ means to be independent or free. So a person in an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions. The shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is called the agentic shift. Milgram (1974) suggested that this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority. This other person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy. In most social groups when one person is in charge, others defer to this person and shift from autonomy to agency.

Binding Factors: Milgram then raised the question of why the individual remains in this agentic state. Milgram had observed that many of his participants spoke as if they wanted to quit but seemed unable to do so. Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the ‘moral strain’ they are feeling. Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victim.

Legitimacy of Authority:

Most societies are structured in a hierarchical way. This means that people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us. For example, parents, teachers, police officers, nightclub bouncers, all have some kind of authority over us at times. The authority they wield is legitimate in the sense that it is agreed by society. Most of us accept that authority figures have to be allowed to exercise social power over others because this allows society to function smoothly. One of the consequences of this legitimacy of authority is that some people are granted the power to punish others. Most of us accept that the police and courts have the power to punish wrongdoers. So we are willing to give up some of our independence and to hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately. We learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood, of course, from parents initially and then teachers and adults generally.

Destructive Authority: Problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive. History has too often shown that charismatic and powerful leaders such as Hitler and Stalin can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are callous, cruel, stupid and dangerous. Destructive authority was very clearly on show in Milgram’s study, when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their conscience.

Fennis and Aarts (2012) argue that the reason for the agentic shift is a reduction in an individual’s experience of personal control. Under such circumstances people may show an increased acceptance of external sources of control to compensate for this. In a series of both laboratory and field experiments, Fennis and Aarts demonstrated that a loss in personal control resulted not only in greater obedience to authority but also in bystander apathy and greater compliance with behavioural requests.

One limitation of the agentic state explanation is that there is research evidence to show that the behaviour of the Nazis cannot be explained in terms of authority and an agentic shift. Mandel (1998) described one incident involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101 where men obeyed the orders to shoot civilians in a small town in Poland. This was despite the fact that they did not have direct orders to do so.

A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority. For example, Kilham and Mann (1974) replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale. On the other hand, Mantell (1971) found a very different figure for German participants – 85%. This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals. This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures. Such supportive findings from cross-cultural research increase the validity of the explanation.

The agentic shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings. For example, it does not explain why some of the participants did not obey. The agentic shift explanation also does not explain the findings from Hofling et al.’s study. The agentic shift explanation predicts that, as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants, as they understood their role in a destructive process. But this was not the case. This suggests that, at best, agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.

The Authoritarian Personality: Like Milgram, Theodor Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand the anti-semitism of the Holocaust. Their research led them to draw very different conclusions than Milgram had. On the basis of their research they came to believe that a high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder, and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual.

Procedure: Adorno et al. (1950) investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed several scales to investigate this, including the F-scale which is still used to measure authoritarian personality. Two examples of items from the F-scale are: ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’, and ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel a great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’.

Findings: Probably the most interesting discovery from this study was that people with authoritarian leanings identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’. They were very conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of higher status. Adorno et al. also found that authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there was no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups. There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Authoritarian Characteristics: Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority. They have an extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it. They also show contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status, and have highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender. They view society as ‘going to the dogs’ and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country, religion and family. People with an authoritarian personality are inflexible in their outlook – for them there are no ‘grey areas’. Everything is either right or wrong and they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Origin of the Authoritarian Personality: Adorno et al. also sought to identify the origin of the authoritarian personality type. They concluded that it formed in childhood, as a result of harsh parenting. Typically, the parenting style identified by Adorno features extremely strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards, and severe criticism of perceived failings. It is also characterised by conditional love – that is, the parents’ love and affection for their child depends entirely on how he or she behaves. Adorno argued that these experiences create resentment and hostility in the child, but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because of a wellfounded fear of reprisals. So the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker, in a process known as scapegoating. This explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority, which is a dislike for people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups. This is a psychodynamic explanation.

Milgram and his assistant Alan Elms (1966) conducted a follow-up study using participants who had taken part in Milgram’s original study. They found that those who were fully obedient and went all the way to 450 volts scored higher on tests of authoritarianism and lower on scales of social responsibility than those who defied the experimenter. These findings support Adorno’s claims although only a correlation could be determined. There is also a large body of evidence to indicate that people who are very rigid, conservative, and prejudiced have been brought up in the way that Adorno described, with a great deal of physical punishment and little chance to express their own opinions.

Dambrun + Vatine (2010) used an ‘immersive virtual environment’ in a repetition of Milgram’s experiment where an actor taking the role of the learner was filmed and displayed on a computer screen. Despite knowing that the experiment was a simulation and that the learner was not being harmed by an electric shock, participants still tended to respond as if the situation was real and there was a significant correlation between participants authoritarian scores and the maximum shock voltage given. Therefore this suggests that in Milgram’s study participants did not give shocks because they were sceptical of whether it was real, but because of their personality.

This refers to the ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority. The ability to withstand social pressure is influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.

Social Support:

The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same. These people act as models to show others that resistance to social influence is possible.

Conformity: Social support can help people to resist conformity. The pressure to conform can be reduced if there are other people present who are not conforming. As we saw in Asch’s research, the person not conforming doesn’t have to be giving the ‘right’ answer but simply the fact that someone else is not following the majority appears to enable a person to be free to follow their own conscience. This other person acts as a ‘model’. However, Asch’s research also showed that if this ‘non-conforming’ person starts conforming again, so does the naïve participant. Thus the effect of dissent is not long lastings.

Obedience: Social support can also help people to resist obedience. The pressure to obey can be reduced if there is another person who is seen to disobey. In one of Milgram’s variations, the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the genuine participant was joined by a disobedient confederate. The participant may not follow the disobedient person’s behaviour but the point is the other person’s disobedience acts as a ‘model’ for the participant to copy that frees him to act from his own conscience

The Rosenstrasse Protest:

In 1943, a group of German women protested in the Rosenstrasse in Berlin, where the Gestapo were holding 2,000 Jewish men, most of whom were married to non-Jewish partners or were the male children of these ‘mixed marriages’. The women stood toe-to-toe with Gestapo agents, who threatened to open fire if they did not disperse, and demanded the release of their husbands and sons. Despite the threats, the women’s courage prevailed and the Jews were set free.

Locus of Control:

This refers to the sense we have about what directs events in our lives. It is a concept concerned with internal control versus external control. Internals believe that the things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves. For example, if you do well in an exam it is because you worked hard, if you don’t do well it is because you didn’t work hard. Externals have a tendency to believe that things happen without their own control. If they did well in an exam they might well say it was because they used an excellent textbook. If they failed they might blame it on the textbook or they had bad luck because the questions were hard.

Continuum: People differ in the way they explain their successes and failures but it isn’t simply a matter of being internal or external. There is a continuum with high internal LOC at one end and high external LOC at the other end of the continuum, with low internal and low external lying in between.

Resistance to Social Influence: People who have an internal LOC are more likely to be able to resist pressures to conform or obey. If a person takes personal responsibility for their actions and experiences then they are more likely to base their decisions on their own beliefs and thus resist pressures from others. People with a high internal LOC tend to be more self-confident, more achievement-oriented, have higher intelligence and have less need for social approval. These personality traits lead to greater resistance to social influence.

Evaluation – Social Support:

Research support – resistance to conformity: Allen and Levine (1971) found independence increased with one dissenter in an Asch-type study. Even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and said he had problems with his vision. Resistance is not motivated by following what someone else says, but it enables someone to be free of the pressure from the group.

Research support – resistance to obedience: Gamson et al (1982) found higher levels of resistance in their study than Milgram. This was probably because they were in groups. They had to produce evidence to help an oil company run a ‘smear campaign’. 29 out of 33 groups of participants rebelled. This shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance.

Evaluation - Locus of Control:

Research support – resistance to obedience: Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s study and measured whether participants were internals or externals. 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level. Only 23% of externals did not continue. As internals showed greater resistance this support increases the validity of the LOC explanation and our confidence that it can explain resistance.

Contradictory research: Twenge et al (2004) analysed data from American obedience studies over a 40-year period (1960-2002). The data showed that, over this time span, people have become more resistant to obedience, but more external. If resistance were linked to an internal LOC then we would expect people to have become more internal. This challenges the link between internal LOC and resistance. However, the results may be due to a changing society where many things are increasingly outside personal control.

The role of LOC may be exaggerated: Rotter et al (1982) found LOC is only important in new situations – it has little influence in familiar situations where previous experiences are always more important. This does suggest that locus of control can explain only a limited range of situations in which people might resist social influence. This means that locus of control is not as important a factor in resistance as some have suggested.

Minority influence is a form of social influence where a persuasive minority changes the attitudes and behaviours of the majority. Social change is when a whole society adopts a new belief or way of behaving which then becomes widely accepted as the norm. For example, in the 1950s a small number of environmentalists emerged. They had ‘radical ideas’ about recycling and pollution which were dismissed. However, now their attitudes about the environment are the norm and most people believe that recycling and looking after the environment is a good thing.

Consistency:

Over time, consistency in the minority’s views increases the amount of interest from other people. Consistency makes others rethink their own views. Synchronic consistency – people in the minority are all saying the same thing. Diachronic consistency – they have been saying the same thing for a long time.

Commitment:

Sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to their cause. It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority because this demonstrates commitment to the cause. This increases the amount of interest further from other majority group members – the augmentation principle.

Flexibility:

Researchers have questioned whether being consistent alone is enough to cause minority influence. Nemeth (1986) argued that if the minority is seen as being inflexible and uncompromising then the majority are unlikely to change. They constructed a mock jury in which there were three genuine participants and one confederate. They had to decide on the amount of compensation to give a ski lift accident victim. When the confederate would not change from a low amount which seemed unreasonable, the majority stuck together at a much higher amount. However, when the confederate changed his compensation offer a bit, so did the majority. This therefore shows that the minority should balance consistency and flexibility so they do not appear rigid.

The Process of Change:

Over time, increasing numbers of people switch from the majority position to the minority position. They have become ‘converted’. The more that this happens, the faster the rate of conversion. This is called the snowball effect. Gradually the minority view has become the majority view and change has occurred.

Moscovici (1969): Serge Moscovici first studied minority influence with his ‘blue slide, green slide’ study. Participants were first given eye tests to ensure that they were not colour blind.

Procedure: Participants were shown 36 slides which were clearly different shades of blue and asked to state the colour of each slide out loud. In the first part of the experiment the two confederates answered green for each of the slides. They were completely consistent in their responses. In the second part of the experiment they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times. In this case they were inconsistent in their answers. A control group was used for comparison with the experimental group where the factors expected to influence the experimental group are removed. The control group did not include confederates.

Findings: Only 0.25% of the control group’s responses were green, the rest were blue. For the experimental group, 1.25% of the participants’ answers were green when the confederates gave inconsistent answers. This rose to 8.42% responding with green when the confederates were consistent in their responses.

The real ‘value’ of MI: Nemeth (2010) argues that dissent, in the form of minority opinion ‘opens the mind’. As a result of exposure to minority opinion, people search for information, consider more options and make better decisions, and are more creative. Dissenters liberate people to say what they believe and they stimulate divergent and creative thought even when they are wrong. Van Dyne and Saavedra (1996) support this, as they studied the role of dissent in work groups, finding that groups had improved decision quality when exposed to a minority perspective.

Do we really process the minority’s message more?: Mackie (1987) argues that the views of the minority do not necessarily lead to greater processing, but rather it is the majority who are more likely to create greater message processing, as we tend to believe that the majority of group members share similar beliefs to ours. If the majority express a different one from the one we hold, we must consider it carefully to understand why this is the case. On the other hand, people tend not to waste time trying to process why a minority's message is different; therefore it tends to be less rather than more influential.

MI in name only: Nemeth (2010) claims it is still difficult to convince people of the value of dissent. People accept the principle only on the surface i.e. it appears democratic and tolerant. However they quickly become irritated by a dissenting view that persists and they also fear the lack of harmony within the group by welcoming dissent. As a result, we attempt to belittle the dissenting view or try to contain it. People are encouraged to ‘fit in’ and made to fear repercussions, including being marginalised by ridicule by being associated with a ‘deviant’ point of view. This means the majority view persists and the opportunities for innovative thinking associated with minority influence are lost.

A ‘tipping point’ for commitment: Xie et al (2011) discovered a ‘tipping point’ where the number of people holding a minority position is sufficient to change majority opinion. They developed computer models of social networks, with ‘individuals’ free to ‘chat’ with each other across the networks. Each individual held a ‘traditional’ view, but were also open to other views. They then added some committed individuals representing an alternative point of view, which they expressed consistently. If the listener held the same opinion as the speaker it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another individual. If that individual also held the new belief, the listener adopted it. After a while, opinion suddenly began to shift. The percentage of committed opinion holders necessary to ‘tip’ the majority into accepting the minority position was 10%.

Occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things.

The Role of Social Influence Processes in Social Change:

Research into social influence does not just tell us how individuals change their beliefs and behaviours, but also how whole societies might change. If we look around us, we find evidence of social influence in many different types of social change: for example, the actions of the suffragettes, recycling, same-sex marriage. The power that persuasive groups possess in order to bring about social change is their ability to organise, educate and mobilise support for their cause. When individuals band together and form an organisation to focus their collective power, social change can be the result. Social change occurs when societies as a whole adopt new attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. This process occurs continually but at a gradual pace, with minority influence being the main driving force for social change.

The Special Role of Minority Influence:

If an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to match those of the minority. Moscovici (1980) referred to this process as a ‘conversion’, a necessary prerequisite for social change.

1) Drawing Attention: The minority draws attention to a situation or issue by providing social proof of the problem (black separation - provided social proof to draw attention, NAACP, speeches).

2) Consistency: The minority shows consistency in promoting the social change they want to see – they continue to campaign and push for action (marches, civil rights acitivists despite minority of American population, bus boycotts, continued protest).

3) Deeper Processing: People who had accepted the status quo begin to question it (changes in law).

4) Augmentation Principle: If members of the minority are willing to suffer for the issue they are fighting for they are seen as more committed and are taken more seriously by the majority (freedom riders got on buses to challenge the fact that black people had to sit separately and were beaten and there were incidents of mob violence, KKK).

5) Snowball Effect: There is a change from minority to majority support as more people start to support the cause (Martin Luther King continued to press for changes that gradually got the attention of the US government and in 1964 the US Civil Rights Act was passed).

6) Social Cryptomnesia: People remember that there was a change in society, but do not remember exactly how it happened (cannot identify all changes that happened).

Conformity Research

Dissenters make social change more likely: Asch’s research demonstrated that when one confederate always gave the correct answer, this broke the power of the majority – this enabled others to dissent. This demonstrates the potential for social change.

Majority influence and normative social influence: Environmental and health campaigners exploit conformity by appealing to NSI. They provide information about what others are doing. Social change is encouraged by drawing attention to the majority’s behaviour, for example, preventing young people from smoking by telling them that most young people do not smoke.

Obedience Research:

Disobedient models make social change more likely: Milgram's research demonstrated the importance of disobedient role models. In his variation, when one confederate refused to give shocks, the rate of obedience in genuine participants dropped significantly.

Gradual commitment leads to ‘drift’: Zimbardo (2007) suggested how obedience can be used to create social change – once a smaller commitment has been made it becomes more difficult to resist a bigger one. People ‘drift’ into a new kind of behaviour.

Barriers to Social Change: Bashir et al investigated why people so often resist social change even when they agree it’s necessary. They found that their participants were less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways because they didn’t want to be associated with stereotypical and minority environmentalists. They rated environmental activists and feminists in negative ways describing them as “tree huggers” and “man haters”. The researchers’ advice to minorities hoping to create social change is to avoid behaving in ways that reinforce the stereotypes because this will always be off-putting to the majority they want to influence.

Research Support for Role of NSI: Nolan (2008) investigated whether majority influence led to a reduction in energy consumption in a community: the researchers hung messages on the front doors of houses in San Diego, California every week for one month. The key message was that most residents were trying to reduce their energy usage. As a control, some residents had a different message that just asked them to save energy, but made no reference to other people’s behaviour. Findings showed significant decreases in energy usage in the group that were informed ‘most residents’ were trying to reduce energy usage showing how conforming to a majority group can lead to social change.

Different Levels of Processing: Minority influence and majority influence may involve different levels of cognitive processing. Moscovici believes that a minority viewpoint forces individuals to think more deeply about the issue. However, Mackie (1987) counters this, suggesting the opposite to be true. She suggests that when a majority group is thinking or acting in a way that is different from ourselves we are forced to think even more deeply about their reasons. This, therefore, casts doubt on the validity of Moscovici’s minority influence theory, suggesting it may be incorrect.

Methodological Issues: Methodological issues may undermine the links drawn between social influence processes and social change. For example, many of the research studies providing an explanation for social change, such as those conducted by Asch, Milgram and Moscovici, can themselves be criticized for issues in their methodology ranging from low generalisability to demand characteristics. This means that there are doubts about the validity of some of the processes involved in social influence and social change due to the research informing the theories.

One strength of both informational social influence (ISI) and normative social influence (NSI) is that there is research support for their role in conformity. For example, Asch (1956) investigated if individuals would conform to the group even when they knew the group was incorrect and found that 75% of participants conformed at least once, with an average of 37% conformity on each critical trial. After the experiment, Asch interviewed participants to find out why they conformed and found that some participants conformed because they did not want to be rejected by the group (NSI) whilst others conformed because they believed the group was right and they were wrong (ISI). Therefore, this study provides evidence for the idea that people will conform to the group to be right or to fit in, supporting both ISI and NSI as explanations.

Some people consider a situational perspective on the Holocaust offensive because it removes personal responsibility from the perpetrators. To suggest that Nazi executioners of Jews were 'only doing their duty by obeying orders' implies that they were also the victims of situational pressures, and that anyone faced with a similar situation would have behaved in the same way. It runs the risk of trivialising genocide. Many Nazis on trial for war crimes attempted to use the explanation that they were just following orders to defend themselves after the war.

Uniform: In the original baseline study, the experimenter wore a grey lab coat as a symbol of his authority. Milgram carried out a variation in which the experimenter was called away because of an inconvenient telephone call right at the start of the procedure. The role of the experimenter was taken over by an ‘ordinary member of the public’  in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat. The obedience rate dropped to 20%, the lowest of these variations.

A strength of Milgram’s research is that his findings have been replicated in other cultures. The findings of cross-cultural research have been generally supportive of Milgram. For example, Miranda et al. (1981) found an obedience rate of over 90% amongst Spanish students. This suggests that Milgram’s conclusions about obedience are not limited to American males, but are valid across cultures and apply to females too. However, Smith and Bond (1998) state that most replications have taken place in Western societies. These are culturally not that different from the USA, so it would be premature to conclude that Milgram’s findings about proximity, location and uniform apply to people everywhere.

It is highly unlikely that the millions of individuals that all displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behaviour in pre-war Germany all had the same personality, and so perhaps there is an alternative explanation – Social Identity Theory. People identify themselves as belonging to particular social groups. We favour our own group over any group to which we do not belong. We maximise the similarities within the group and the differences between our group and others. The majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’, the Jews.

Similarities Between Minority and Majority: Maass et al. (1982) investigated the idea of group membership and found that a minority of heterosexual men were more likely to convince a heterosexual majority about gay rights, in comparison to a minority of homosexual people. Maass concluded that ‘straight’ men have more persuasive power when discussing gay rights with other straight men, in comparison to gay men. This supports the idea that similarity in terms of group membership is an important factor for minority influence and social change.

Tarnow (2000) studied a US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) review of all serious aircraft incidents in the US between 1978 and 1990 where a flight voice recorder was available and where flight crew actions were a contributing factor in the crash. He found excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise – one second officer claimed that although he noticed the captain taking a particularly risky approach, he said nothing as he assumed ‘the captain must know what he’s doing’. The NTSB report found such ‘lack of monitoring’ errors in 19/37 accidents investigated.

A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it can help explain how obedience can lead to real-life war crimes. Kelman and Hamilton (1989) argue that the My Lai massacre  can be understood in terms of the power hierarchy of the US Army.

Conclusion: Moscovici’s experiment suggests that minorities can influence majorities. However, it indicates that this influence is much more effective when the minority are consistent in their responses. When the minority gave inconsistent answers, they were largely ignored by the majority. Later research has largely confirmed these findings. This study has drawn attention to three processes involved in minority influence.