Social Influence

Compliance: Accepts influence to achieve a favourable reaction from those around them

Internalisation: Accpts influence because it is consistent witht heir own values and they genuinely agree

Identification: Adoption of an attitude or behaviour to identify and fit inwith a certain group of people

Normative social influence: Conformity to gain approval and avoid social disapproval. Compliance. The person must feel like they are under surveillance by the group.

Informational social influence: Conforming with the desire to be right - looking to others to gain evidence about reality.

Procedure: 123 male US unddergraduates tested. Asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths. Took turns ot call out which line they thought was the same length as standard line. Real participant always answered second to last (all others were confederates). Solution was always fairly obvious. on 12 of 18 (critical) trials, confederates insructed to give same incorrect answer.

Findings: On the critical trials, conformity was 33%. 1/4 never conformed on any of the trials, 1/2 conformed on 6 or more of the trials, and 1 in 20 conformed on all 12 critical trials. Asch conducted control experiment to ensure answers were unambiguous and participant sonly made mistakes 1% of the time. Asch interviewed participants afterwards and found that majority of participants who conformed privately trusted their own perceptions but gave incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from other members (compliance).

Group size: Size of the majority is important up to a point. Little conformity when only 1-2 confederates in the group. 3 confederates and conformity raised to 30% however further increase in confederates did not change the conformity rate.

Unanimity of majority: Conformtiy levels dropped when another real participant was added or a confederate had been instructed to give the right answers throughout. When 'dissenter' gave answer different to real and majority answer, conformity dropped to 9%.

Difficulty of task: Differences in line length were made much smaller so task was made more difficult. Conformity increased. Depends on persons self confidence in their beliefs also.

Procedure: Mock prison set up in University in the US. 24 male student volunteers assigned 'pridoner' or 'guard' role. Prisoners unexpectedly arrested at home, given uniform and ID number. Guards referred to prisoners by their number and were only allowed certain rights (three meals and 3 supervised toilet trips a day, 2 visits a week). Guards given clubs, uniforms, whistles and reflective glasses. Planned to last 2 weeks.

Findings: Guards became tyrannical and abusive towards prisoners. Made them carry out degrading activities such as clean toilet with bare hands. 5 prisoners released early due to extreme reactions. Study terminated after 6 days. Both guards and prisoners conformed. Guards became increasingly cruel and sadistic and prisoners became increasingly passive and accepting of plight.

Agentic state: A person see's themselves as an agent carrying out another person's wishes and therefore do not feel responsible for their actions.

Legtimacy of authority: A person who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation (authoritive figure).

Authoritarian Personality: A personality type with strict adherance to conventional values and belief in absolute obedience and submission to authority.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism: Conventionalism, authority submission and authoritarian aggression associated with authoritarian personality. People possess these values which predispose them to obedience of authority.

F-Scale: A measure of authoritarian traits or tendancies.

Procedure: 40 US participants in total. 2 experimental confederates: an experimenter and another 'volunteer' participant. Participants chose a name out of a hat to see who would be teacher and who would be learner however it was rigged so that real participant was always the teacher. Teacher was required to test the learner on his ability to remember word pairs and everytime he gave a wrong answer, an electric shock was given which increased by 15 volts from 15V to 450V. The learner provided mainly wrong answers and once at 300V the learner began to protest by banging the wall and asking to stop. If the teacher asked to stop, the experimenter gave a series of 'prods' to encourage them to continue.

Findings: 65% of participants ocntinued to 450V despite being labelledb '***'. Only 12.5% participants stopped the study at 300V when the learner first objected.

Proximity: When teacher and learner were in the same room, obedience dropped to 40%.

Location: When located in a run-down office in comparison to Yale University, rates dropped slightly to 48%.

Uniform: Person dressed in uniform seen to have more authority and therefore obedience increases. (Bushman 1998 - police officer, business executive and beggar.)

Social support: The perception that an individual has assistance available from other people, in terms of someone else having the same opinion as them so they feel more comfortable expression their true opinion.

Locus of control: 

High internal locus of control: People who tend to believe they are responsible for their behaviour and experiences and can control the outcome.

High external locus of control: People who believe their behaviour is caused by events outsided of their control ie. luck.

Consistency: If minority are consistent with their approach, the majority are curious as to why the minority have maintained their position and makes them question and reassess the situation more carefully.

Commitment: Commitment suggests certainty, confidence and courage in their values which may persude majority members to take the minority more seriously or even convert to the minority.

Flexibility: Minorities are typically powerless compared to the majority therefore they must show that they are willing to negotiate their position rather than to enforce it. However too much flexibility can be viewed as inconsistency therefore flexibility only works in certain amounts.

Minority Influence:

1. Drawing attention to the issue - Creates conflict which majority are motivated to reduce.

2. Cognitive conflict - Forces majority members to think more deeply about the issues being challenged.

3. Consisitency of position - Must be consistent over time and with each other.

4. Augmentation principle - Willingness to suffer for views, therefore seen as more committed.

5. Snowball effect - As more people consider the issues being promoted, the effect spreads widely until it reaches a 'tipping point' where it leads to a wide-scale social change and the minority becomes the majority.

Majority Influence:

Social norms interventions - A widespread misperception relating to a specific risky behaviour is changed by using perception correction strategies via the media and advertising. eg. 'Most of us don't drink and drive'.