social influence

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social influence

  • when someones emotions, opinions and behaviour are influenced by others
  • social influence takes many forms, it can be seen in conformity, socialisation, pressure groups, obedience, leadership, sales and marketing, persuasion and leadership
  • Kelman said there were 3 types of conformity: internalisation-genuinely accepts the group norms. Identification-we identify and want to be part of the group. Compliance-going with the flow (behaviour stops when the group pressure stops)
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conformity

  • Deutsch and Gerrard (1955)- 2 process theory: Informational social influence- the need to be right, we follow the majority as they are likely to be right: Normative social influence, we follow the consensus, group norms. an emotional action when we fear rejection
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obedience

  • follows a direct order form
  • person giving order usually has a posistion of power-who can punish those who disobey
  • obedience=order. conformity=request
  • obedience relies on social power. conformity relies on social acceptance
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milgrams obedience study

  • recruited 40 male participants
  • tested lea\rners ability to learn word pairs
  • teachers give electic shocks everytime they get one wrong-up to 450 volts-no response=incorrect answer
  • no shocks were really given
  • when the teacher hears the screams 25/40 continued to 450 volts
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obedience- situational variables

-proximity (how close the teacher is to the student) (when in the same room (milgrams) obedience fell from 65% to 40%. This fell to 30% when the teacger had to force the learners hand onto the electric shock)

-location- (where the order is given) (in a run down office the obedience fell to 47.5%)

-uniform- (suggests a postion of power) (when the member of public took over obedience fell to 20%)

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social support

  • people can resist social influence if there is social support (if others dont conform)
  • these people are known as models and show that resistance is possible
  • Allen & Levine found that jsut one desenter cause conformity to decrease
  • Gamson et al- when people work in groups theyre more likely to resist 
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locus of control

  • Rotter concerned with whether we do thing out of our own control (internal) or whether they are out of our control (external)
  • internal factors- choice, free will, high achievement and motivation
  • external factors- luck, blame others, stress, 
  • people with an internal LOC are less likely to conform
  • Twenge et al- over time as resistance increased so did the number of externals, this link could be due to change in society
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minority influence

  • small groups who influence the thoughts and actions of people
  • internalisation- deep conformity that changes public and private views
  • if consistency is applied over a period of time, the interest from other people increases- this can be due to: synchronic consistency and diachronic consistancy
  • Commitment is a big pulling point- if groups do things that are of high risk then it shows how strongly they feel about it...majority group members then pay attention and consider what they have said/ done (augementation principle)
  • minority needs to be onsistent and flexible
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social change

  • drawing attention- (1950's USA) racial segregation- social right marches and movement drew the attention of people.
  • consistency- despite being a minority group the marches still took place
  • deeper processing- despite majority holding the opposite viewpoint people stopped and asked questions
  • augementation priciple- risk draws the attention of others (number of people got beaten for breaking the norm)
  • snowball effect- small movements lead to big interest and activists becoming well known (M.L.King)
  • social crymptommesia- lack of memory about incidents that led up to social change
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