Social Influence

Social Influences

Process by which an individual’s attitudes, beliefs or behaviour are modified by the presence or actions of others.

Conformity: is the tendency to change what we do, think or say in response to the influence of real or imagined pressure from others.

Herber Kelman suggested that there are three ways in which people conform to the opinion of a majority.

1)      Compliance – Agree from outside whilst disagreeing from inside

2)      Identification – A moderate form of conformity where we act the same is the group because we share their values.

3)      Internalisation – Agree from outside and inside. They accepted the view of the other group.

Explanations of Conformity

1)      Normative Social Influence - desire to be liked by the majority, so we go along the group even though we may not agree with them.

Evaluation

Supporting Research – Schultz et al found that the hotel guest exposed to normative message that 75% guest re-used their towel each day (rather than getting a new one) reduced their own towel use by 25%, this suggest that people shape their behaviour out of a desire to fit with reference group.

McGhee and Teevan – Student high in need of affiliation (relationship) are more likely to conform showing the desire to be like which lead to conformity.

Research shown that Normative Social Influences does not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way.

2)      Informational Social Influences – desire to be right, we look to someone else for information as we may think they hold better information then us in a certain situation.

Evaluation

Supporting Research – Whitterbrink and Henley found that people exposed to negative information about African American (which they were lead to believe was the majority view) later reported more negative belief about black individual.

Lucas et al found that students conformed more to an incorrect answer when they found the task difficult in a math problem, showing people conform in situation where they feel they don’t know the answer.

Individual differences – Perrin and Spencer found very little conformity and less likely to seek information from other

Asch’s Research – Looked At Majority

Aim: Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious.

Procedure: In Asch’s study there were 5-7 participants per group. Each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length. In each group, there was only one true participant the remaining 6 were confederates. The confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails.

Results: True participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials where confederates gave the wrong answers. Additionally 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial.

Evaluation

This study lacks ecological validity as it was based on peoples’ perception of lines, this does…