Social Influence

Conformity

Conformity is a type of social influence defined as a change in belief or behavior in response to real or imagined social pressure. It is also known as majority influence.

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Internalisation

This is when an individual publicly changes their behavior to fit in with the group while also agreeing with them privately. An internal (private) and external (public) change of behavior. This is the deepest level of conformity were the beliefs of the gr

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Compliance

This refers to instances where a person may agree in public with a group of people, but the person privately disagrees with the group’s viewpoint or behavior. The individual changes their views, but it is a temporary change.

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Identification

Identification occurs when someone conforms to the demands of a given social role in society. For example, a policeman, teacher or politician. This type of conformity extends over several aspects of external behavior. However, there still be no changed to

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Normative Influence

Normative social influence is where a person conforms to fit in with the group because they don’t want to appear foolish or be left out. Normative social influence is usually associated with compliance, where a person changes their public behaviour but no

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Informational Influence

Informational social influence is where a person conforms because they have a desire to be right, and look to others who they believe may have more information. This type of conformity occurs when a person is unsure of a situation or lacks knowledge and i

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Asch’s Line Study: 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 real

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Asch’s Line Study: Results

Real 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.

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Evaluation of Asch’s Study 1

This study lacks ecological validity as it was based on peoples’ perception of lines, this does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity.

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Evaluation of Asch’s Study 2

There are also sampling issues regarding this study as the study was only carried out on men thus the sample was gender bias and therefore the results cannot be applied to females. The sample therefore lacks population validity.

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Evaluation of Asch’s Study 3

There are ethical issues regarding Asch’s study, deception was used as participants were told the study was about perception of lines. As a result, they could not give informed consent. It is possible that the participants may have felt embarrassed when t

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Factors Affecting Conformity: Group Size

Asch altered the number of confederates in his study to see how this effected conformity. The bigger the majority group, the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point because conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four. Bro

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Factors Affecting Conformity: Group Unanimity

A person is more likely to conform when all members of the group agree and give the same answer. When one other person in the group gave a different answer from the others, and the group answer was not unanimous, conformity dropped. Asch (1951) found that

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Factors Affecting Conformity: Difficulty of Task

When the comparison lines were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased. When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.

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Factors Affecting Conformity: Answer in Private

When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity decreases. This is because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of rejection

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Conformity to Social Roles

Social roles are the part people play as members of a social group (e.g. student, teacher, policeman etc). There is considerable pressure to conform to the expectations of a social role. Conforming to a social role is called identification.

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Procedure

To study the roles people play in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. He advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight. Participants were r

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Procedure 2

Prisoners were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only. Guards were issued a khaki uniform, together with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible. The guards worked shifts of eight hours each (the

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Findings

Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, with the guards adopting to theirs quickly and easily. Within hours of beginning the experiment some guards began to harass prisoners. They behaved in a brutal and sadi

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Findings 2

The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior too. They talked about prison issues a great deal of the time. They ‘told tales’ on each other to the guards. They started taking the prison rules very seriously, and some even began siding with the guards

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Stanford Prison Experiment: Findings 3

As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and assertive. They demanded even greater obedience from the prisoners. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything so tried to find ways to please the guards.

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 1

Demand characteristics could explain the findings of the study. Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting. Because the guards and prisoners were playing a role their behavior may not be influenced by the same factors which affect behavior i

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 2

The study may also lack population validity as the sample comprised US male students. The study's findings cannot be applied to female prisons or those from other countries.

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 3

A strength of the study is that it has altered the way US prisons are run.

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 4

The study has received many ethical criticisms, including lack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment (it was unpredictable). Also, the prisoners did not consent to being 'arrested' a

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 5

Participants playing the role of prisoners were not protected from psychological harm, experiencing incidents of humiliation and distress. One prisoner had to be released after 36 hours due to uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger.

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Evaluation of Zimbardo's Study 6

Another strength of the study is that the harmful treatment of participant led to the formal recognition of ethical guidelines.

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Obedience

Obedience is a type of social influence where a person follows an order from another person who is usually an authority figure.

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Milgram's Shock Study: Procedure 1

Milgram wanted to see whether people would obey a legitimate authority figure when given instructions to harm another human being. He conducted a lab experiment in which two participants were assigned either the role of a teacher (this was always given to

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Milgram's Shock Study: Procedure 2

The teacher and learner were put into separate rooms. The teacher was then asked by the experimenter (who wore a lab coat) to administer electric shocks (which were actually harmless) to the learner each time he gave the wrong answer. These shocks increas

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Milgram's Shock Study: Procedure 3

The experimenter wore a grey lab coat and his role was to give a series of prods when the participant refused to administer a shock. There were 4 prods and if one was not obeyed then the experimenter read out the next prod.Prod 1: please continue.
Prod 2:

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Milgram's Shock Study: Results

The results were that all participants went to 300 volts and 65% were willing to go all the way to 450 volts. Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study. All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affecte

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Evaluation of Milgram's Study 1

A limitation is that this study lacked ecological validity as it was carried out in a lab under artificial conditions. This means that it might not be possible to generalise the finding to a real life setting, as people do not usually receive orders to hu

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Evaluation of Milgram's Study 2

Another problem is that the sample was biased. Milgram only used males in his study and this means we cannot generalise the results to females.

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Evaluation of Milgram's Study 3

Highlight the value that Milgram’s work has provided to social Psychology. For instance Milgram’s work gives an insight into why people under the Nazi reign were willing to kill Jews when given orders to do so. It also highlights how we can all be blind t

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Evaluation of Milgram's Study 4

A strength of the study is that it used a standardised procedure because it was a lab experiment. This is good because it improves the reliability of the study and also helps establish a causal relationship.

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Ethical Issues: Deception

The participants actually believed they were shocking a real person, and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram's. Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get

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Ethical Issues: Protection of participants

Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed. Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering etc. Three participants had un

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Ethical Issues: Protection of participants 2

Milgram argued that these effects were only short term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK) their stress levels decreased. Milgram also interviewed the participants one year after the event and concluded that most w

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The Agentic State

Agency theory says that people will obey authority when they believe the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s evidence. When participants were reminded that they had respo

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The Agentic State 2

Another example of the agenetic state involved a variation of Milgram's study whereby participants could instruct an assistant (confederate) to press the switches. In this condition 92.5% shocked to the maximum 450 volts. This shows when there is less per

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Limitations 1

It cannot explain Nazi behavior – Mandel described how the German Police Reserve shot civilians in a small Polish town even though they were not directly ordered to and were told they could be assigned to other duties – Challenges agentic state as they we

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Limitations 2

May be better explained by ‘plain cruelty’ – Zimbardo’s participants may have used the situation to express their sadistic tendencies, guards inflicted rapidly escalating cruelty to prisoners even though there was no authority figure telling them to – Obe

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Legitimate authority

The people who we give the right to tell us what to do and we are more likely to obey them. They have defined social roles which people respect because it implies knowledge or legal power

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Authority Figure Wearing a Uniform

Milgram’s experimenter wore a laboratory coat (a symbol of scientific expertise) which gave him a high status. But when the experimenter dressed in everyday clothes obedience was very low. The uniform of the authority figure can give them status.

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Status of Location

Milgram's obedience experiment was conducted at Yale, a prestigious university in America. The high status of the university gave the study credibility in the eyes of the participants, thus making them more likely to obey.When Milgram moved his experiment

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Proximity of Authority Figure

People are more likely be obey an authority figure who is in close proximity. In Milgram's study the experimenter was in the same room as the participant.If the authority figure is distant it is easier to resist their orders. When the experimenter instruc

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Dispositional Explanation: Authoritarian Personality

Adorno felt that dispositional factors rather than situational factors could explain obedience. He proposed that there was such a thing as an authoritarian personality. One of the various characteristics of the authoritarian personality was that the indiv

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Dispositional Explanation: Authoritarian Personality 2

He investigated 2000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups using the F-scale to measure Authoritarian personality

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Social Influence

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