Social influences

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What were the three types of conformity proposed by Kelman?
Compliance, Internalisation, Identification
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What is compliance?
An individual goes along with the group to gain approval as fitting in is seen as desirable. A person may agree in public but privately disagrees with the groups behaviour - temporary change
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What is internalisation?
An individual may go along with the group due to an acceptance of their views. They privately change their behaviour to fit in with the group while also agreeing privately - internal and external change in behaviour
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What is identification?
An individual adopts an attitude or behaviour because they want to be associated with a person/ object. Occurs when someone conforms to the demands of a given social role in society for example, police officer. Public change in behaviour only
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What is normative social influence?
It is very common to go along with the majority without really accepting the point of view (compliance). Humans tend to have a need for social companionship & a fear of rejection so when they feel they are being watched they try to gain approval
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What is informational social influence?
When an individual accepts information from others as evidence about reality. Humans need to feel confident that their perceptions & beliefs are correct. Individual does not just comply in behaviour alone but changes behaviour in line with group
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Who completed a study in relation to Variables affecting conformity?
Asch 1956
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Outline Asch's study
Asked student volunteers to take part in a visual discrimination task. Unbeknown to the volunteers all but one of pots were really confederates.
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Who was involved in Asch's study?
Wanted to investigate conformity under non-ambiguous conditionings so came up with an experiement that involves 123 young, male, American students being split into groups of 6-10
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Outline the task of Asch's study
Ppts were informed the experiment was about visual judgement. The task was to match the length of line X to either A, B or C but the answer was obvious and only one true naive ppt
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Outline the findings of Asch's study
12/18 trials the actors were instructed to say the wrong answer. 74% conformed at least one, 26% never conformed, 8% conformed all the time. Average conformity rate was 37%
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What did Asch find out in an interview after the study?
That those who conformed had continued privately to trust their own perceptions & judgements but changed their public behaviour to avoid disapproval
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How can group size affect conformity?
Under the pressure of a majority of three, the proportion of conformity rose to around 30% but further increases did not increase the level of conformity. Campbell et al suggest group size may have a different effect depending on type of judgement
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How can the unanimity of the study affect conformity?
When real ppt was given support of real ppt or confederate throughout, conformity levels dropped reducing wrong answers to 5.5%. When support gave answer different to majority and true answer conformity was 8%
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Who conducted a study on conformity to social roles?
Zimbardo 1973
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Who was involved in the Stanford Prison experiment?
Mock prison was set up in the basement of psychology department at Stanford Uni. Male student volunteers were psychologically and physically screened and 24 were randomly assigned as prisoner or guard
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What happened on the first day of the study for prisoners?
Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and at prison were assigned an ID number. They were allowed certain rights: 3 meals a day, 3 supervised toilet trips & 2 visits per week
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What happened on the first day of the study for guards?
Guards were given uniforms, clubs, whistles and wore reflective sunglasses to prevent eye contact
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What was found from the Stanford Prison Experiment over the first few days?
The guards grew increasingly sadistic and abusive towards the prisoners e.g. woke them in the night and forced them to clean toilets with their hands
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What did some prisoners do part way through the study?
One asked for parole rather than to withdraw from the study and 5 were released early due to reactions appearing after only two days in the prison
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Who stopped the study and after how many days?
Study stopped after 6 days by intervention of Christian Maslach
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What was the procedure of Reicher and Haslam's 2006 BBC Prison study?
Randomly assigned men to role of guard/ prisoner/ 15 male pets were divided into 5 groups of 3 people and closely matched on personality variables. In each group of 3, 1 randomly assigned guard & 2 as prisoners
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What did Reicher and Haslam find?
Ppts didn't conform automatically to assigned roles & prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked collectively to challenge the authority of guards and establish a democratic set of relations within prison
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Why was there a collapse of prisoner-guard system?
Guards failed to identify with their role, which made them reluctant to impose authority on the prisoners which led to a shift in power
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Who conducted a study on situational variables affecting obedience?
Milgram
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How many ppts were involved in Milligram's study and what were they told?
40 ppts at a time over a series of conditions, each varying some aspect of the situation to calculate its effect on obedience. Ppts were told it was a study of how punishment affects learning
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Who were the two experiment confederates?
An experimenter and a 47-year-old man who was introduced as another volunteers.
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How was teacher and learner decided?
2 ppts drew lots to see who was the teacher and learner however, this was rigged so the real ppt was always teaching learner on their ability to remember word pairs
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What happened every time learner got a word pair wrong?
The teacher had to administer increasingly strong electric shocks starting at 15V continuing to 450V in 15V increments
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What happened in the voice feedback study?
The learner sitting in the other room gave mainly incorrect answers and received (fake) shocks in silence until 300V where he then pounded the wall and gave no response to next question
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What did Milgram find?
26/40 continued to administer the 450V and all pots went to 300V with only 5 stopping there despite shock generator being labelled 'Danger: serve shock at 420V'
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How might proximity affect conformity rates?
In proximity study, teacher and learners were seated in same room and obedience levels fell to 40%. Another variation= teacher was required to force learners hand onto shock plate and obedience rate dropped to 30%
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What happened in the experimenter absent study of proximity?
After giving instructions the experimenter left the room and gave orders over the phone. Vast majority defied the experiment with only 21% going to 450V.
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How might location affect conformity rates?
To examine the possibility of pots claiming Yale Uni gave them confidence Milgram moved study to run-down office in Bridgeport. Obedience rates dropped slightly with 48% of pots delivering the 450V shock
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How might power of uniform affect conformity?
Bushman carried out study where female researcher dressed as police officer, business executive or beggar & stopped people in the street and told them to give change to male researcher for expired parking meter. 1=72%, 2=48%, 3=52%
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What is an agentic state?
The person sees themselves as acting as an agent of another person and so don't feel responsible for actions
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Whats the change from autonomous state to an agentic state called?
Agentic shift
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What conditions make an agentic shift more likely?
If individual perceives authority figure to be legitimate & if individual believes the authority will take responsibility for their actions
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What is legitimate authority?
Refers to the amount of social power held by the person who gives instructions. Most human societies are ordered in a hierarchal way with some members having more social power to issue instructions to those beneath them in hierarchy
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Why might we obey people with legitimate authority?
We fear punishment or we trust them
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What does the F Scale provide?
A possible explanation for why some individuals require little pressure to obey
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Who was the F Scale used by?
Adorno et al to measure the different components that made up the Authoritarian Personality
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What kind of statements did the F Scale contain?
'Obedience & respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn', 'Rules are there for people to follow, not change'
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What did Adorno et al find?
That people who scored high on the F Scale tended to be raised by parents who used an authoritarian parenting style
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What are the three personality characteristics identified by Altemeyer that predispose obedience in high right-wing authoritarianism people?
Conventionalism, Authoritarian aggression, Authoritarian submission
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How did Altemeyer test the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism and obedience?
In an experiment where ppts were ordered to give themselves increasing levels of shock when made mistakes on learning tasks.
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What did Altemeyer find?
A significant correlation between right-wing authoritarianism scores and the level of shocks that ppts were willing to give themselves
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Who did Elms and Milgram complete a follow up study of Milgram's two months prior on?
Ppts who had previously taken part and selected 20 obedience pots who had continued to final shock level and 20 defiant ppts
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What did each ppt complete?
The MMPI scale and the F Scale to measure their levels of authoritarianism and a series of open-ended questions about childhood relationships & their attitudes to experimenter and learner during original study
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What did Elms and Milgram find?
Little different between obedience and defiant ppts on MMPI variables but higher levels of authoritarianism among obedience ppts.
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What did Elms and Milgram find significant differences between in regards to being consistent with the idea of Authoritarian Personality
Obedience ppts reported being less close to their fathers during childhood and spoke of them in a more negative manner
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What did Asch find in regards to presence of social support?
It enables individuals to resist conformity pressure from the majority e.g. through an ally who gave the right answer causing conformity levels to drop - 33% to 5.5%
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Whats the most important aspect of social support?
It breaks the unanimous position of majority and supporters & dissenters are likely to be effective in reducing conformity as break the unanimity, raise the possibility of other equally legitimate ways of thinking/ responding
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Why is it often difficult to stand against authority?
The obedience behaviour of others makes even a harmful action appear acceptable however, their disobedience can change that perception
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What has research shown about resisting obedience?
That if they can find an ally willing to join them in opposing the authority figure the individual will be more confident in their ability to resist the temptation to obey
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What do disobedience peers act as?
Role models which the individual can model their own behaviour and individuals are able to use the defiance of peers as an opportunity to remove themselves from causing further harms to victims
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What does locus of control refer to?
A person's perception of personal control over their own behaviour and is measured from high internal or high external. It's likely most of us would be somewhere between the two
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What is a strong internal locus of control associated with?
The belief that we can control events in our lives and believe that what happens to them is largely a consequence of their own ability and effort. Tend to rely less on opinions of others which means better able to resist social influence
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What is a high external locus of control?
Tend to believe that what happens to them is due to some external factors such as luck. Have a sense that things just happen to the and largely out of their control. Tend to approach events with more passive and fatalistic attitude than internals
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What do high internals tend to be?
More achievement driven and more likely to become leaders rather than followers. Spector found a relationship exists between relationship exists between locus of control and leadership style
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What does minority influence create?
A conversion process where provided the minority adopt a consistent and committed approach, people scrutinise the message itself so conversion to majority position tends to be deeper and longer lasting as people have internalised the minority view
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What is consistency in relation to minority influence?
If the minority adopt a consistent approach, others come to reassess the situation and consider issue more carefully.
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Outline Wood et al's study in relation to consistency
Carried out a meta-analysis of 97 studies of minority influence & found minorities who perceived as being being consistent in expressing their position were particularly influential
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What is commitment in relation to minority influence?
It is important in the influence process as it suggests certainty, confidence and courage in the fact of hostile majority as joining minority has greater cost for individual.
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What is flexibility in relation to minority influence?
Mugny suggests flexibility is effective at changing majority opinion than rigidity of arguments as minorities are typically powerless compared to majority, must negotiate their position with majority than try to enforce it
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What does Mugny argue rigid minority does?
Refuse to compromise risks being perceived as dogmatic but a minority that is too flexible and too prepared to compromise risks being inconsistent
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Outline Moscovici et al's study
Each group comprised 4 naive ppts & minority of 2 confederates and shown a series of blue slides that varied in intensity and asking to judge the colour of each slide
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Outline the consistent/ inconsistent experimental condition
The two confederates repeatedly called the blue slides green & in inconsistent condition, confederates called slides green on 2/3 of trails and remaining 1/3 called the slides blue
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Outline the control condition
Comprising of six naive pots and no confederates, pots called the slides blue throughout
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What did Moscovic et al's findings suggest?
That in the consistent minority influence the naive ppts said green on over 8% of trails, inconsistent minority applied very little influence and didn't differ significantly from control group
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What happened after the main study was over?
Ppts were asked individually to sort 16 coloured discs into either blue or green. 3 of these discs were unambiguous from blue end of colour spectrum and 3 were unambiguously from green end. Remaining 10 dice were ambiguous as either blue or green
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What is social change through minority influence?
If an individual is exposed to a persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change their views to match the minority. Moscovici referred to this as conversion
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What are the five stages in the process of conversion?
Drawing attention to an issue, Cognitive conflict, Consistency of position, The Augmentation principle & Snowball effect
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What is drawing attention to an issue?
Minorities bring about social change by doing this. If their views are different to those of majority, this creates a conflict that they are motivated to reduce.
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What is cognitive conflict?
Minority creates a conflict between majority group members believe and position advocated by minority.This means majority group members think more deeply about issues being challenged
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What is consistency of position?
Research has established that minorities tend to be more influential in bringing about social change when they express their arguments consistenly
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What is the augmentation principle?
If a minority appears willing to suffer for their views, they are seen as more committed and so taken more seriously by others
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What is the snowball effect?
Minority influence initially has a relatively small effect but this spreads more widely as more people consider the issues being promoted, until it reaches a tipping point, at which point it leads to wide-scale social change
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What has research consistently demonstrated in social change through majority influence?
That behavioural choices are often related to group members i.e. they are subject of normative influence
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What does social norms approach hold if someone perceives something to be the norm?
They tend to alter their behaviour to fit that norm e.g. if uni students think heavy drinking is the norm, they'll drink more. Behaviour is based on what people think others believe and do than their real beliefs
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How do social norms interventions typically start?
By identifying a widespread misperception relating to a specified risky behaviour within a target population e.g. young adults generally misperceive the frequency/ quantity of alcohol typically consumer by peers & so develop norms of heavy drinking
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How can perception correction strategies be used and what are their aims?
Can be used in media campaigns, promotion material & other routes. Aim is to communicate to target population the actual norm concerning that behaviour
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Name an example of a social norms intervention
'Most of us' don't drink and drive
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Why was this designed?
To reduce drinking and driving among young adults in Montana, USA. This age group had been over-represented in alcohol-related crashes state-wide
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What did the initial survey find?
That only 20.4% of Montana young adults reported initially driving within an hour of consuming two or more drinks in previous month, 92% of respondents believed peers had done to
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By correcting this misperception with the message of 'Most Montana young adults don't drink and drive' what did the researchers find?
That the previous reported driving after drinking was reduced by 13.7% compared to countries that didn't run the campaign
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What is compliance?

Back

An individual goes along with the group to gain approval as fitting in is seen as desirable. A person may agree in public but privately disagrees with the groups behaviour - temporary change

Card 3

Front

What is internalisation?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is identification?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is normative social influence?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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