resistance to social influence

what are the 2 ways to resist social influence

• social support

• locus of control

what is social support

• when there is another person that goes against the majority of the group

• demonstrated in Asch’s study

how is social support shown in milgrams study

when a disobedient confederate walked out before the participant walked in obedience dropped from 65% to 10%

strengths of social support 

• real world research support 

• albrecht helped adolescents reists peer pressure to smoke and when given a ‘buddy’ they resisted more

a limitation of social support

resistance depends on the quality of the social support

• in the asch study resistance was at 64% when the person had good eyesight and dropped to 36% when the person had thick glasses

locus of control - Julian Rotter

refers to how much a person believes that they are in control of their own behaviour and life events

internal locus of control

believe they are responsible for their own behaviour

• more confident and independent

• better at resisting pressure to obey

external locus of control 

believe that someone else is in control of their behaviour 

• believe in luck/fate

• more likely to be influenced by others

strength of LOC

murphy et al found that people who resisted vaccines in the uk scored higher on the internal locus of control

limitation of LOC

• jean twenge et al analysed data from american LOC studies and found that young people became more resistant but also externally orientated

• julian rotter argued that LOC only applied in new or ambiguous situations

why does LOC only affect people in new or ambiguous situations

if a task has been repeated before then the person is likely to repeat what they did last time regardless of their LOC