Social influence (L3)

Social influence

- Process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real of implied presence of other people.

Social norms

- Attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate between groups.

Compliance

- Superficial, public and transitory change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in response to requests, coercion or group pressure (i.e. changing behaviour but not beliefs in the presence of a group).

Norm development (Sherif, 1936)

- People need to be certain and confident that what they are doing, thinking or feeling is correct and appropriate.

- Argues that people use the behaviour of others to establish the range of possible behaviour (i.e. frame of reference).

Frame of reference (FoR)

- Complete range of subjectively conceivable positions on some attitudinal or behavioural dimension, which relevant people can occupy in a particular context.

Autokinetic effect (Sherif, 1936)

- People asked to estimate how much light moves.

- Presented the pinpoint of light and had participants, unaware that it was an illusion, estimate the amount the light moved on each trial.

- Discovered they used their own estimates as FoR: over a series of 100 trials, gradually focused on a narrow row of estimates (different people adopted their own range).

- Continued experiment in further sessions of 100 trials in groups of 2 or 3: participants used each other's estimates as FoR and converged on group mean so gave similar estimates.

- Suggests norm seems to be internalised: when participants start then continue in a group, group norm used when they finally make autokinetic estimates on their own.

Autokenesis

- Optical illusion in which a pinpoint of light shining in complete darkness appears to move about.

- Movement actually caused by eye movement in the absence of a physical frame of reference (i.e. objects).

Conformity (Asch, 1951)

- Rational process: people construct norm from others' behaviour to determine appropriate behaviour.

- Visual discrimination task: which 3 comparison lines matches the standard line?

- Groups of 7-9, only 1 true participant.

- Confederates told to give incorrect answer → average conformity 33% (5% conformed on all trials, 25% on none).

- When judgements anonymous, conformity dropped to 12.5%.

Informational influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955)

- Ambiguous/uncertain situations.

- Need to feel confident our perceptions/beliefs/feelings correct.

- Influence to accept info from another as evidence about reality.

- True cognitive change.

Sherif's study: ambiguous → uncertainty → use others' estimates as information to resolve subjective uncertainty.

Normative influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955)

- Need for social approval and acceptance.

- Avoid disapproval.

- Surface compliance.

Asch's study: unambiguous; go along with group; especially when under surveillance.

Minority influence

Social influence processes whereby numerical or power minorities change the attitudes of the majority.

Obedience

Following the demands of someone higher in the social hierarchy than oneself.

Obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963)

- Participant assigned role of teacher.

- Electric shocks to confederate in mock learning study when incorrect answer given.

- Shocks increased with each incorrect answer (up to 450V).

- Experimenter prodded the participant to continue (e.g. 'the experiment requires you to continue).

- People socialised to respect authority of the state.

Agentic state

- Mentally absolve of own responsibility and transfer responsibility to person giving order (i.e. acting as an agent for someone else).

Factors influencing obedience

- Gradual change and commitment: participants committed to course of action.

- Immediacy of victim: as immediacy increased, obedience decreased.

- Immediacy of authority figure: obedience decreased when experimenter not in room and directions given by telephone.

- Legitimacy of authority figure: lab coated experimenter (Yale University); reduction when the experiment was conducted in industrial setting.

Gradual change and commitment

- Participants committed to course of action.

Immediacy of victim

- How close or obvious the victim is to the participant.

- When victim unseen and unheard (except for pounding on the wall), 65% gave up to a lethal shock of 450V.

- In a less immediate conditions where the victim was neither seen no heard, 100% went to the end.

- When the victim was visible, 40% obeyed to the limit.

Immediacy of authority figure

- Originally conducted at Yale University: when conducted in a run-down inner-city office building, obedience dropped to 48%.

- Obedience reduced to 20.5% when experimenter absent from the room and relayed directions via phone.

- When experimenter gave no orders at all and participant given free will to choose when to stop, 2.5% persisted till the end.

Legitimacy of authority figure