Social Support

What is resistance to social influence?

The ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority. It’s influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.

What is social support?

The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same. These people act as role models, showing others that resistance to social influence is possible.

What is a reason someone may resist the pressure to conform or obey?

If they have an ally - someone supporting their point of view.

• Having an ally can build confidence and allow individuals to remain independent

How can social support help others to resist conformity?

The fact that someone else is not following the majority acts a social support.

• It enables the naïve participants to be free to follow their own conscience

• Individuals who have support for their own point of view, no longer feel ridiculed, allowing them to avoid normative social influence.

• The other person acts as a ‘model’

• Social support provided by another person might make individuals feel less at risk of negative consequences from resisting the majority

How can social support help others to resist obedience?

The pressure to obey can be resisted if there’s another person who is seen to disobey.

• In one of Milgram’s variations, the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10%, when the genuine participant was joined by a disobedient confederate.

• The participant may not follow the disobedient person’s behaviour, but the point is the other person’s disobedience acts as a model of dissent for the participant to copy that frees them to act from their own conscience

• The disobedient model challenges the legitimacy of an authority figure, making it easier for others to disobey

What is a strength of social support on obedience in the real world?

There’s real world application demonstrating the positive effects of social support.

• For example, Albrecht (2006) evaluated Teen Fresh Start USA, an eight-week programme to help pregnant teens resist peer pressure to smoke

• Social support was provided by a slightly older mentor or ‘buddy’,

• At the end of the programme, teens who had a ‘buddy’ were significantly less likely to smoke than a control group of participants who didn’t have a ‘buddy’

This shows that social support can help young people resist social influence as part of an intervention in the real world.

What is a strength of social support in obedience on Milgram’s study?

Research supporting the role of social support in reducing the pressure to obey.

• In one of Milgram’s variations, the real participants were paired with two additional confederates, who also played the role of teachers

• In this variation, the two additional confederates refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early

• In this variation, the percentage of real participants who proceeded to the full 450 volts dropped from 65% (in the original) to 10%

This shows that peer support can lead to disobedience by undermining the legitimacy of authority figure.