A-Level Social Psychology: Obedience, Conformity, and Research Methods

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the Pearson Edexcel International A-Level Psychology Unit 1 (Social Psychology) specification, including obedience, conformity, minority influence, key studies, research methods, data skills, and ethics.

Social influence

The process by which a person's thoughts, feelings, or behaviour are affected by other people, groups, or social situations, encompassing obedience, conformity, and minority influence.

Obedience

A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order or instruction given by someone perceived to have legitimate authority.

Dissent

The expression of disagreement with, or the explicit refusal to follow, an instruction from a group or authority figure.

Resistance to obedience

Failing or refusing to comply with an instruction issued by an authority figure, which can involve questioning, delaying, or directly defying the order.

Authority figure

A person perceived to possess legitimate, socially sanctioned power or the right to give instructions within a specific hierarchy.

Autonomous state

A psychological state in which an individual sees themselves as acting independently, evaluates actions according to their personal moral values, and accepts responsibility for the outcomes.

Agentic state

A psychological state in which a person perceives themselves as an agent executing another individual's wishes, thereby transferring or displacing personal responsibility onto the authority figure.

Agentic shift

The transition from an autonomous state to an agentic state that occurs when an individual perceives someone as a legitimate authority within a social hierarchy.

Binding factors

Psychological and situational mechanisms—such as initial commitment, entrapment, routinisation, and responsibility displacement—that maintain a person's obedience once compliance has started.

Social power theory

A framework formulated by French and Raven (1959) proposing that obedience occurs through different bases of power: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, and referent power.

Legitimate power

A base of social power accepted because of an individual's recognized role, status, or structural position in an organization or hierarchy.

Reward power

A base of social power derived from an individual's ability to provide valued incentives, benefits, recognition, or desirable opportunities.

Coercive power

A base of social power based on the ability to impose sanctions, punishments, or adverse consequences for failing to comply with an instruction.

Expert power

A base of social power founded on the target's perception that the influencer possesses superior specialist knowledge, skill, or technical expertise.

Referent power

A base of social power stemming from admiration, identification, or the target's desire to be associated with an attractive or respected role model.

Milgram (1963) baseline study

A controlled laboratory experiment investigating destructive obedience where $40$ male volunteers administered pseudo-electric shocks ranging from $15\,\text{V}$ to $450\,\text{V}$ to an unseen learner; $65\%$ completed the full $450\,\text{V}$ and $100\%$ reached at least $300\,\text{V}$.

Milgram Experiment 7 (Telephonic instructions)

A situational variation where the experimenter delivered instructions by telephone rather than staying in the laboratory, causing maximum obedience to drop to approximately $20.5\%$ to $21\%$.

Milgram Experiment 10 (Rundown office block)

A situational variation conducted in an unimposing commercial building in Bridgeport instead of Yale University, resulting in an obedience rate of approximately $47.5\%$ reaching $450\,\text{V}$.

Milgram Experiment 13 (Ordinary man gives orders)

A variation where the experimenter left the room and an ordinary confederate stepped in to direct the participant, resulting in $0\%$ of participants reaching the maximum shock level.

Burger (2009)

A contemporary partial replication of Milgram's study using $70$ male and female adults that incorporated enhanced ethical safeguards and stopped at $150\,\text{V}$, finding that approximately $70\%$ of participants were willing to continue past this threshold.

Hofling et al. (1966)

A field experiment investigating hospital obedience where $21$ out of $22$ ($95\%$) nurses complied with an unfamiliar doctor's telephoned instruction to administer an unauthorised overdose of an unapproved medication to a patient.

Sheridan and King (1972)

An obedience study evaluating the reality of Milgram's paradigm by asking participants to deliver genuine electric shocks to a live puppy, finding that $100\%$ of female participants and $54\%$ of male participants delivered the maximum voltage.

Authoritarian personality

A dispositional explanation of obedience characterized by strict adherence to conventional values, uncritical submission to legitimate authorities, and hostility directed toward outgroups and perceived inferiors.

F-scale

The Potentiality for Fascism scale developed by Adorno et al. (1950) that uses Likert-style agreement ratings to measure the degree of authoritarian personality traits in individuals.

Conformity

A change in an individual's behaviour, opinions, or attitudes caused by real or imagined pressure from a majority group or social norms.

Compliance

The shallowest level of conformity, where a person outwardly conforms to group expectations to gain approval or avoid rejection while privately maintaining their original disagreement.

Identification

A moderate level of conformity where an individual adopts the behaviours, values, and attitudes of a group because membership is valued, persisting primarily while the individual identifies with that group.

Internalisation

The deepest, most permanent level of conformity where an individual genuinely accepts the group's perspective as correct both publicly and privately.

Informational social influence (ISI)

A cognitive mechanism of social influence where an individual conforms because they have a desire to be correct, looking to others for guidance in ambiguous, novel, or difficult situations.

Normative social influence (NSI)

An emotional mechanism of social influence where an individual conforms to group norms to be liked, gain approval, or avoid social embarrassment and rejection.

Two-Process Model

Deutsch and Gerard's theory proposing that conformity is mediated by two independent human motives: informational social influence (the need to be right) and normative social influence (the need to be liked).

Social role

A set of socially established behaviours, obligations, and expectations associated with a particular position, status, or identity in a group or institution.

Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)

A simulated prison study investigating conformity to social roles among $24$ male college students, terminated after $6$ days due to guard brutality and severe emotional breakdowns among prisoners.

Social Impact Theory (Latané, 1981)

A model proposing that the overall social pressure experienced by a target is a multiplicative function of the Strength, Immediacy, and Number of source individuals present.

Asch (1951)

A classic laboratory study of conformity where $123$ male college students judged line lengths alongside confederates, showing that participants conformed on approximately $32\%$ to $36.8\%$ of critical trials.

Asch's Group Size variation (1952)

A variation where the number of confederates was manipulated, revealing that conformity rose sharply until the majority reached $3$ confederates (rising by approximately $30\%$), after which further increases had minimal additional impact.

Asch's Unanimity variation (1956)

A variation where the presence of a single non-conforming ally giving the correct answer caused participant conformity to drop sharply from $32\%$ to $5.5\%$.

Asch's Task Difficulty variation (1956)

A variation where comparison lines were made more similar in length, which increased task ambiguity and raised conformity levels due to the greater role of informational social influence.

Locus of control (Rotter, 1966)

A personality dimension measuring the extent to which individuals perceive events in their lives as being determined by their own actions or by external forces.

Internal locus of control

The belief that life outcomes and events are primarily caused by one's own personal decisions, actions, and efforts, associated with greater independence and resistance to social influence.

External locus of control

The belief that life outcomes are controlled by fate, luck, chance, or powerful others, making an individual more prone to conformity and obedience.

Social support

The presence of another dissenting peer that validates an individual's independent judgment, providing confidence to resist majority conformity or defiance toward an authority figure.

Minority influence

A process of social influence in which a smaller group or an individual persuades the larger group or majority to reconsider and adopt their viewpoint.

Diachronic consistency

A type of consistency in minority influence where the minority maintains the exact same core viewpoint and argument consistently across time.

Synchronic consistency

A type of consistency in minority influence where all individual members of the minority group express the exact same viewpoint simultaneously.

Augmentation principle

The psychological effect where the credibility and impact of a minority increase because members take personal risks, face hostility, or make sacrifices for their cause.

Moscovici et al. (1969)

A colour-perception study using blue slides where a consistent minority calling the slides green caused participants to yield on $8.4\%$ of trials, compared to $1.25\%$ with an inconsistent minority.

Snowball effect

The progressive social change process whereby an initial small minority gradually converts a few majority members until momentum builds and the minority view becomes the new prevailing majority norm.

Haun et al. (2014)

A comparative study showing that human children frequently abandon their own successful problem-solving strategy to conform to peer behaviour, whereas chimpanzees and orangutans do not.

Open question

A questionnaire or interview item that allows respondents to construct their answers in their own words, producing rich qualitative data that is time-consuming to analyse.

Closed question

A question format that restricts respondents to choosing from a fixed set of predetermined answers, yielding standardized quantitative data that is simple to compare and code.

Rating scale

A closed-ended self-report measure where participants select a numerical point on a continuum to reflect the intensity, agreement, or frequency of an attitude or behaviour.

Structured interview

An interview method based on a standardised set of predetermined questions read to participants in a fixed order without deviation.

Semi-structured interview

An interview method centered around core predetermined questions while giving the researcher flexibility to ask spontaneous follow-up questions for deeper clarification.

Unstructured interview

A flexible, conversational interview style containing minimal fixed questions, allowing deep exploration of unexpected themes at the expense of standardized comparison.

Researcher effects

Unintended influences exerted by a researcher's presence, tone, expectations, or demographic characteristics on participants' responses or on data recording.

Directional hypothesis (one-tailed)

An operationalised prediction specifying the exact expected direction of an experimental effect, difference, or relationship between variables.

Non-directional hypothesis (two-tailed)

An operationalised prediction stating that a difference or relationship exists between variables without specifying which group will score higher or the direction of the outcome.

Random sampling

A probability sampling technique where every member of a defined target population has an equal chance of being selected from a complete sampling frame.

Stratified sampling

A sampling technique where the target population is subdivided into relevant strata, and participants are randomly selected from each stratum in exact proportion to the population's composition.

Volunteer sampling

A self-selected sampling method where participants elect to join a study in response to an advert, flyer, or public invitation.

Opportunity sampling

A non-probability sampling method where the researcher selects participants who happen to be readily available and willing to take part at a given time and place.

Response bias

A systematic tendency for a participant to answer questions in a fixed pattern (such as acquiescence or extreme responding) regardless of the specific content.

Social desirability bias

A tendency for respondents to give distorted answers that make them appear more socially acceptable, responsible, or moral rather than reporting their authentic thoughts or behaviours.

Quantitative data

Numerical information that can be counted, measured, and subjected to statistical analysis and objective comparison.

Qualitative data

Descriptive, non-numerical information expressed in words, meanings, or experiences, providing rich contextual insight.

Primary data

Original information gathered first-hand directly by the researcher specifically to address their current research aim.

Secondary data

Pre-existing data collected by another researcher or organization for a different initial purpose that is re-examined in a new investigation.

Objective data

Information collected and recorded using standardised, observable criteria designed to be completely independent of personal judgment or observer bias.

Subjective data

Information that involves personal interpretation, opinion, emotional viewpoint, or individual experience on the part of the participant or researcher.

Reliability

The consistency, stability, and replicability of a psychological measure or investigation when repeated under identical conditions.

Validity

The degree to which an investigation, questionnaire, or test accurately assesses the psychological concept it intended to measure.

Ecological validity

A dimension of external validity indicating how realistically findings from a laboratory or artificial task can be generalised to real-life settings.

Thematic analysis

A qualitative method involving data familiarisation, initial coding, theme searching, reviewing, defining, and producing an analytic narrative of recurring patterns in qualitative text.

Informed consent

An ethical safeguard where participants are given clear information regarding the study's purpose, procedures, risks, and right to withdraw before agreeing to participate.

Debriefing

A post-experimental session where the true objectives and deception of a study are fully revealed to participants to restore their psychological wellbeing.

Right to withdraw

An ethical entitlement ensuring participants can stop participating and withhold their collected data at any stage of an investigation without penalty.

Positively skewed distribution

An asymmetrical distribution where the long tail extends to the right toward high scores, typically resulting in $\text{mode} < \text{median} < \text{mean}$.

Negatively skewed distribution

An asymmetrical distribution where the long tail extends to the left toward low scores, typically resulting in $\text{mean} < \text{median} < \text{mode}$.