Psychology - Social influnce

What is conformity

• type of soical influence

• involves someone changing, adapting ot taking on new beahviours

• To fit in with a group

• also known as majority influnce (people tend to want to conform to larger groups)

• minorty influnce does happen but it is less common

What is compliance

• type of conformtiy

• agreeing with or behavioing like the group publicly

• but disagreeing or having differnt opinions privately

• weakest type of conformtiy - only involves surface and superfical change - stops when not with group

What is internalisation

• Type of conformtiy

• accept and agree with the group publicly and privalty

• internalise the group norms

• Strongest form of conformity

• leads to long term change

Explanations of conformtiy

• Normative soical influence (NSI)

• Informatioanl soical influence (ISI)

Normative soical influecne (NSI)

• need to be liked/accepted by the group (fear of rejection)

• occurs when individual is keen to adopt the soical norms of a specific group

• more liekly to be effected by NSI if behaivour and attitudes do not align with those in the group (i stopped going to church years ago but the group goes every week)

• lack of cohesion with the group may casue anxiety - leads to a adjustment in behaviour

• may lead to individulas going aganist their inner beliefs, ideals or opinions in order to not be rejected by group

• linked to conformity

• emotioanl as ased on need to be liked

Informatioanl soical influecne (ISI)

• takes place when indiviudal lacks knowledge or is unsure about hwat to do in a certain situation (eg first day of work)

• fear of social disapproval/humiliation

• occurs when individual looks to the group for guidance

• or when there is a crisis and a decision needs to be made quickly (assume group knows what to do) - result in faulty descion making

• mor elikely to be effected by ISI if they are insecure about what is deemd wrong and right

• ISI is cogntive, based on information processing - may internlaise what they learn

• linked to internlaisation

Evaluation for explanations for conformtiy: Strength

• research support for ISI

• Jenness asked ppts to individually estimate the number of beans contained in a jar

• participants then discussed etiamtes in groups

• then each participants made a second independent estiamte

• findings showed that the second estaimte moved clser to the group estiamte

• indicating theroy of ISI has validity

Evaluation for explanations for conformtiy: Strength 2

• NSI = good application to real behaviour settings (high egological validity)

• Schultz et al conducted series of feild experiments to test NSI

• Guests exposed to signs providing descriptive normative messges (other guests reuse their towles)

• findings showed that guests who recived normative messages where significanlty more likley to reuse towels

• then those in control group (no sign)

• demonstrates that NSI can influence real behaviour in everyday settings

Evaluation for explanations for conformtiy: Weakness

• neither explanation for conformtiy explains why some people resist both NSI and ISI (freedom fighters, rebels, iconolasts)

• both explanations cant be genralised to ebeyone

• as it cannot account for individual differnces

Aschs study of conformity: Aim

• extent to which group pressure could influece an indiviudal to go agasit what there eyes told them

Aschs study of conformity: Procedure

• 123 male students from the USA

• each participants sat at a table with 6-8 other students who were confederates

• group was shown series of cards with lines

• they had to say which of the 3 lines (A,B or C) on the right card was the samle length as X on the left card

• each participants asked intern to say which line matched

• cofederate gave right answer on first few trials (18 all togther)

• 12 of 18 trials where critical trials

• this was when confederates would all give the same incorrect answer

Aschs study of conformity: Results

• Participants gave the wring answer 36.8% of the critical trials

• 75% of the participants conformed at least once

Aschs study of conformity: Conclusion

• Asch concluded that people will confrom to the majority even when the situation is unambigous (completly clear, no uncertaity)

• Clear what the correct answer was

• however some participants gave the wrong answer after hearing the confederates all give the same wrong answer

• Aslo concluded that people confrom due to NSI and ISI

• 25% of participants did not conform showing resistance to sical influece in form of group pressure

Evaluation of Asch’s: Strengths

• Asch used a standardised procedure (same group number per trial, same number of trials, same question asked)

• Standerised procedure means that the study can be replicated many times over

• repeeated replications should show consistent results, which equlas high reliabilty

Evaluation of Asch’s: Strengths

• Replications of Aschs study (Smith and bond) have been used to identify cross - cultural differences in conformity

• which gives validity to the idea that conformity is linked to group cohesion

• highest rates of conformity in study were from collective cultures

• cultures value needs of the group above individual needs

Evaluation: Limitations

• research took place in 1940s/50s

• this was when conformity was arguably higher

• directly after World War II and before civil rights and feminist movement

• this observation has led to the study being labelled “a child of its time”

• Thus the study lacks temporal validity

Evaluation: Weakness

• possible that some of the participants may have quessed the aim of the study due to ease of the task

• if any participants had guessed the aim they they may simply have gone along with giving the wrong answer

• this is what they thought was required of them (response bias/ demand characteristics)

• response bias reduces the validity of the findings

Asch’s varaibles

• Group size

• unanimity

• task difficulty

Group size

• he conducted variations of his original line length procedure to test how conformity changes depending on the condition

• group size: asch insitagted following procedure:

• With one confederate ( Just one person giving the wrong answer) conformity dropped to just 3% of the critical trials

• When group size increased to 2 confederates conformity was 12.8% of the critical trials

• in group containing three confederates conformity rose to 31.8% of the critical trails

• findings is same percentage as in Aschs originl experiment in which there were six to eight confederates

• thus conformity peaks with three confederates once majority pressure is established

Unanimity

• refers to the extent of agreemnt or consensus across a group

• in Ashs original procedure the confederates all gave the same incoerrect anser on the critical trials (ie they were unanimous in the answer they gave)

• to test effect of unanimity Ash asked one of the confederates to give the correct answer (eg non conforming answer) throughout resulting in conformity dropping to 5%

• This shows that support from another person makes it easier to resist the pressure to conform to majority

• In another varaion one of the confederates gave a differnt incorect answer to the majority, resulting in conformity dropping to 9%

• Disrupting group unanimity is therefore one way to reduce conformtiy

Task difficulty

• in original experiment the correct answer was obvious

• to test effect of task difficulty, Asch instigated the following procedure

• task was made more difficult by minimising the differnce between the length of the lines (eg not as easy to detect which line was longer or shorter - task becomes more ambigious)

• Asch found the rate of conformtiy when faced with the ambigious task increased

• Thus when a task is difficult (ambigious) and people confrom to the incorrect answer it can be explained by ISI

• When a task is easy and people conform to the incorrect answer it can be explained by NSI

Explanation for obedince

• agentic state

Agentic state

• when an individual is in an agentic state

• they feel removed from their actions

• “i was just obeying orders“

• Example: ignoring one of your friends beacuse the most popular person in your group told you to do so

• indivudlas can be in denial and pass any blame onto the person who issued the order

• agentic state allows people to minimise responsibilty and guilt about their actions because they are acting under someone esles command

• agentic state made possible by the presnce of a legitimate authority figure who has status of position to issue demands or orders

• Soical hierachies stand or fall according to whether people adhere to norms expected of them in soicety

• further up the hierachy someone is the more they would expect obedince from those lower down

• obeying someone further up hierchy means that personal respondibilty for actions can be shifted onto them

• being part of a social heirachy is a bidning factor that may contribute to destrcutive obedice

• milgrams study imposed a moral strain on the aprticipants

• so being able to shift responsibilty for the shocks to the experimenter allowed them to ease burden of guilt/shame

Milgrams study: Procedure

• volunteer sample of Amercian males were recruited (niave to the true aim of the study)

• In the role ot ‘teacher‘ each participant administered electiracl shocks (where fake, although paritiapnts didnt know this)

• to the ‘learner‘ for every incorrect answer given

• Experimenter provided ‘prods‘ to encourage the participants to continue if they raised any objection to the procedure

• 65% of particpants went all the way to 450 volts

• Milgrams work on obedience drew from the idea that people will obey an authority figure if specific situatioanl factors are present

• even to the point of harming a stanger who has done them no worng (destrcutive obeidnce)