Studied by 3 people
types of conformity
compliance, identification, internalisation
compliance
shallowest form of conformity - changes their public behaviour in response to group pressure. usually short-term and usually as a result of normative social influence
identification
this is a middle level of conformity. person changes their public behaviour and private beliefs but only when they are in that group setting. usually shot term change and usually a result of normative social influence
internalisation
this is the deepest level of conformity. person changes their public behaviour and private beliefs. usually a long term change and often a result of informational social influence.
explanations of conformity
normative social influence and informational social influence
normative social influence
when a person conforms to be accepted and to feel that they belong to the group. here a person conforms because it is socially rewarding, or to avoid social rejection.
information social influence
when a person confers to gain knowledge or because they believe someone else is right.
evaluating explanations for conformity
Asch study conformity - research support for normative social influence
Jenness provided research for the role of informational social influence.
individual difference may play a role in explaining social influence - means that the process will not effect everyones behaviour in the same way
there are real world applications which demonstrate that normative influence also occurs beyond artificial lab studies
KEY STUDY - Jenness
AIM - to examine wether individuals will change their opinion in an ambiguous situation in response to group discussion.
METHOD - Jenness used an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with 811 white beans - he asked them to individually guess how many there were and then in groups of three asked them to discuss note their answers down. he wanted to see if they changed their original answers
CONCLUSION - almost all participants changed their answer. males average change 256 , females average change 382. proof of informational social influence.
KEY STUDY - Asch
Aim - to examine the extent to which social pressure to conform from unanimous majority affects conformity.
METHOD - 123 male undergraduate - thought they were partaking in a vision tests. 6-8 confederated and one naive participant. each person took It in turn to call out the matching line and they all had agreed upon answers and in 12 of the 18 critical trials they would say the wrong answer
RESULTS - 74% of participants conformed on at least one of the critical trials. less than 1% actually got the answer wrong - shows normative social influence
evaluation for asch study
biased sample all male students from America in college - lacks population validity
low levels of ecological validity
Asch research is ethically questionable like deception and protection from harm
variation of Asch
group size , unanimity , task difficulty
group size - asch
he carried out many variations to determine how size of majority affected the rate of conformity. ranged from 1 -15 confederates. group size of 2 confederates conformity - 12.8%
unanimity - Asch
this refers to the extent that members of a majority agree with one another. in one variation one confederate was instructed to only give correct answers throughout - conformity dropped to 5%
tast difficulty - asch
in the original experiment the correct answer was obvious - in one variation he made it more difficult - this increased conformity - this is likely to be because of informational social influence
conformity to social roles
is when an individual adopts a particular behaviour and belief while in a particular situation.
KEY STUDY - Zimbardo
AIM - to examine whether people would conform to social roles of a prisoner and a guard when placed in a mock prison environment
METHOD - sample consisted for 21 males - paid $15 a day to take part. - they were arrested by real police officers, stripped, given numbers and chains around their ankles
RESULTS - found that prisoners and guard sucky identified with their roles. within days prisoners rebelled, crushed by the guars - guards were dehumanising. 5 prisoners were released early - extreme crying and anxiety. the experiment was terminated after just 6 days - it was meant to run for two weeks.
evaluation - Zimbardo
recent replication of the SPE carried out contradicted Zimbardo finding. Reicher and Hallam - has 15 men to role of prisoner or guard. - the participants didn’t conform to their roles automatically.
protection from harm , these participants has many adverse reactions os the physical and mental torment - broke many ethical guidelines
real world applications to improve the US prisons system.
obedience
is a form of social influence that is in direct response to an order from another person
KEY STUDY - Milgram
AIM - to investigate wether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure
METHOD - sample consisted of 40 male participants - American. all paid to be there. they drew lots to see who would be the teacher or the student - but it was fixed so the real participant was the teacher. the learner was strapped by the arms into a chair in the room next door and the shock was demonstrated - so it appeared real to the teacher. different labels for the shocks - one was extreme danger 15v to 450v
CONCLUSION - Milgram found that all participants went up to 30 v and 65% went up to 450v. he concluded that under the right situational circumstances ordinary people will obey unjust orders.
evaluation of Milgram
broke several ethical guidelines - psychological harm and deception
lacks ecological validity - conducted in a lab
lacks population validity - biased sample of 40 male Americans
social psychological factors - agentic state
agency theory suggests that we are socialised from a young age to follow rules of society. but for this to happen a person needs to surrender some of their free will. when a person is acting independently its called autonomous state opposite of this is agentic state. the shift is called agent shift
legitimacy of authority
milgram believed by focusing on the procedure and following the instruction - the participants recognises the legitimate authority. but when their location shifted to a run down building the obedience levels dropped to 47.5%
situational explanations - obedience
proximity, location and uniform
proximity
is the situational variable affecting obedience which refers to how close your are to someone or something. variation were the teacher and learner were in the same room and obedience dropped to 40%
location
difference in the location when their location shifted to a run down building the obedience levels dropped to 47.5% - highlights the importance of location n creating a prestigious atmosphere generating respect and obedience.
uniform
experimenter was wearing a white lab coat, one variation were the experimented was called away and some looking like an ordinary person obedience dropped to 20%
evaluation of explanations of obedience
research support for the role of agentic state - Schmitt - asked students to watch a video Milgrams experiment and were asked who is the experimenter - all said the person in the white lab coat
Bickman - dressed up like different people and gave people instructions - police officer, milkman and normally - officer most people listened to him
reliability - very methodical approach and systematically changing one variable at a time.
KEY STUDY - adorned et al
AIM - used over 2000 middle class Americans finding their unconscious views on other racial groups
METHOD - Adorno and his colleagues developed a numb of questionnaires one including the F - scale measures facist tendencies - core to the authoritarian personality
CONCLUSION - Individuals who scored highly on the f -scale and other questionnaires were self reported as identifying with strong people and showed disrespect to the weak. concluded that people with an authoritarian personality were more obedient towards authority figures
evaluating the authoritarian personality
individual difference - that contributed to authoritarian personality - study found that less educated people were more likely to display authoritarian characteristics than well educated people
methodological criticism - it is possible that F-scale sufferes from response bias and social desirability
f scale may represent a political bias - only measure for extreme right wing ideologies .
social support
one reason why people can resist social influence is because they have an ally. someone supporting their point of view. Asch does report that if this dissenter then returns to conform then so does the naive participant
evaluating social support
research support - Asch - he said that conformity dropped to 5%
research support -variation for Milgram when there were two other teaches who were confederates as well as the participants and they refused to continue obedience dropped to 10%
locus of control
idea of locus of control is the extent in which they believe they have control over their own lives. internal locus of control they believe that what happens in their life is largely the result of their own behaviour and that they have control over their life. external is the opposite , they believe their life is controlled by external factors
evaluating locus of control
research support - spector found that those with high internal locus of control were less likely to conform than students with high external locus of control
Oliner and Oliner - interviewed non jewish survivors 406 rescuers and 126 who simply followed the rules and found the 406 rescuers had a high internal locus of control
Contradictory evidence - not all research support Twenge et al - found that people have become more external in their locus control but also more resistant to obedience
minority influence
consistency , commitment , flexibility
Consistency
moscovici - Aim - to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer
METHOD - sample of 172 female participants - groups of six shown 36 slides all varying shades of blue - two of the six participants were confederates in one condition thy said all were green and the other they said 12 were green
CONCLUSION - found in the all 36 were green - 8.2% of real participants agreed but in the 12 sides were green only 1.25% agreed. shows consistency makes it more effective
commitment
augmentation principle - important to put themselves at risk to show how important their cause is.
flexibility
AIM - Nemeth wanted to experiment to see if flexibility was the most important trait.
METHOD - groups of four had to agree on compensation for a victim of a ski lift accident - some not that flexible and thee other flexible
CONCLUSION - moe flexible more likely to go higher - higlights the importance o felxiibltiy
evaluating minority influence
moscovici - used a bias sample - low population validity
he also breached ethical guidelines - deception and not fully formed consent
lacks mundane realises and lacks external validity
social change
refers to the way in which a society develops over time ( rather than an individual) number of processes that can be used to explain these like - consistency , deeper processing , drawing attention , the augmentation principle and the snowball effect, normative soical influence and gradual commitment.
psychology in everyday life
history provides many real life examples like Martin Luther king or rosa parks or suffragettes
evaluating social change
research support for normative social influence as a process for social change - Nolan people went house by house to reduce energy shows it can also lead to positive change
methodological issues like demand charactersitcis and low generalisablitiy
lack of scientific credibility
