1.3 Explanation of Resistance to Social Influence

What is Resisting conformity and obedience?

Social support - Resisting the pressure to conform is easier if there are others also resisting, it allows the person to follow their own conscience.

The same can be seen with resistance to obey. If another person is seen to disobey, it allows the person to also disobey, it challenges the legitimacy of the authority

What was Albrecht et al (2006) study?

Albrecht et al (2006) evaluated a program designed to help pregnant teenagers resist smoking. Social support was provided to some of the teenagers by an older mentor. At the end of the 8 week program, they found the participants who had a mentor were less likely to smoke than the control group who did not have a mentor.

This shows that social support can help young people resist social influence in the real world.

What is an External Locus of Control?

When a person feels they do not have control over their own lives and believe their life is controlled by external factors.

What is an Internal Locus of Control?

When a person feels they have control over their own life and behaviour.

What is the Research support for LOC?

Holland (1967) repeated Milgram's baseline experiment and found that 37% of those participants who were measured to have a high internal locus of control did not continue to the highest shock.

In contrast, only 24% of participants who were measured to have a high external locus of control did not continue to the highest shock level.

This shows that those with a high internal locus of control are more resistant to authority.

Give one limitation of locus of control as an explanation for resistance to social influence (gender differences).

Psychologists have found that males are more likely to have an internal locus of control and show independent behaviour than females. This may be due to socialisation differences, as men are often encouraged to be independent while women are socialised to be more dependent, as well as differences in workplace opportunities. This suggests that resistance to social influence may be influenced by gender rather than locus of control alone, reducing the validity of LOC as a full explanation.

Locus of control - Limitations

-LOC has no relationship to informational social influence, only normative, and therefore lacks effectiveness as an explanation for conformity in general

-People are more external than they used to be and researchers found that young Americans increasingly believed that their fate was determined more by luck etc