Social Influence

Conformity

A change in our opinions or behaviours to fit in with socially accepted norms or as the result of perceived group pressure.

Types of conformity : The need to be right - Internalisation

If we are in an ambiguous situation we will see what other people are doing and assume they are correct.

We copy them especially if we believe others might be more intelligent than us.

This leads to internalisation, where we genuinely believe this new behaviour is right.

We now behave this way both publicly and privately.

INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE e.g.

Types of conformity : The need to be liked - Compliance

In a social situation we have a strong desire to be accepted in the group.

This means we might say or do things just to be popular.

This leads to compliance, where we show the behaviour in public even if we do not agree with it privately.

NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE e.g.

Factors affect conformity

Some people conform more than others.

It may be that some types of people conform or it may be some people conform more in some situations.

These 2 explanations are called dispositional & social factors.

Dispositional : you have a more conformist personality and are less confident.

Social : features in your surroundings make you feel a stronger urge to conform.

Dispositional factors affecting conformity : Personality

Personality: Low self-esteem, low group status and low IQ have all been linked with high levels of conformity.

Personality : NSI + ISI

This may lead to insecurity in social situations and assuming others have a better understanding of what to say / do.

So we look to others for guidance & follow (ISI)

So that people will like & accept us (NSI)

Dispositional factors affecting conformity : Expertise

Expertise: Conformity is less likely in situations where we have a high level of expertise as we are confident in our own opinions and know what to do.

Expertise : ISI

Older people are more independent & less likely to conform,

With age comes experience; we feel more certain about our knowledge, so we don’t need guidance from others, Resist ISI

Social factors affecting conformity : Group size

Group size: We are more likely to adopt the behaviour of others when we are in a group with three or more people who are behaving in the same way.

Group size : NSI

In a group, we are more likely to feel the increased pressure to fit in when more people are behaving the same way than when we are alone.

Fell more NSI

Social factors affecting conformity : Task Difficulty

Task Difficulty : We show higher levels of conformity when attempting a difficult task rather than an easy one.

Task difficulty : ISI

When we find tasks challenging, we are more likely to look to others for guidance, bc we are less confident in our own knowledge - ISI

Social factors affecting conformity : Anonymity

Anonymity : In public situations we face ridicule from others when they can hear and see what we say or do.

However, when we can express our opinions in private we are anonymous.

This reduces concern about others disagreeing with us.

Anonymity : NSI

Anonymity reduces NSI but doesn’t prevent conformity entirely.

Asch’s Conformity Study (1956) : A01

AIM: Asch wanted to know whether people could be influenced by other people’s opinions to give an answer they knew to be wrong (unambiguous).

METHOD: 123 male participants were shown sets of four lines. For each set, the participant had to say whether line A, B, or C was the same length as the test line. Each participant was tested along with 6-8 confederates who the naïve participant thought were just other students. In total there were 18 trials. Confederates were instructed to give the correct answer in the first few trails but then confederates were told to give the same wrong answer on 12 critical trails. The naïve participant was always positioned as one of the last to give their response after hearing the majority of the groups incorrect responses.

RESULTS: On 36.8% of the trails where the rest of the group gave the wrong answer, the participant conformed and gave the same wrong answer as the rest of the group, rather than the obviously correct answer. In fact, 76% of the participants gave at least one wrong answer. 24% of participants resisted the pressure to conform and gave correct answers in all 18 trails.

CONCLUSION: The results showed that people conform to fit in with a group, even when they know they are giving an incorrect judgement.

Asch’s Conformity Study (1956) : A03

🙁 Asch’s research used 123 American participants, who are all part of an individualistic culture (western) that place the importance on the individuals needs.

Collectivist cultures (non-western) like China place greater importance on meeting the groups needs. Cross-cultural research has found that collectivist cultures are more conformist than individualistic.

This means Asch’s findings cannot be generalised to all countries as the sample lacks population validity & culture bias, as depending on what culture you live will affect your conformity levels.

🙁 Asch’s experiment used a lab experiment meaning it lacks ecological validity.

This is because he used a artificial setting & fake task (matching line lengths). This task is not representative of normal conformity situations in everyday life.

Meaning: it’s difficult to generalise Asch’s findings about conformity beyond the study setting.

🙂 Asch’s study demonstrates the extent to which people will conform in social situations.

When people completed the line task alone, with no pressure to conform to the judgements of others, the error rate was less than 1%. It rose to 36.8% when the same task was performed in a group setting.

Post experimental interviews confirmed that people will conform due to normative social influence to fit in and be accepted by a group of people, as participants said they knew they were right but said the wrong answer just to fit in with the group.

Obedience

Obedience: Following orders of someone we perceive to be in a position of power / authority.

Normally this is acceptable - E.g. Obeying a police officer

However history has many examples in which authority figures have given unreasonable orders with terrible consequences.

Factors affecting obedience

Social= Milgram’s Agency Theory contains agency, authority, culture and proximity.

Dispositional= Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality

Milgram’s Agency Theory (1963)

Aim: Milgram wanted to see how far people would obey an unreasonable order.

Method: 40 male participants volunteered to take part in what they thought was an experiment about memory and learning. Participants were made to believe they were giving an electric shock to a ‘learner’ every time he got an answer wrong. The learner was a confederate and the shocks weren’t real. The participant was seated in front of a ‘shock generator’ that had 30 switches marked from 15 volts up to 450 volts. 

The learner had to remember pairs of words, and the participant had to deliver had to deliver a shock that increased in severity with each mistake the learner made. As the shocks got worse the confederate pretended to screamed in pain. This made the participant want to stop, so the experimenter would provide verbal prods eg ‘The experiment requires that you continue’. 

Results: Before the experiment Milgram thought that no more than 1% of participants would give a 450 volts shock. However, all 40 went to 300 volts and 65% went 450 volts.  

Conclusion: People are prepared to obey dangerous orders if they think the person giving them is in a position of authority.  

Agency Theory : Milgram’s Agency Theory

Normally we feel responsible for our own actions and are free to choose how to behave= autonomous state.

However, Milgram’s Agency theory suggests we are more likely to obey orders in the agentic state. This is when we believe we are acting on behalf on an authority figure so no longer feel accountable for our actions.

Instead we see responsibility being with the person who gives us the orders. The move from the autonomous to agentic state is called the agentic shift.

We are taught to enter agentic state as to children, to respect and follow orders from authority figures in society. It becomes so normal we do it without really thinking about it, but this can lead to blind obedience.

Evaluating Agency Theory

🙂 Milgram’s theory can explain why many soldiers who have followed orders to commit atrocities appear to have been in an agentic state.

E.g. Nazi guards at concentration camps during WW2 claimed they were simply following orders and that responsibility for their actions lay in the hands of their superiors who gave the orders.

🙂 Milgram’s famous study showed how 65% of participants were prepared to give a fatal electric shock of 450 volts to someone else when a legitimate authority figure told them to do so.

Milgram said that participants were in an agentic state on behalf of the experimenter because participants were being paid to perform a role and were told the experimenter would take responsibility for their own actions.

🙁 We do not all blindly follow orders, which suggests that some people are less likely to enter the agentic state than others.

Milgram’s theory only focuses on social factors that affect obedience, but other psychologists, like _________ have suggested that dispositional factors such as an ____________________ personality are more important in determining how obedient people are.

Social factors affecting obedience : Authority

Some people in society have higher positions of authority than others. We have all been brought up to obey authority figures e.g. police officers and teachers. 

We are more likely to follow orders from people who think have legitimate authority. 

This is because we trust their expertise (doctor) or because they have power/ status in society (police officer) to punish us if we don’t follow instructions. 

Legitimate authority figures often have the credentials to back up their status- uniform/ID badge

Social factors affecting obedience : Culture

The culture in which we live influences how we are brought up to think about authority figures. 

Some research has found lower levels of obedience in individualistic cultures compared to collectivist cultures. 

This is because collectivist cultures place greater importance on group values and respecting authorities, whereas individualistic societies place value on independence and individual freedom. 

This means culture may affect obedience levels because it influences how people respond to authority figures.

Social factors affecting obedience : Proximity

Proximity refers to how far away something is. When we are in close proximity to an authority figure it appears we are more likely to obey them. 

In Milgram’s study more people followed orders when the experimenter gave instructions in the same room (65%), than over the phone (20.5%).

Milgram found that obedience dropped when participants had to physically touch the learner to shock them (30%), rather than hit a switch that sent a shock through to another room. 

As now the “buffer” was removed, meaning participants could see the consequences of their actions

Adorno’s Dispositional factor affecting obedience

Adorno suggested that some people form personalities that make them more obedient than others, due to their early childhood experiences. 

He called this the authoritarian personality.

Authoritarian personality

Adorno believed that an authoritarian personality develops because strict parents, who show their child very little love, raise an individual.  

The child grows up feeling anger towards its parents but is too anxious to fight back against them.  

Instead they displace their feelings onto a person or particular group they see as inferior to themselves.  

This scapegoating results in prejudice and discrimination against such minority groups.

Cognitive style

Another feature of an authoritarian personality is a particular way of thinking- ‘black and white’. 

They prefer to believe in rigid stereotypes e.g. all men are bullies and all women emotional as they have a rigid cognitive style.

Evaluating Authoritarian personality

🙁 Adorno’s F scale questionnaire was used to measures people’s attitudes and behaviours. 

It has been criticised for being flawed, because if you showed a response bias and tended to answer ‘yes’ instead of no to questions you would end up with a higher authoritarian score, making you seem more prejudice and therefore obedient. 

This questions the validity of the theory as it’s based on poor evidence.

🙁 Adorno only found a correlation between personality type and obedience. 

This means he cannot establish a cause and effect relationship, proving that high authoritarian personality causes high obedience. 

In fact, some of the most obedient participants in Milgram’s experiment did not experience the authoritarian up bringing predicted by Adorno.

🙁 Dispositional explanations cannot explain all cases of obedience, 

because the millions of Nazi German soldiers who were all prejudice and obedient in WW2, could not have all had the same exact upbringing and personality. 

Therefore, there must be some social factors too like Milgram’s ___________________________ that can explain the high levels of obedience shown.

Prosocial behaviour

This is acting in a way that is beneficial to other people. This is called bystander behaviour. 

A bystander is somebody who witnesses emergencies where other people need help. 

Bystander intervention is when people help. 

Bystander apathy is when they choose not to help.

Social factors affecting bystander behaviour : The presence of others 

We are more likely to help others when we are alone than when other people are present.

It’s sometimes hard to determine whether or not a situation is in fact an emergency. E.g. when children scream, they might be playing not in pain.

If we are alone in an emergency situation we take full responsibility for helping a person because there is no one else who can assist. 

When other people are present, the responsibility for helping is shared between these people. 

This is called diffusion of responsibility. So we may not help someone because we assume others will. 

Social factors affecting bystander behaviour : The cost of helping

It’s suggested that we weigh up the cost and rewards of helping a person in need. 

In some circumstances we may decide it is too costly to intervene. 

If the costs outweigh the rewards, then we are less likely to intervene. 

We may get hurt, lose money, inconvenienced.

Praise, social recognition, financial reward, avoid feeling guilty if we don’t help.

Dispositional factors affecting bystander behaviour : Similarity to the victim

When there are similarities between a bystander and the person in need, bystanders are more likely offer assistance. 

If someone is the same gender, similar age, or have something in common with us, we are more likely to help them.

It’s easier to empathise with them, and easier to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine how they are feeling.

Dispositional factors affecting bystander behaviour : Expertise

Bystanders are more likely to help others if they believe they have the skills required to help someone in a specific situation. 

E.g. if a swimmer is in trouble, how can we help if we can’t swim ourselves? 

People without the necessary expertise may not offer assistance because they do not know how to help, and fear causing more harm than good. 

Bystanders may still be concerned about the victim but when other people are present, they believe that someone else might be more capable of helping.

Piliavin’s Subway Study (1969)

Aim: To investigate whether the appearance of a victim would influence helping behaviour.

Method: On a New York subway train, a confederate pretended to collapse. His appearance was altered in different ways. In 38 of the trails he appeared to be drunk- he smelt of alcohol and carried a bottle of alcohol wrapped in a paper bag. In 65 trails he appeared to be sober and carried a walking stick. Observers recorded how often and how quickly the victim was helped. 

Results: When the victim carried a walking stick, he received help 95% of the time. When he appeared to be drunk he received help 50% of time.  Also people were more quick to help the man with the walking stick as 87% helped within 70 seconds, whereas only 17% helped the apparently drunk man within 70 seconds.

Conclusion: A person’s appearance will affect whether or not they receive help and how quickly this help is given.

Piliavin (1956) Evaluation A03

Field experiment carried out in a natural setting.

🙂 Piliavin’s study has high ecological validity

As it was set in a real life environment (subway train), and people did not know they were part of a study, 

This means the findings about Bystander behaviour can be generalised to other real life situations of emergency situations.

🙁 Carried out in New York city, America. This is an urban area with an individualistic culture. 

Research has shown that people in urban areas are more used to seeing emergency situations and so are more helpful. Interestingly, other research has shown that people in collectivist cultures are actually less helpful, because there is a cultural value that people should sort themselves out. 

All of this means that Piliavin’s study may not accurately predict bystander behaviour in Rural and Collectivist cultures.