Social influence (PMT)

What is social influence?

The process by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviours

What is legitimacy of authority?

An explanation for obedience which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us due to the position of power they hold within the social hierarchy

What are 3 features of an authoritarian personality?

• Submissive to superiors

• Dismissive of inferiors

• Highly prejudiced

How do authoritarian personalities develop?

• Harsh parenting style in childhood

  • strict discipline

  • criticisms of failings

  • impossibly high standards

• Child cannot express feelings to parents - displace onto those they deem weaker (scapegoating)

What scale measures the authoritarian personality?

F-scale

What are limitations of the F-scale?

• Acquiescence bias - all questions are worded in the same direction

• Politically biased - very right wing, does not account for left-wing authoritarianism

What does Milgram’s original study tell us about obedience?

• People obey those they consider authority figures

• Results suggest obeying authority is normal in hierarchical societies

• People obey distressing orders that go against our moral code

What are 2 situational variables and their impact on obedience?

• Proximity - physical closeness between the person giving order and receiver. In Milgram’s variations, when the learner and teacher were in the same room the obedience level decreased (65% to 40%) compared to when they were in different rooms

• Uniform - describes the outfit of the person giving order. In Milgram’s original study the experimenter wore a lab coat. In the variation they wore casual clothes and obedience fell (60% to 20%)

What is the agentic state?

When individuals obey an order, even if they are aware it is wrong, because they feel that they are acting for an authority figure so feel no responsibility for their actions

What keeps a person in the agentic state?

Binding factors which allow a person to minimise the damaging aspects of their actions reduce the moral strain they feel such as:

• Guilt/anxiety about the thought of leaving

• Not wanting to appear rude/arrogant

• Unwillingness to break commitment to experimenter

• Shifting responsibility to victim

• Denying the impact of their actions

What are 2 explanations for how people are able to resist social influence?

• Social support - when the presence of people helps others resist the pressures of conforming or obeying

• Locus of control - a person’s perception of their control over behaviours, successes, failures and events. A person with a high internal locus of control believes they are responsible for their lives - more likely to resist

What’s the difference between internal and external locus of controls?

• Internal - believe they are responsible for what happens to them and they direct their lives

• External - believe outside forces direct their lives and they do not have control

What are the 2 theories Deutsch & Gerard proposed to explain conformity?

Normative social influence - when you conform to fit in and be liked

Informative social influence - when you conform due to the need to be right/correct

What is identification?

When you go along with others because you have accepted their point of view and identify with them

What is a limitation of Asch’s (1951) conformity study?

• Criticised as being ‘a child of its time’

• 1950s were a conformist time in America (Post WW2)

• Perrin & Spencer (1980) found only 1 conformity response out of 396 trials in a replicated study

  • Provides evidence that Asch’s results are not consistent over time

• Biased sample (123 American males in university)

What is the difference between compliance and internalisation?

Compliance - temporary type of conformity whereby a person goes along with the majority in public, but does not agree with the view in private

Internalisation - a permanent type of conformity where the person accepts the majority in public and in private

What are the stages of minority influence?

• Draw attention to their beliefs

• Consistency, commitment and flexibility shown

• Deeper processing of the issue in the majority group

• Augmentation principle

• Snowball effect

• Social cryptoamnesia

What are 3 characteristics of minorities which make them influential?

• Consistency

• Commitment

• Flexibility

What is social cryptoamnesia?

Describes how people have a memory that social change has occurred, but don’t remember how it happened