A-Level AQA Psychology: Social Influence AO3

Evaluation of: Conformity - Strengths

S: Research support for normative influence:

- Post experimental interviews following Asch line study, ppts revealed they conformed in order to fit in/be liked.

S: Research for informational influence:

- Wittenbrink and Henley found that ppts exposed to negative info (believed to be majority view) about African Americans later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual.

Evaluation of: Conformity - Limitations

-It's difficult to distinguish between compliance and internalisation (e.g. a person who publicly agrees yet disagrees in private is seen as showing compliance, when really they actually internalised the views but these dissipated due to forgetting information or having it be displaced by new info)

-People may not detect when normative influence is occurring, making it difficult for researchers to know if that changed their views. Nolan et al found that, regarding energy conservation behaviour, ppts believed their neighbours had least impact when really they had the biggest impact.

Evaluation of: Variables affecting conformity (Asch) - Limitations

-Low historical validity: Asch's study showed higher conformity due to the research taking place at the height of McCarthyism in America in '50s (strong anti-communist views) where people were scared to go against the majority

-There are problems determining the exact effect of group size as no studies other than Asch have used a majority greater than nine (most use between 2 and 4) so we know little about the effect of large majority sizes

-Asch's study didn't show a significant level of conformity. Because a large proportion of ppts (in 2 thirds of trials) in Asch's study didn't conform, it shows that rather than people being overly conformist, they demonstrate a tendency to stick to what they believe in

-Conformity is different amongst cultures; in individualist ones the conformity is lower (about 25%) than collectivist (37%) - Smith et al. Collectivist has higher because they view conformity as a 'social glue' that binds communities. So the findings from Asch's study cant be generalised to all cultures

Evaluation of: Zimbardo's SPE - Strengths

-Real-world application: Abu Ghraib (military prison in Iraq); Zimbardo argued that the situations in the SPE and in Abu Ghraib were similar and so suggested that the violent behaviour of the guards to prisoners in both situations is due to situational factors - in both cases, the guards are extremely bored and there was a lack of training

Evaluation of: Zimbardo's SPE - Limitations

-Ethical issues: psychological harm, lack of informed consent (didn't tell them they'd be arrested at homes)

-Zimbardo suggested that the guards' drift into sadistic behaviour was automatic, however researchers have found that some remained 'good guards' and did not degrade the prisoners, showing instead that the guards chose how to behave

-It is possible that powerful demand characteristics led to the change in behaviour and not the compelling environment. These characteristics (that tell the ppts what the experimenters want) led the ppts to conform more quickly to their roles in order to please the experimenters. Researchers showed the procedure to students who were unaware of the study, and all correctly guessed the purpose of the study and predicted that guards would act hostile while prisoners would act passive

Evaluation of: Situational variables affecting obedience (Milgram) - Strengths

-High historical validity: Researchers found that, when replicating Milgram's study, obedience levels in later studies were no more or less different to the original study. Possibly because the binding factors that keep a person obeying an authority do not change along with society (e.g. people will always fear looking rude if they stop obeying)

Evaluation of: Situational variables affecting obedience (Milgram) - Limitations

- Lack of realism: Ppts have learned not to trust experimenters because they know the true purpose of a study may be disguised. Researchers found many ppts were sceptical about whether the shocks were real; this could have led to more "obedient" behaviour, because the ppts did not truly believe they were hurting the learner

-Ethical issues: although Milgram gave ppts the freedom to withdraw, the 'prods' from the experimenter made it more difficult for those who then felt like they had no choice but to continue.

-Low external validity: Obedience research cannot completely apply to real-life situations. E.g. during ww2 in Poland, a battalion received orders to carry out a mass killing of Jews - their commanding officer gave them the offer to take on other duties but even in spite of factors that Milgram suggested increase defiance (e.g. closeness to victim), the vast majority carried out the killing

Evaluation of: Agentic State - Limitations

-Milgram suggested people shift in and out of the agentic state, however this fails to explain the irreversible change that Lifton found in a study of German doctors in Auschwitz who went from good doctors to evil bastards. Another researcher suggested that, rather than the agentic state being responsible, the experience of carrying out long-lasting acts of evil led to a change in behaviour

-The agentic state may not be the only reason for people acting out terrible actions, as some social scientists believe that Milgram detected signs of cruelty in his ppts. This was given support by Zimbardo, whose 'guard' ppts carried out evil tasks despite the lack of an authority figure

Evaluation of: Legitimacy of authority - Strengths

-Real life application: the theory of legitimacy of authority affecting obedience has been shown in everyday life (responding to police officer during emergency) and in history (e.g. think nazis, they did shitty things when obeying authority)

Evaluation of: Authoritarian personality (Elms and Milgram) - Strengths

-Looks at social context (family, personality - dispositional factors) for why obedience occurs, rather than just variations in situational settings as shown in Milgram's study

Evaluation of: Authoritarian personality (Elms and Milgram) - Limitations

-Reductionist theory: doesn't look at all aspects of why people obey, such as proximity and location - as demonstrated in Milgram's study

-There may be differences between being obedient and being authoritarian. Elms and Milgram found that for many obedient ppts, they reported good family environments, rather than the strict ones that are associated with the authoritarian personality. Suggests that the authoritarian personality alone cannot lead to obedience

-Lack of education could be a better explanation for obedience than authoritarian personality as Milgram found that those ppts who are less well educated tend to be more obedient than those well-educated.

Evaluation of: Resistance to social influence - Strengths

-Real world application: Rosenstrasse in WW2 where Nazi secret police were holding 2,000 Jewish men; women stood toe to toe with the agents (who threatened fire) but their courage prevailed and the Jews were released

Evaluation of: Resistance to social influence - Limitations

-Support may not have to be valid to be effective. E.g. in a visual discrimination test, one confed had thick lensed glasses (invalid social support) and one had normal sight, and in both conditions conformity was reduced

Evaluation of: Locus of control - Strengths

-Research support: meta analysis of studies of relationship between locus of control and different forms of social influence showed significant positive correlation for relationship between scores of internality/externality and scores on measures of social influence and conformity (e.g. higher on external LOC = more conforming and easily influenced)

Evaluation of: 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

Evaluation of: Minority influence (Moscovici) - Strengths

-High value: minority influence opens the mind and allows people to feel liberated; it leads people to consider wider options and gain more information

Evaluation of: Minority influence (Moscovici) - Limitations

-Minority influence in reality is not very effective as people tend to accept the principle on the surface (appears democratic and tolerant), but people quickly become irritated by a persistent dissenting view and fear the lack of harmony that it creates, so they try to contain it >> majority view then persists

-Minority influence may not lead to greater message processing as people tend to ignore their messages, however if a majority changes views then people will try to understand why more because we view the majority as sharing similar beliefs to ours

Evaluation of: Social change through minority influence - Strengths?

-Rather than leading to actual social change, only leads to the potential for change. E.g. women's liberation movement never actually got the equal rights act passed, but still brought about the potential for change (not actually a strength but eh)

Evaluation of: Social change through minority influence - Limitations

-Minority influence may not have much impact if they are viewed as 'deviant', as people often do not want to be viewed this way (people focus on the source of the message rather than the actual message)

Evaluation of: Social change through majority influence - Limitations

-'Boomerang effect': Schultz found that although a social norms campaign led to people reducing electricity usage, it spurred on those who used less than the norm to increase their usage. Probably because they assume that they have the capability to do so, and in thinking that they are lower than the norm they increase it in an attempt to match the new norm