Psychology, Social influence

What is obedience?

is a form of social influence where people are told what to do and follow instructions

Whats the background of Milgrims obedience experiment?

• 1963

• He had a Jewish background and wanted to understand why the German people went along with events like the holocaust

• At the time, the opinion was that it was based on German traits being ‘cold’ meaning many had no issue commiting these crimes

What was the procedure of the experiment?

• 40 US males took part found through volunteer sampling

• Roles were allocated ‘randomly’ of being either ‘teacher’ or ‘learner’ (this was rigged)

• The learner was strapped to the chair and the teacher was made to believe they were administering electric shocks

• The learner answers questions from the teacher, if they got the question wrong, they would be given an electrical shock. The voltage would increase each time the learner got a question wrong (destructive order given to teacher)

• Shocks went up from 15v to 450v

• The responses from the learner were all standardised ‘let me out of here’ at 330v there is no response

• If the teacher refused to give out the shocks they would be given verbal prods ‘please continue’ to ‘you have no choice but to continue’

What were the results of Milgrims obedience experiment?

• 65% continued to the 450v (26 ppts)

• 100% continued to 300v (where 5 ppts stopped)

• People had shown physical distress, sweating, nervous laughter, 3 had seizures

What conclusions were made from Milgrims obedience experiment?

• Clearly, the Germans are not different, ordinary Americans were obedient to authority

• Milgrim argued obedience is based on the situation people find themselves in rather than personality of indivuals

How can we evaluate Milgrims obedience research?

strengths

• Standardised procedure, well controlled lab experiment so has high internal validity

• Has some ecological validity, this would be how the Nazis would’ve ordered people, using intimidation

Limitations

• We can’t generalise the findings, no woman took part so maybe this had an effect on the results

• Ethical issues. Phyiscal and psychological harms, 3 had seizures, they were put under pressure, Milgrim may counter this by saying that afterwards he debriefed ppts, many said after that they recognised the good outcomes

• Ethical issues. Deception, they went into an experiment that wasn’t what they thought it would be, lied to by Milgrim

• Ethical issue. Lack of informed consent

Milgrim argued that these ethical issues were broken to keep the internal validity of the research, if ppts knew it was about obedience they would potentially act differently

What is conformity?

What 3 types of conformity did Kelman identify?

Conformity is defined as yielding to group pressure. Conformity occurs when an indivduals behaviour or belief are influenced by wider groups of people. Conforminity is known as majority influence

Kelman in 1958 identified the three types of conformity

• Compliance

• Identification

• Internalisation

What is compliance?

Occcurs when individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of a group to be accepted and avoid dissapproval. Compliance therefore occurs due to a desire to fit in and involves public, not private acceptance of groups behaviour and attitudes. It is a fairly weak temporary form of conformity, only shown in the pressence of a group. E.g, claiming to support a football team in the presence of others to avoid being judged

What is identification?

Occurs when indivduals adjust their behaviour or opinions for a group as membership is desireable. This is a stronger type of conformity, involving private as well as public acceptance, its genrally temporary

E.g sharing the same opinion as others at work but not when you are home or with friends

What is internalisation?

Also known as true conformity, occurs when an indivdual adjust their behaviour and opinions for a group (genuinly). Involves indivduals being exposed to belief systems of others and deciding what they believe in. If opinions are seen as correct, this will lead to public and private acceptance of beliefs. E.g influenced by religous groups and converting to faith with a new religous way of life

What is ISI?

Informational social influence

Is about a desire to be right, often we are uncertain about what behaviours are right or wrong. You go with other students answers. it occurs in situations you don’t want to be judged for being wrong, and there isn’t a clear answer. We follow others who seem like experts

What is NSI?

Normative social influence

Is about a desire to be liked and not looking foolish. NSI concerns ‘normal’ behaviour for social groups and occurs in unfamilier situations where we don’t know others. we look for norms in groups, it also important for with people we know looking for social approval from friends

How can we evaluate ISI?

Strengths

• it has supporting evidence, Lucas et al 2006, asked students to give answers to easy and difficult maths problems, there was more conformity in incorrect answers when the problems were more difficult. This was most true for students who scored themselves lowly in maths

• People conform in situations when they feel they don’t know the answer we look to others and assume they know better than us.

Limitations

• a problem with ISI is that there are individual differences

• Asch 1955 found students were less conformist 28% than other ppts 37%

• Perrin and Spencer 1980, replicated this with engineering Students as they are confident about precision, less conformity. People who are knowledgeable/more confident are less influenced showing individual differences in ISI

How can we evaluate NSI?

Strengths

• like ISI, NSI has strong research support, Asch 1951 asked ppts to explain why they agreed with the wrong answer. Some said they felt self conscious giving the right answer and were afraid of disapproval

• When Asch asked ppts to write down their answers, conformity rates fell to 12.5% this supports the Ppts own reports that they were conforming because of NSI

Limitations

• despite there being research, evidence to support NSI and ISI it is unclear which one can be used to explain the results of different studies or behaviour in real life

• For example, Asch 1955 found that conforming is reduced when there is one dissenter ppts. The dissenter may reduce the power of NSI (because the provide social support) or they may reduce the power of ISI (because they provide an alternative source of social situation) both interpretations are made possible

• Therefore it is hard to separate ISI and NSI and both processes probably operate together in most real world conformity situations