SOCIAL INFLUENCE

What is conformity?

Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms/expectations) group pressure.

What is normative social influence?

This type of social influence is associated most commonly with compliance. Going along with the majority even if you don’t accept their beliefs because you want to be accepted.

What is informational social influence

This type of social influence is associated most commonly with internalisation. This is where someone conforms to a view because they believe it to be correct.

Who carried out the 1932 jelly bean conformity investigations?

Jenness

What are the two types of conformity?

Compliance and Internalisation

What was Asch investigating?

Majority influence. He was interested in seeing the extent to which group pressure could influence an individual.

What was the method for Asch’s study?

123 male students from the USA made up the sample of naive participants. Each participant sat at a table with 6-8 other male students who were confederates of Asch. The group was shown a series of cards with lines shown on them. Their task was to say which of the three lines on the right of the card was the same length as the line shown on the left of the card.

How were the trials set up?

There were 18 trials per group

The confederates gave the right answer on the first few trials.

There were 12 critical trials within the total of 18 trials

On each critical trial, the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer to the question of line length

What were the results to Asch’s study?

Participants gave the wrong answer on 36.8% of the critical trials

75% of participants conformed at least once

25% of participants did not conform on any of the trials

What did Asch conclude?

1. Asch concluded that people will conform to the majority even when the situation is undeniable. It was clear what the correct answer was per trial yet some participants still gave the wrong answer after hearing the confederates give the same wrong answer.

2. Asch also concluded that people conform due to Normative Social Influence and Informational Social Influence.

3. He also concluded that conformity to the majority is common but not inevitable.

What were some strengths and limitations of Asch’s Study?

Strengths:

Asch used a standardised procedure meaning that the study can be replicated many times over which equals high reliability.

Does follow ethical guidelines

Limitations:

Asch’s research took place in the 1950s, when conformity was arguably higher, directly after World War II and before the civil rights and the feminist movement, therefore, the study lacks temporal validity

Only had male students from USA and so the results may be biased and do not show population validity or generalisability

Why did Milgrim want to research obedience?

He was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.

What was Milgrim’s aim for his 1963 study?

He was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

What was the procedure for Milgrim’s study?

Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning”. At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate. They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor.

Two rooms were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator. The “learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices. The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time,15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders to ensure they continued.

What were the results of Milgrim’s study?

65% continued to 450 volts

100% continued to 300 Volts

What was Milgrim’s conclusion?

Milgram abandoned his dispositional hypothesis

The results showed that obedience is not a result of nationality or personal factors but is instead made possible by specific situational factors. The situational factors that contributed to the participants’ high levels of obedience were:

• The prompts were given by the experimenter, who was wearing a lab coat (a legitimate authority figure)

• The fact that the participants had volunteered to take part and had been paid a small sum for doing so

• The feeling that the situation was not in their control and they were ‘just obeying orders’ (agency theory)

What were some strengths and limitations of Milgrim’s study?

Strengths:

Milgram's findings have been reflected in other research on obedience, such as Hofling et al. (1966), therefore, Milgram's study has good external validity as similar effects as were observed in his study can be seen in the real world and it is also reliable.

Limitations:

The study is hugely compromised in terms of ethics:

• Participants were deceived as to the true nature of the study

• The physical and psychological harm inflicted on the participants means that the study cannot be replicated today

• Right to withdraw was not tacitly given; the experimenter's prods made leaving the study more difficult

Its not generalisable as it only tests white males

What are the 4 explanations for obidience?

Legitimate Authority

The Agentic State

Gradual Commitment

Buffers

What is legitimate authority?

It is a perception that a person has the right to give orders due to their position in a social hierarchy.

What is an Agentic state?

In this state individuals give up their own responsibility, deferring to those of higher status.

What is gradual commitment?

It is agreeing to something gradually/ in small steps. This makes it harder to refuse the next step.

What is Buffers?

It is a person or thing that reduces a shock or that forms a barrier between incompatible people or things.

What is an Autonomous state?

In this state individuals make decisions based on their own ideas, beliefs and experiences.

What did Bickman look at in 1974?

The power of uniforms and how they make people more likely to obey orders.

What was Bickman’s method?

Bickman used three male actors dressed in normal clothes, as a milkman, or as a security guard.

The actors asked passers-by to do things like pick up a paper bag that had been thrown in the street, or to give them a coin for a parking meter.

What were Bickman’s results?

Passers-by were most likely to obey the actor dressed as a security guard and least likely to obey the actor in normal clothes.

Guard = 80%

Civilian = 40%

What are some external explanations of obedience?

Proximity

Location

Uniforms

What is proximity?

It is the proximity of the person giving the order.

E.G Milgrim’s study

What is location?

It is when the location of an environment can be relevant to the amount of perceived legitimate authority a person giving orders is seen to have.

E.G Milgrim’s study

What is uniforms?

It is when the wearing of uniforms can give a perception of added legitimacy to authority figures

E.G Bickman’s study

Those with an authoritarian personality tend to be what?

• Hostile to those who are of inferior status but obedient of people with a higher status

• Fairly rigid in their opinions and beliefs

• Conventional, upholding traditional values

What did Adorno et al propose in 1950?

They proposed that prejudice is the results of an individual’s personality type.

What was Adorno et al’s method?

They piloted and developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale.

What did Adorno et al conclude?

That people with authoritarian personalities were likely to categories people into groups, seeing their own as superior

The study indicated that the individuals with a very strict upbringing were most likely to develop this personality

Some traits identified by the F-Scale predispose some individuals towards “fascistic” characteristics

What was Hofling’s aims in his 1966?

Hofling (1966) created a more realistic study of obedience than Milgram’s by carrying out field studies on nurses who were unaware that they were involved in an experiment

What is Hofling’s method?

It was field experiment involving 22 (real) night nurses. Dr Smith (a subordinate) phones the nurses at hospital (on 22 separate occasions) and asks them to check to see if they have the drug astroten. When the nurse checks she can see that the maximum dosage is supposed to be 10mg.  When they reported to the ‘Doctor’, they were told to administer 20mg of the drug to a patient called ‘Mr. Jones’.  Dr. Smith was in a desperate hurry and he would sign the authorisation form when he came to see Mr. Jones later on. 

The nurses were watched to see what they would do. The medication was not real, though the nurses thought it was. 

If the nurse administers the drug, they will have broken three hospital rules:  

1. They are not allowed to accept instructions over the phone. 

2. The dose was double the maximum limit stated on the box. 

3. The medicine itself as unauthorized, i.e. not on the ward stock list. 

The drug itself was a harmless sugar pill invented just for the experiment.

What were the results for Hofling’s study?

21 out of 22 (95%) nurses were easily influenced into carrying out the orders

When other nurses were asked to discuss what they would do in a similar situation (i.e. a control group), 21 out of 22 said they would not comply with the order. 

Who wanted to challenge Hofling’s study with a more realistic drug?

Rank and Jacobson in 1977

What did Rank and Jacobson find?

They increased the realism of the situation by using valium at three times the recommended dose.

When the research pretending to be a doctor telephoned, he introduced himself as a doctor the nurses would have heard of, and the nurses were in a position of being able to discuss the order with other nurses before carrying it out. Only 2 out of 18 nurses followed the order.  

The increased realism of the experiment, and the discussion with a colleague had lowered obedience rates in exactly the same way that Milgram’s addition of a dissenting confederate had done. 

What are some explanations for resisting pressures to conform?

• Giving answers in private

• Non-conforming role model

• Size of group

What are some explanations for resisting pressures to obey?

• Disobedient role model

• Questioning the status and legitimacy of the person giving the order

• Increasing sense of responsibility

• Time to think and find social support

What is locus of control?

The extent to which someone believes that they have control over and responsibility for their lives rather than attributing outcomes to external factors.

Who designed a scale to measure LOC?

Rotter in 1966

What are some examples of behaviours high internal LOC include?

• Accepting responsibility for not passing an exam by admitting that they did not work hard enough

• Refusing to work beyond office hours at the weekend for a tyrannical boss

• Not joining in with friends who are gossiping about someone behind their back

What are some examples of behaviours high external LOC include?

• Blaming the teacher for an exam failure

• Working beyond office hours at the weekend for a tyrannical boss because they do not feel that they can say no

• Joining in with friends who are gossiping about someone behind their back as they want to stay 'in' with the group

When does minority influence occur?

When a small group of people or an individual changes the attitudes/behaviours/beliefs of the majority.

What are the three processes at work in minority influence?

• Commitment

• Consistency

• Flexibility

Who demonstrated the importance of consistency in minority influence?

Moscovici in 1969 by putting the participants into groups of six and shown 36 slides of varying shades of blue. The participants had to state out loud the colour of each slide.

• In the consistent condition, the two confederates said that all the slides were green

• In the inconsistent condition, the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue

The findings showed that:

• In the consistent condition, there was 8.2% agreement with the minority (the two confederates)

• In the inconsistent condition, agreement decreased to 1.25% of the trials

Who demonstrated the extent to which a flexible minority could influence others?

Nemeth in 1986 by presenting the participants with a scenario in which someone had been injured in a ski-lift accident. They had to decide as a group (with one confederate) how much compensation the victim should receive

• The inflexible condition: the minority argued for a low rate of compensation and refused to change his position

• The flexible condition: the minority argued for a low rate of compensation but then compromised, offering a slightly higher rate

The results showed that

• in the inflexible condition, the minority had little or no effect on the majority

• in the flexible condition, the majority was much more likely to change their view and go along with the minority