psychology social influences

What is anti-social behaviour

selfish behaviour that is negativel valued by society and usually causes harm to the common good, ore results in a reward for the person involved.

what is diffusion of responsibility

occurs when individuals within a group feel decreasingly responsible or accountable to act as group size increases.

what is audience inhibition

occurs when performance decreases when in the presence of others because of fear of evaluation. It also depends on one's sense of competence.

How is social influence learned

1. social norms

2. direct teaching

3. modelling

4. reinforcement.

What is the cost-benefit analysis

Social interactions are viewed as exchanges, similar to economic behaviour. People enter into these exchanges with motivation to gain a reward in exchange for a cost.

what is group think

Occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides rational consideration of possible alternative because those with dissenting or contradictory opinions are vilified or pressured to conform.

What is the bystander effect.

occurs when the presence of multiple bystanders inhibits each person's tendency to help/ Largely due to comparison or social responsibility.

similarity

gender

group size and unanimity

competency

what is obedience

Obedience is acting in response to an instruction from an authority figure.

Proximity to the victim (social proximity)

proximity of authority figure (social proximity)

perception of authority

unanimity of group or dissenting attitudes

What is conformity

Refers to the process of changing one's behaviour in response to group pressure.

What is informational influence

When we are in unfamiliar situations, we take cues from those around us in order to decide how to behave.

What is normative behaviour

When we conform to group standards in order to belong to and be accepted by a group to avoid disapproval or exclusion.

group size

unanimity

culture

deindividualisation

What is influence

influence occurs when an individual, group, or institution alters another's thoughts, feelings and/or behaviour through accidental, expressive or rhetorical communication

What is compliance

- weakest form of conformity

- occurs when an individual accepts influence because they hope to receive a favourable reaction or avoid a specific punishment or disapproval.

change is transitory - only as long as individual sees compliance as beneficial.

what is identification

occurs through the process of group identification.

this type of influence occurs when individual sees themselves as similar to or connected to the person or group, and as a result, adopts their attitudes, values, or behaviours.

What is internalisation

occurs because the new thoughts, feelings and/or behaviour are rewarding, and congruent with your own values.

The new attitude is useful or fulfils a need.

what is pro-social behaviour

Occurs when a person selflessly does something to help somebody else, with little regard for their own self-interest or personal safety. This behaviour is valued positively by society, it must be helpful to the person being helped, it must also be selfless.

What is the reciprocity principle

Refers to the extent to which we expect to receive a prosocial behaviour in return for helping others.

What is social responsibility

Refers to social norms that drive us to help others and contribute to the welfare of society.

What are personal characteristics

empathy - refers to sharing another person's emotional state.

mood - people who are happy are more likely to help.

competence - our willingness to help others is influenced by our own feelings of competence.

What is competence

the capacity to successfully complete a task.

What is altruism

Involves helping other people because they are in need, without any expected benefit to oneself.

What is the aim, methods, and findings of Milgram's 1963 - behavioural study of obedience.

to determine whether people will obey orders from an authority figure.

40 participants were sampled from a newspaper article - all males (convenience sampling.)

participants falsely 'randomly' allocated to role of teacher and told it was a study about learning/memory.

learners are to be administered shock for every incorrect response, in increasing voltage 15-450V.

No random allocation

65% of participants continued all the way to 450V.

Ordinary people will obey instructions from an authority figure.

What is the criticisms and limitations of Milgram's 1963 - behavioural study of obedience?

Ethics - participants did not have the right to withdraw, deception was used, and Milgram failed to protect participants from harm.

Milgram claimed that the results were due to authority (if it was, as authority increased, obedience should have increased); however, none of the participants who received the fourth and final prompt went to 450V. 14 participants dropped out of the study by refusing to follow instructions.

Results cannot be generalised for all males.

Not using random allocation could have meant that groups were biased and did not have an equal chance of being allocated to either group.

What are the aim, methods, and findings of Asch's 1951 line judgement task

to investigate how social pressure from a majority group could influence an individual to conform.

Asch put a naive participant in a room with 7 confederates. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the task.

Each person in the room had to say out loud which comparison line was most likely the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave their answer.

After a few rounds, the confederates started to provide unanimous incorrect answers.

There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer in 12 trials (referred to as critical trials.

On average, 32% of participants who were placed in this situation conformed to the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.

over the critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, 25% never conformed.

The control group, which had no pressure to conform to confederates, had less than 1% of participants give the wrong answer.

people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence_ and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence.)

What is the Criticisms/limitations of Asch 1951 line judgement task

Biased sampling - male college students

artificiality - task is not reflective of social situations that demonstrate conforming behaviour in the real world.

culture - different cultures may not demonstrate the same rates of conformity.

ethics - participants were deceived about the nature of the study.

What is the aim, methods, and findings of Latane and Darley 1968 - smoke filled room.

To understand the bystander effect. (Why people in a group will withhold help from another in need.)

college students were allocated into two groups - filling out questionaire alone in a room or filling out a questionnaire in a room with others - confederates.

After a few minutes, smoke starts creeping into the room. Confederates ignored the smoke.

of those alone in the smoke 75% quickly left the room and reported this to examiners.

those with confederates 10% left for help. took twice as long to act as those alone.

the greater number of bystanders, the less likely we are to act.

This is different from previous experiments from L & D because, participants' own lives were at risk (rather than experiments in whihc the safety of other confederates were perceived to be at risk.

this demonstrates that even as the level of emergency increases, the presence of others continues to inhibit prosocial response

sampliang bias - college students

artificiality - the context of the experiment is not an accurate representation of real-world experiments.

10% of people in groups still acted quickly - results do not generalise to all people.

even when alone 25% did not act.

What can cause social influences

the presence of others - accidental

emotionally driven (expressive)

on purpose (rhetorical)