Social Influence

Normative Social Influence (NSI)

Conforming in order to be liked and fit in with the group

Informational Social Influence (ISI)

Conforming in order to be right, due to a lack of knowledge about a subject

3 Types of Conformity

Compliance → individual changes their behaviour to fit in with the group, even if they may not agree with the behaviour or belief, but they go along with it publicly just not privately

Identification → individual

Internalisation → individual changes their behaviour and belief both publicly & privately as they fully accept the group majority view

Minority Influence

This is when a view starts with a minority e.g. women’s right to vote Sufferagetes

It cant be Normative social influence as the minority isn’t the norm

They have to convince the majority through the process of internalisation

What 3 characteristics must a minority show for minority influence?

1. Consistency → they must stick to their values & not be hypocritical

2. Commitment → must be willing to make sacrifices for their cause e.g. friendships

3. Flexibility → must be reasonable & willing to make compromise over the rate of change.

   Once they convince some, those people will convince others leading to the snowball effect

Social Change Stages

1. Drawing Attention - the minority raises awareness of the issue

2. Consistency - minority remain consistent with their message over a period of time

3. Augmentation Principle - personal sacrifice reinforces or augments the message e.g. sacrificing their lives like Emily Davis and the Sufferagetes

4. Snowball Effect - the minority becomes the majority & society now conforms the the majority

5. Deeper Processing - activism around the issue ensures that people think about it deeply

6. Social Crytoamnesia - social change has occurred & society is now different. People can’t remember how or why it happened

What are the situational explanations for obedience?

1. Legitimacy of authority → obeying others that are higher in the social hierarchy than us, but they have to be supported by an institutional framework

2. Agentic State → obeying as they do not feel responsible for their actions as they are ‘just obeying their authority figure’. They will feel moral strain but Binding Factors reduce this

Explain the Asch Line study

Aim : to see if an individual will conform to a group even if the answer is obvious

Method: 123 US male ppts volunteered, one naive ppt in a room with 7 confederate ppts, asked to do a line judging task e.g. which of 3 lines looks closest to the comparison line, 18 trials were done but only 12 were critical (6 were trial runs on the other 12 confederates gave the wrong answer purposefully

Findings: conformity to the confederates occurred in 33% of the trials, 75% of ppts conformed at least once

Asch Study Variations

1. Task Difficulty → when the lines all looked very similar it made it harder to identify which line looked like the comparison - found that conformity increased (which displays ISI)

2. Group Size → with more confederates there’s more conformity, 3 confederates = 32%, 2 confederates = 12.5%, 1 confederate = 3% SUPPORTS NSI & ISI

3. Unanimity of the Majority → out of the 6 possible confederates, 1 also gave the correct answer (like the naive ppt) conformity dropped to 5% (supports Social Support)

4. Answers were private → when allowed to write their answers, conformity dropped to 12.5%

Strengths of Asch’s study

• Lab study - highly controlled environment, so good control of variables, which makes it scientific

Weaknesses of Asch’s study

• Demand Characteristics - the ppts may have guessed the aim of the study & gave their answers accordingly