Social influence

Conformity definition

A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people

Conformity Types

Compliance -going along with others in public

Internalisation - genuinely accept view of the group

Identification - we conform because we value the group and want to be a part of it

explanations for conformity

ISI - informative - based on desire to be right

NSI - normative - based on desire to be accepted and liked

Evaluation of conformity explanations

+NSI research support Linkenbach and Perkins US study → adolescnets exposed to normative message that majoity of peers their age didnt smoke, they were less likely to smoke

+NSI research support →Shultz et al found hotel guests exposed to nomative message that 75% of guests reused their towel, reduced need for daily fresh towels by 25%

+support for ISI - Lucas et al - greater conformity to incorrect maths answers when questions were more difficult

-limitation of ISI - individual differences - Asch found that students were less conforming at 28% compared to 37% of other ppts

-limitation NSI - individual differences - McGhee and Teevan 1967 found people who care more about being liked are more likely to be influenced by NSI

Asch 1951

123 male undergrad students told it was a vision test

ppts gave wrong answers in 12 out of 18 of the critical tasks

naïve ppts wrong 36.8% of the time

75% conformed at least once 25% never conformed

study with no confeds= wrong only 1% of time

variation in asch study

difficulty of task - line lengths more similar, conformity increased due to ISI

group size - little conformity with 1/2 confeds but with 3 conformity rose to 31.8% with more confeds than that little difference

unanimity - presence of another non conforming person would reduct confirmity

Asch ao3

-ecological validity

—ethical issues

-Cultural bias

-research in the UK shows only 1 instance of conformity, however with youth offenders with their prohibation officers as confeds similar levels of conformity

+lab study -

Zimbardo study

• Aim: To investigate whether the brutality reported among American prison guards was due to their personalities (dispositional factors) or the prison environment (situational factors).

• Procedure:

  • Sample: 24 "emotionally stable" male student volunteers, screened for psychological health and randomly assigned to be either a prisoner or a guard.

  • Setting: A mock prison in the basement of Stanford University.

  • Deindividuation: To lose their personal identity, prisoners were "arrested" at home, blindfolded, strip-searched, and issued ID numbers instead of names. Guards wore khaki uniforms, mirrored sunglasses (to avoid eye contact), and carried batons.

  • Roles: Guards were told they had complete power over prisoners but were forbidden from physical violence.

• Findings:

  • The guards and prisoners conformed to their roles with surprising speed. Guards became increasingly brutal and sadistic, forcing prisoners to clean toilets with bare hands and conducting night-time headcounts.

  • Prisoners initially rebelled (Day 2) but soon became subdued, depressed, and anxious.

  • The experiment was terminated after only 6 days (instead of the planned 14) due to the severe psychological distress of the prisoners and the intervention of Christina Maslach.

• Conclusion: People conform strongly to social roles provided by a situation, even if those roles go against their moral principles.

Zimbardo ao3

-ethics —>right to withdraw, protection from harm

-population validity — all university

-volunteer sampling

-lack of realism

obedience

individual follows a direct order from a figure of authority who has power to punish.

Milgram 1963

The Baseline Study (1963)

Milgram aimed to test the "Germans are different" hypothesis by seeing if ordinary Americans would obey orders to harm an innocent person.

Save My Exams +3

• Sample: 40 male participants (aged 20–50) recruited via a newspaper ad for a "study of memory" at Yale University.

• Procedure:

  • Participants were always the "Teacher," and a confederate (Mr. Wallace) was the "Learner".

  • The Teacher had to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks (15V to 450V) to the Learner for every wrong answer.

  • If the Teacher hesitated, the Experimenter gave four standardized "prods" (e.g., "The experiment requires that you continue").

• Findings:

  • 100% of participants went to 300V.

  • 65% went all the way to the maximum 450V ("fatal" level).

  • Participants showed extreme signs of stress, including sweating, trembling, and even seizures.

Milgram variations -situational variables

Proximity Teacher & Learner in same room 40% Increased "moral strain" when seeing the victim's pain.

Proximity Instructions given via phone 20.5% Reduced pressure from the authority figure.

Location Moved to a run-down office 47.5% Less prestigious setting reduced the legitimacy of the research.

Uniform Experimenter in "ordinary clothes" 20% Lack of uniform reduced the perceived Legitimate Authority.

Milgram evaluation

-ethical issues

+External Validity (Strength): Hofling et al. (1966) found that 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed a doctor's order to give an overdose, suggesting obedience happens in real-world settings.

-Internal Validity (Limitation): Orne and Holland (1968) argued participants didn't believe the shocks were real and were just showing "demand characteristics".

+However, Sheridan & King (1972) found 100% of women gave real shocks to a puppy, supporting Milgram's findings.

Obedience situational explanations

Agentic state

Legitimacy of authority

Agentic state

a mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour as we feel as acting for an authority figure.

autonomous state - opposite of agentic state where we are free

binding factors - aspects of a situation which allow you to ignore or minimise the damaging affects of actions or moral strain you feeling. such as shifting responsibility to victim or denying the damage

Legitimacy of authority

suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us.

society is in a hierarchy structure

most of us accept authority figures are allowed to exercise power over us to enable society to function.

—for example we generally accept the police and courts who have power to punish us.

Destructive authority - where legitimate authority becomes destructive. for example milgrams experiment or hitler

situational explanations of obedience - a-state, l of authority A03

+research support from milgrams experiement - experimenter told ppts that they were responsible, also uniform shows legitamcy of authority

• Real-life Application: The theory helps explain real-life destructive obedience, such as in the Holocaust or military atrocities, where soldiers follow commands from superiors.

• Ethical/Methodological Issues: Many studies, like Milgram’s, involved high levels of stress and deception to trigger this state.

-Legitamacy of authority - cultural variations Kilham and Mann 1974 in Austrailia found only 16% went all the way to the top replication of milgram. however Mantell 1971 found 85% for Germans

obedience dispositional explanation

authoritarian personality - Adorno - people with authoritarian personality show extreme respect to those in authority, they believe society is weaker than it once was so needs more powerful leaders to enforce traditional values, makes people with this personality more likely to obey.

origins of authoritarian personality

strict childhood - extremely strict discipline, expectation of loyalty, impossibly high standards, and severe criticism of feelings, parents give conditional love.

create hositility so feelings against parents are displaced onto others who they believe to be weaker - scapegoating. causes hatred between those below us.- psychodynamic

adorno et al research 1950

2000 middle class americans

studies their unconscious attitudes towards racial groups ,

fascism - F scale

people with higher F scale - more authoriatarian identified with strong people and contemptious of the weak, they were conscious of their own status and showed extreme respect to those of high status, authoriatarian people had a COGNITIVE STYLE where they had fixed and distinct stereotypes of different groups.

positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

evaluation dispositional - auth personality

-cannot explain obedience in a whole country eg nazi germany

-political bias only looks at extreme right wing idiology but doesnt look at left wing or extreme left such as Russian or chinese which have a lot in common.

-correlation not causation

-elms and milgram many obedient ppts had very good relationship with parents therefore may not have grown up in a harsh environment

-middendorp and meloen 1990 found less educated people were more authoritarian. - other factors which play a role

Resistance to social influence

Social support

Locus of control

Social support

conformity

Social support helps resist conformity as pressure to conform reduces when other people refuse to conform

when there was a non obeying confederate conformity dropped to 5%

-breaks the ISI

Obedience

social support helps resist obedience as the pressure is reduced if someone else disobeys. Milgram found that the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when ppt was joined by a disobedient confederate

Locus of control

Refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour

an internal locus of control:

in control of events in life

consequences of own ability and effort

rely less on opinions of others

rake responsibility and display independent behaviour

external locus of control:

what is happened is determined by external factors

such as luck or actions of others

more passive and fatalistic attitude

as a result take less responsibility for their actions and are less likely to display independent behaviour

evaluation of resistance to social influence

Asch research can support resistance to conformity dropped to 5%

Milgram work can support the idea of resistance to obedience. presence of a non conforming confed 65% drops to 10%

limitation of resistance to conformity is that it may be less effective in opinion based tasks, Allen and Levine argued that the ally must share same opinion as ppt in order to influence them

Locus of control is limited because it only applies to novel situations. Rotter 1982 argued that in familiar situations past experiences play a more significant role in determining behaviour than LOC. for example, individuals who have conformed or obeyed in certain situations are likely to do the same again, even with internal LOC

minority influence

situations where one person or a small group of people influences the behaviour of others. Conversion to minority influence tends to deeper and longer lasting as people have internalised the minority’s viewpoint rather than just trying to fit in.

Types of minority influence

consistency - overtime the consistency in the minorities views increases the amount of interest from other people. This could be consistency within minority group or over time. Synchronic - people saying the same thing within group. Diachronic - They’ve been saying the same thing for some time. For example the suffragettes

Commitment - sometimes minorities engage in quite extreme activities to draw attention to themselves. - It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to demonstrate commitment to the cause - called the augmentation principle. For example hunger strikes from suffragettes

Flexibility- Nemeth 1986 argued that consistency is not the only important factor because it can be interpreted negatively, for example repeating the same arguments could be seen as rigid and inflexible. instead members need adapt their point of view to accept reasonable and valid counter arguments. - originally not all women could vote, only some

Key Terms: synchronic consistency, Diachronic consistency, Augmentation principle

Moscovici

to find out whether consistency in minority is important in minority influence

Lab study

-Female students 172

6 people in each condition 4 naive and 2 confeds

they were asked to name colour of 36 slides, all of which were blue but varied in brightness . confeds named all 36 slides as green

8.42% answered green. 32% incorrect at least once. in control group 0.25% were green

+highly controlled

+lots of PPTs

-artificial situation

-all females, gender bias

-deception

minority influence evaluation

+supporting research from Moscovici, found consistent minority had a greater affect on people than an inconsistent opinion

-however flawed as it was only on females

-research involves artificial tasks

+real world examples

-nameth - while consistency is important, a minority must be flexible and willing to compromise to effectively influence the majority. Her studies, such as the 1986 ski-lift accident simulation, showed that rigid, dogmatic minorities fail, whereas adaptable ones encourage divergent thinking and genuine attitude change

Social change

- occurs when society as a whole adapts new belief or way of behaving which becomes the norm, most major social movements were as a result of minority influence.

Conditions needed for social change via minority influence

Drawing attention to the issue

Consistency

Deeper processing - activism makes people think more deeply about the issue

Augmentation principle - if minority are willing to suffer for their views they are taken more seriously

Snowball effect - minority influence initially has a small effect but this spreads widely until it eventually leads to large scale change

Social cryptonesia - people have a memory change that occurred but don’t remember how it happened. some people have no memory of the events that led to social change but accept that its now different to how it used to be.

Evidence for social change and minority influence

people who started it had a high locus of control - Martin Luther King worked hard to bring change himself

Evidence of consistency - Rosa Parks and MLK consistently fought

Evidence of flexibility - Suffragettes agreed to postpone campaigning in the war to help with war effort.

Evidence of augmentation principle - Rosa Parks got arrested

Evidence of snowball effect - word of mouth about suffragettes protests , or Bus Boycotts as a result from Rosa Parks

evaluation of social change

+Research supporting normative influences - Nolan wanted to see if people could reduce their energy intake, and gave out signs for doors in San Diego. One group were given signs saying they were reducing their intake, whereas the other group were given signs saying to save energy. The first group had a significant decrease in energy use. This shows that NSI can be used to create social change.

• Limitation: Social Barriers and Stereotypes: [Bashir et al. (2013)] suggest people are reluctant to align with environmental activists because they do not want to be associated with negative stereotypes (e.g., "tree huggers"), indicating that social influence is not always effective due to fear of stigma.

• Limitation: Methodological Issues: Research into social influence often uses highly controlled laboratory experiments (e.g., [Moscovici's blue/green slides], [Asch's line study]), which lack ecological validity. Therefore, applying these findings to large-scale, real-world social change is difficult and limited.

• Real-life Application: The role of disobedient models (like [Rosa Parks), as shown in [Milgram's research], highlights that individuals can trigger significant social change by demonstrating non-conformity to existing, unjust norms