social influence

what is conformity

a change in a persons behaviour due to a real or imagined pressure

what are the types of conformity

• compliance → go along with group in public to fit in and avoid rejection, personal behaviour and opinions dont change (NSI)

• identification → behaviour and private values change only when with the group, as membership is valued

• internalisation → personal opinions genuinely change permanently to match the group (ISI)

explanations for conformity

• informational social influence (ISI) - need to be right, leads to internalisation, occurs in ambiguous situations and is cognitive

• normative social influence (NSI) - need to be liked, leads to compliance, occurs in unambiguous situations and is emotional

AO3 of explanations of conformity

✅research support for ISI - increasing ambiguity increased conformity in Asch’s study, e.g. Lucas found ppt conformed when math questions were harder

✅research support for NSI - Asch interviewed ppt afterwards & ppt said they conformed due to fear of disapproval if they disagreed w majority

❌hard to differentiate between ISI and NSI - individuals may conform to both gain acceptance (NSI) while also believing the group is correct (ISI) - e.g. Asch, ↓ explanatory power

❌individual differences as to why people conform - doesnt take free will into account as it suggests ppl respond automatically to external social pressures, McGhee and Teevan found some people dont conform due to ISI or NSI but because of need for affiliation (to relate to others) → determinist + reductionist

AO1 for Asch’s research

• procedure → 123 college male ppts, groups of 6-8 completed a line judgement task. This was deception as there was only 1 ppt per group and the rest were confederates who gave wrong answer

• results → overall conformity rate (32%), 75% conformed at least once, 25% never conformed and 5% conformed each time

• variations → increased group size between 2-16, conformity increased with group size until 3 confederates to 35%

  unanimity was broken as a dissenting confederate disagreed with majority and gave a different answer, conformity dropped to 5.5% because having a dissenter allowed ppt to act more independently

  task difficulty was made more ambiguous by making line lengths more similar, conformity increased due to ISI

AO3 of Asch’s research

✅lab experiment - high control and internal validity

❌artificial tasks - low mundane realism, demand characteristics, ppt had no reason not to conform, ↓ generalisability Fiske (2014) said Asch’s groups didnt represent real life

❌unethical - deception, meaning ppt cannot give informed consent and may have had negative experience, damaging reputation of psychology & its research

❌not generalisable - androcentric, beta bias (e.g. Neto(1995) suggested women might have more conformity due to social relationships/expectations) & culture biased as collectivist cultures may have higher conformity

what is a social role

a socially defined pattern of behaviour that is expected of someone who occupies a certain role

AO1 of Zimbardo’s SPE

• procedure → fake prison was created in Stanford University. 21 male ppt were selected via volunteer sampling and were deemed mentally stable. Guards and prisoners were randomly allocated to roles and were given uniforms for deindividuation

• findings → ppt quickly adapted to assigned social roles. 1/3 of guards were mean, 1/3 were fair and 1/3 tried to help the prisoners. The prisoners rebelled in 2 days and the guards harassed the prisoners. The prisoners shows signs of stress after rebellion. Study was cancelled 6 out of 14 days into study for fear of prisoners mental health

• conclusion → social roles greatly affect behaviour & situational characteristics increase conformity more than dispositional ones

AO3 for Zimbardo’s SPE

✅highly controlled setup - ppt were deemed as mentally stable & roles were randomly allocated, increased internal validity

✅real world application - help explain incidents of cruelty and abuse in institutional settings as ppt behaved as if the prison was real, 90% of conversations were about prison life

❌unethical - no right to withdraw or protection from harm, damaging reputation of psychology & its research

❌SPE didn’t measure conformity - Banuazizi and Mohavedi (1975) suggested some ppt didn’t genuinely conform e.g. one guard based his role on a character from a movie. shows SPE lacked realism

what is obedience

when someone follows a direct order, usually from an authority figure

AO1 for Milgram’s study

• Milgram wanted to see why German’s followed Hitler’s orders during the Holocaust

• procedure → 40 male ppt were selected via volunteer sampling and were always teacher while confederates were experimenter and learner. Ppts were deceived into thinking it was a memory test and that their role was random. Experimenter wearing lab coat prodded teacher to administer increasingly severe electric shocks (15-450v) if learner got word wrong. In some prompts, at 315v the learner would pretend to be dead

• findings → 65% of ppt went to 450v, 100% went to 300v and 12.5% stopped at 300v

• conclusion → we obey authority even if it causes someone else harm, certain situational factors encourage obedience

what were the variations for Milgram’s study

• proximity → experimenter gave prompts over phone (21%), teacher forced learner’s hand on shock plate (30%), teacher and learner in same room (40%) due to no agentic state

• location → experiment was performed in rundown office instead of Yale, conformity dropped to 47.6% due to lack of legitimacy of authority

• uniform → experimenter replaced by confederate in normal clothes, conformity dropped to 20% due to lack of LOA

AO3 for Milgram’s study

✅lab experiment, high replicability → e.g. in a French TV show, contestants were told to give fake electric shocks to other contestants by host and 80% went to 460V, supporting Milgram’s study

❌lacks generalisability - androcentric, beta bias

❌unethical - Baumrind (1964) said deception, no debrief or right to withdraw meant ppt couldn’t fully give informed consent, damaging reputation of psychology & its research

❌artificial stimuli, low internal validity - Holland(1968) said only half of ppt believed electric shocks were real, /✅however, Sheridan and King’s (1972) ppts gave real fatal shocks to a puppy, 54% of males and 100% of females showing Zimbardo’s results are genuine

AO3 for Milgram’s Variations

✅research support for situational variables → Bickman’s confederates dressed in either a jacket or as a security guard and gave people on the streets orders (e.g. pick up litter) & found people obeyed the security guard more

✅high replicability → Meeus found 90% of Dutch ppt who were ordered to give stressful comments to interviewees obeyed but obedience decreased with proximity → cross cultural validity 

❌Lacks internal validity → Holland said variations were more likely to trigger suspicion so its unclear if results are due to obedience or demand characteristics

❌Deflects responsibility → Mandal (1998) argues the idea of situational variables determining obedience offers an excuse for genocide and oversimplifies Holocaust - “I was just obeying orders” → socially sensitive

Situational explanations for obedience (AO1)

• agentic state

• legitimacy of authority

agentic state (AO1)

• someone feels no personal responsibility for their actions and acts in place of another

• autonomous state → person behaves according to their own principles and feels responsible for their actions

• agentic shift → shift from autonomous state to being an agent, occurs when we perceive someone else as an authority figure due to their role in the social hierarchy

• binding factors → aspects that allow the person to minimise damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce ‘moral strain’ they feel e.g. by shifting responsibility to victim

What is legitimacy of authority

• we obey people further up social hierarchy, e.g. parents, police, teachers as society agrees the power they hold is legitimate

• we give up some independence to those we trust to exercise authority properly, & we learn to do so during childhood

• leaders use legitimate powers for destructive purposes, e.g. Hitler

AO3 for situational explanations for obedience

✅agentic state has research support → Milgram’s ppts asked the ‘experimenter’ who is responsible for the harm of the learner and after ppt learnt the experimenter was responsible they continued the procedure without objecting

❌agentic shift doesnt explain research findings → Rank and Jacobson found nurses disobeyed doctors orders to give excessive drugs, showing nurses remained autonomous which is true for some of Milgram’s ppts, not complete explanation

✅legitimacy of authority explains cultural differences → 16% of Australian women obeyed and 85% of German women obeyed in replica of Milgram’s study, authority is seen as more legitimate in some cultures

❌legitimacy cannot explain all obedience → people disobey when they accept authority as legitimate, nurses and some of Milgrams ppt were disobedient so innate tendencies may be more important than legitimacy of authority

Obedience: Dispositional explanation (AO1)

• Adorno stated high obedience is pathological

• authoritarian personality → obedient from strict parenting, conditional love and harsh punishments, they displace their anger from parents to minority groups

• they have high respect for those with higher social status and are hostile to those of lower status

Outline Adorno’s procedure

• investigated unconscious attitudes of 2000 middle-class white Americans to other ethnic groups

• tested authoritarian personality using F scale with questionnaire containing statements such as ‘obedience and respect to authority are the most important characteristics for a child to learn’

• found → authoritarians identified high on the F scale & had fixed prejudices about other groups of people

AO3 for authoritarian personality

✅evidence that authoritarians are obedient → Milgram interviewed 20 of his obedient ppt and found they scored higher on F scale in comparison to control of 20 disobedient ppt

❌cant explain a whole country’s behaviour → it is unlikely the whole of Germany had an authoritarian personality, they may have identified with the Nazi state, so social identity theory is a better explanation

❌F scale is politically biased → Jahoda suggested it only explains extreme right wing authoritarianism not left, ↓construct validity, not complete explanation

❌social desirability bias → F-scale questionnaire relies on self report, ↓ internal validity as they may change responses to make more socially acceptable, doesn’t reflect true beliefs

what are the explanations to resisting social influence

• Social support

• Locus of control

what is social support

• seeing others resist social influence reduces pressure to obey or conform by increasing person’s confidence

• resistance to conformity → e.g. Asch’s dissenting confederate decreased conformity as majority is no longer unanimous

• resistance to obedience → a disobedient role model challenges the ‘Legitimacy of Authority’ or authority figure and shows the consequences of disobedience

AO3 for social support

✅research support → in variations of Milgram’s study, 2 confederate teachers provided social support where at 210v they refused to obey, dropping obedience rates to 10%, high construct validity

❌doesn’t explain instances where social support doesn’t work → in Asch and Milgram’s variations with social support, some ppt still obey (10%) and conform (5.5%), suggesting there may be dispositional factors like authoritarian personality, not complete explanation

what is locus of control

• Rotter (1966)

• people with an internal locus of control sees themselves as responsible so are more resistant to social influence as they are more confident

• people with external locus of control believe things happen outside their control e.g. due to fate so are less able to resist social influence

AO3 for locus of control

✅research support → Holland(1967) replicated Milgram’s study and assessed ppt’s LOC, & found 37% of ppt with internal LOC refused to continue to highest shock level compared to 23% with external LOC, ↑ construct validity

❌correlation ≠ causation → relationship between LOC and resistance to social influence is correlational, doesn’t take into account other factors associated with social influence like social status, social anxiety and personal morals

what is minority influence

• one person or a small group (that reject majority belief) influences the beliefs and behaviours of other people

• leads to internalisation

what are the 3 processes of minority influence

• consistency → means minority view gains more interest as others rethink their views (deeper processing)

• synchronic consistency → people in minority say the same thing at the same time

• diachronic consistency → people in minority have been saying same thing for a long time

• commitment → helps gain attention through risk to minority via augmentation principle (majority pay even more attention)

• flexibility →minority should adapt their point of view and accept reasonable counterarguments

what is the snowball effect

over time, more people become ‘converted’ to accept minority view, the more this happens, the faster the rate of conversion, so then minority view becomes majority and social change has occurred

AO3 for minority influence

✅research support → Wood et al. did meta analysis on 100 similar studies and found consistent minorities were most influential compared to inconsistency

✅real world examples of minority influence → Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr represented minority but through commitment, flexibility and consistency the end of legal segregation came. ∴ minority influences leads to internalisation, ↑ validity and practical usefulness of the explanation.

❌involves artificial tasks → lab studies investigating minority influence are conducted on artificial groups making decisions w/o real consequences, however minority influence in the real world is often with friends where decisions have real consequences, ↓ ecological validity

❌only explains slow, long-term social change → e.g. ignores rapid changes in attitudes like during COVID-19 where behaviours towards wearing masks or social distancing changes rapidly, not a complete explanation, ↓ explanatory power

what is social change

• when a view held by minority challenges majority but is eventually accepted by majority, then whole societies adopt behaviour

• minority groups are more successful in creating social change when they draw attention, show consistency (causing deeper thinking) commitment and flexibility, leading to augmentation principle, so minority becomes majority due to snowball effect

• leads to social crypto-amnesia → social change comes about but people don’t remember events leading to change

what are lessons from conformity research about social change

• conformity → (NSI/compliance) - behaviours or views become norm in an influential minority group which spreads to wider society, health campaigns exploit conformity by appealing to NSI and stating what others do, e.g. ‘bin it, others do’

• (ISI/internalisation) - members of a minority group can provide info to majority, e.g. effects of climate change, so social change occurs because evidence is accepted

what are lessons from obedience research about social change

• obedience → government (minority group) cause social change by creating laws, social change occurs to avoid punishment

• disobedient models make social change more likely e.g. Milgram’s confederate teacher variation

• gradual commitment leads to drift → once small instruction is obeyed, it’s harder to resist a bigger one

AO3 for social change

✅minority influence explains social change → Nemeth (2009) states minority influence causes people to engage in divergent thinking, leading to better decisions and solutions to social problems, ∴ minorities are valuable as they stimulate open-mindedness

✅RWA → leaders & activists in civil rights movement were successful due to commitment and consistency leading to social change

❌minority influence doesn’t cause deeper thinking → e.g. Mackie(1987) states it applies to majority influence as it creates pressure to think about their views, ↓ construct validity of social change