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

❌individual differences as to why people conform - doesnt take free will into account, McGhee and Teevan found some people dont conform due to ISI or NSI but because of need for affiliation (to relate to others)

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

❌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

❌SPE didnt measure conformity - Banuazizi and Mohavedi (1975) suggested some ppt didnt 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 via phonecall, obedience dropped to 21% 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”

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’

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

• 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 state 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 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

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 biased → Jahoda suggested it only explains extreme right wing authoritarianism not left, so its not a complete explanation