Social Influence

Conformity

When a person changes their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour due to implied pressure to align with a group. Usually occours amongst people with equal status

Types of Comformity (Kelman)

• Compliance

• Internalisation

Types of Conformity - Compliance

• Temporary change in public behaviour

• Private attitudes stay the same

• Occours to fit in or avoid conflict

• Only lasts in the presence of a majority group

Types of Conformity - Internalisation

• Permaneny change in public and private attitudes

• Occours because they agree with majority group

• Does not occour easily because it is meaningful change

• Lasts indefinitely because the person actually agrees

Reasons for Conformity (Deutsch and Gerrard)

• Normative social influebce

• Informational social influence

Reasons for Conformity - Normative Social Influence

• When people conform to be liked or accepted by others

• Adopt norms of a group due to worry of social exclusion

• May lead to compliance because it is a short change in a group

Reasons for Conformity - Informational Social Influence

• When people conform because they believe others are right

• Change public/private belief because they are uncertain and assume majority group know better

• Occours in ambiguous situations

• May lead to internalisation from lack of information

Reasons for Conformity Strengths

• Supporting research evidence - Asch (NSI) found conformity due to being self conscious, Jenness (ISI) found conformity believing others to be right

Reasons for Conformity Weaknesses

• Individual difference - McGhee and Teech found high affiliators susceptible to NSI and low affiliators who were more resistant, which is not accounted for

• Overly simplistic - Suggests conformity occours because of one or the other, when both may occour together

Conformity Research

• Jenness - Informational/Internalisation

• Asch - Normative/Compliance

Jenness Procedure

• 101 psych students made private estimations of number of beans in a jar (ambiguous)

• They then discussed and made a group estimation

• They then made a second independent estimate

• Difference between first and second guess recorded

Jenness Findings

• Nearly all participants changed their answer

• Moved closer to group estimate

Jenness Conclusions

• Participants publically and privately agreed with a group - internalisation

• Participants changed answer because they were uncertain and wanted to be right - Informational

Jenness Weaknesses

• Low ecological validity - artificial task, not generaliseable to real life, limited

• Low population validity - Jenness used psychology students who are not representative of the target population, not generaliseable

Asch Procedure

• 132 male students asked to judge which of three lines matched a comparison line

• Judgements were made verbally, real participants went after confederates (actors)

• Clear right answer, but all confederates gave the wrong answer

• Conformity rate recorded

Asch Findings

• 36.8% of the time people conformed

• 5% conformed every time

• 75% conformed at least once

• Interviews conducted afterwards showed they knew they were giving the wrong answer

Asch Conclusions

• Short term change to avoid conflict (compliance)

• Change occoured to be liked or accepted (normative)

Asch Variations

• Group size

• Unanimity

• Task difficulty

Asch Group Size Variation

• Altered number of confereates

• 1 - 3% compliance

• 2 - 13% compliance

• 3 - 31.8% compliance

• 4+ 35% compliance

• Further increase in numbers did not increase rates beyond original study

Asch Unanimity Variation

• Having one supporting confederate

• Lowered compliance to 5.5%

Asch Task Difficulty Variation

• Conformity rates increased with harder tasks

• Went up to 57%

Asch Weaknesses

• Low external validity - artificial task, unrepresentative and not generaliseable

• Low population validity - Only used male American students, women may show different comformity rates, not generaliseable

• Deception - Participants were told it was an investigation into visual perception, being lied to may cause psychological harm

Obedience

When a person changes their attitudes or behaviour due to an explicit order from an authority figure

Milgram Procedure

• 40 male participants were told it was an experiment on memory and learning

• ‘Randomly’ assigned teacher role

• Told to ‘shock’ the confederate for wrong answers, going up in voltage

• Learner gave pre-recorded responses

• Experimenter prompted participant to continue up to 4 times

Milgram Findings

• 65% gave maximum 450V labelled XXX

• 100% gave up to 300V labelled Intense

• Continued to obey despite arguing

Milgram Conclusions

• Showed very strong levels of obedience even against morals

Milgram Strengths

• Reliability - Standardised lab experiment, easy to replicate

Milgram Weaknesses

• Low external validity - Artficial task, not indicative of real world consequence

• Harm - Caused psychological distress on participants

Hofling Procedure

• Nurses in private and public hospitals were phones by an unknown doctor or nurse

• Asked to gve a dangerous dose of an unknown drug

• Broke hospital authorisation rules

Hofling Findings

• 21/22 obeyed the doctor

• 0/22 obeyed the nurse

Hofling Conclusions

• Showed very strong levels of obedience in a real life setting

• Obedience only for authority figure

Hofling Strengths

• External validity - used a real working enviornment, high mundane realism, generaliseable

• Reliability - used a standardised phone call, easy to replicate

Hofling Weaknesses

• Deception - ethical impli