social influence

Conformity

Changing our beliefs or behaviour to match those of a group, due to real or imagined group pressure.

Compliance (3 points)

• Agrees with the group publicly but privately they disagree

• It’s used to fit in and avoid rejection and conflict

• Temporary

Identification

• agree with the group publicly and somewhat internally

• Want to be associated with the group

• Beliefs/ behaviours only last as long as they are in the group

Internalisation

• accept the groups beliefs as their own both publicly and privately

• Desire to be right/ true change in beliefs

• The change in beliefs is permanent

Explanations of conformity

• Normative social influence

• Informational social influence

Normative social influence

• need to be liked

• avoids social rejection, wants to fit in And gain approval

• Emotional (need for social belonging)

• Compliance

Normative social influence is more likely when ?

• peer pressure or fear of embarrassment

• The individual is insecure

• The group is important to the individual

Informational social influence

• the need to be right

• Conforming due to a lack of knowledge

• Cognitive (believe others will know better)

• Leads to internalisation

When does informational social influence take place?

• task is ambiguous or difficult

• The situation is new/ unfamiliar

• Believe others will know people are experts or know better

Evaluations of conformity (2 studies)

Jenness 1932

• 101 psychology students

• Jar of white beans

• Individual guess, group discussion, another private guess.

• Example of informational social influence

Asch 1951

• 123 American, male, college students

• Told it was a study of visual perception (matching target line to comparison lines)

• Group of confederates with 1 participant

• Confederates give 12/18 wrong answers

• Participant answers last or second to last

• 75% of pts conformed at least 1 time

• Conformed on 32% of critical trials

• Normative social influence

*but it is simple and artificial, lack of mundane realism

And population bias (not generalisable)

And limited by cultural context (individualist culture)

Social roles

The patterns of behaviours expected of specific positions or social contexts

Zimbardos stanford prison experiment - Ao1

• 24 American, male, college students

• Volunteer sample

• Randomly allocated the role of prisoner or guard

• Guards wore khaki uniform, reflective sunglasses and a whistle

• Zimbardo played the role of superintendent

• Took place in the basement of the psychology department

• Pts were aware that they were taking part in a psychological experiment

• Aimed to last 2 weeks (lasted 6 days)

Stanford prison experiment - A02

• prisoners rebelled on day 2 by shouting at the guards and barricading their doors.

• Guards retaliated with harsher punishments, revoking privileges and and tightening control

• Prisoner resistance faded and they became more subdued and passive

• One participant went on hunger strike but the other prisoners did not support him.

• 5 prisoners had the leave early due to servers emotional breakdowns.

Stanford prison experiment - evaluation AO3

Strengths

• highly controlled - no extraneous variables

• Pts were psychologically assessed before to rule out individual differences

• Random allocation of roles meant that it could be deemed that the behaviour was due to the roles and not their personalities

Weaknesses

• lack of generalisability - pts all male college students and chose to do the experiment

• Demand characteristics - aware of the experiments purpose

• Researcher bias - zimbardo was superintendent and could have acted in a bias manner in order to get the results he wanted to find

Milgrams obedience research 1963

• 40 men aged 20-50 from the local area

• Volunteer sample

• Upon arrival they met another “participant” and each drew a piece of paper which determined who would be the teacher or the learner (rigged)- real pts is always the teacher

• If the learner gave and incorrect response to the memory test then the teacher had to shock them

• The voltage went incrementally all the way up to 450 volts.

• If the teacher hesitated, then the experimenter had been given a series of prompts to motivate the participant:

  “please continue”

  “the experiment requires that you continue”

  “you have no choice, you must go on”

• 100% of pts went to 300 volts

• 65% went all the way to 450v

Milgrams variations

Proximity

• the teacher and learner were placed in the same room - obedience dropped to 40%

Remote authority

• the experimenter gave orders over the phone - obedience dropped to 20.5%

Location

• moved the experiment to a rundown office block - obedience dropped to 48%

Uniform

• instead of wearing lab coats, the experimenter wore everyday clothes - obedience dropped to 20%

Evaluation of Milgram

Strength

• highly controlled - conducted in a lab setting (easily replicated, allowing reliability to be assessed), can control extraneous variables.

• Participants were fully debriefed after the fact and were reassured

• Follow up study a year after showed no long lasting psychological harm on the participants (84% of pts said they were glad to have taken part)

weakness

• Ethical issues - deception, as pts were misled about the purpose of the study, they thought they were administering real electric shocks.

• Protection from harm - psychological impact on pts as they believed they were harming a real person.

• Ecological validity - tasks did not reflect real life situations of obedience, set up displayed almost military obedience which may limit how applicable the findings are to everyday social contexts

• Population validity - all male, all American and all volunteers

Situational variables

External factors or aspects of the environment which influence the level of obedience shown by an individual

External factors

Proximity

Location

Uniform

Bickman 1974

• members of the public are asked to either pick up a paper bag, pay for a strangers parking meter or move away from a bus stop

• 3 male actors dressed as either a milkman, security guard or a normal civilian

• Obedience rates were :

  milkman - 47%

  security guard - 76%

  civilian - 30%

Evaluation of Bickman

Strength

• ecological validity - took place in the streets of New York (field experiment)

  Weakness

• Cultural differences - obedience isn’t universal , it’s shaped by culture - kilham and Mann 1974, recreated Milgrams experiment in Australia and found obedience rates of just 16% compared to Milgrams 65%

Legitimacy of authority

We are more likely to obey someone if we recognise them as having a legitimate right to tell us what to do

agentic state

We act as an agent of someone else who we deem the authority and shift responsibility onto them.

Autonomous state

We are responsible for our own actions

Agentic shift

The shift from an autonomous state to an agentic state when we deem some one as a legitimate authority figure

Binding factors

The reasons or pressures that make it difficult for individuals to stop obeying an authority figure

Examples of binding factors

• Fear of disrupting social order

• Fear of punishment or negative judgment

• Gradual escalation

Holfling et al (legitimate authority study)

Tested whether nurses would obey an order to administer a potentially harmful dose of medication if told over the phone by a doctor.

21/22 nurses obeyed

Limitation of the agentic state explanation

• ignores dispositional factors such as individuals personality traits

• According to Adornos personality theory internal traits can affect obedience

• Agentic state is Based on situational factors which alter one’s behaviour from authoritarian to agentic

Authoritarian personality

• an explanation of obedience which focuses on how certain personality traits make some people more likely to obey authority figures

Authoritarian personality traits

• highly respectful and submissive towards authority figures

• Harsh, hostile or prejudiced towards those they see as lower in status

• Dogmatic - see the world in black and white

• Value traditions, order and discipline above all else (rigid and conformist)

Adornos theory of authoritarian personality

authoritarian personalities grow up with parents who:

• set impossible standards

• Are critical of failure

• Offer conditional love

• Strict and controlling

• Demand absolute loyalty

This creates a deep inner conflict