Social Psych Final

Social Influence

• efforts by one or more individuals to change the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, or behaviors of one or more others

  • Attitude Change = Persuasion

  • direct effort to change behavior of others = Compliance

  • changes in behavior, primarily due to rules = Conformity

  • changes in behavior due to commands = obeisance

Types of Social Influence

• Normative Social Influence:

  • based on the desire to be liked or accepted by others

  • conformist to norms helps to receive approval through behavior that is similar to others

• Informational Social Influence:

  • based on the desire to be correct & posses accurate perceptions of the social world

  • actions + opinions of others create a guide for our own behavior

  • when situations create uncertainty about how to act, informational social influence proves to be a strong motivator for conformity

• Minority Influence

Milgrams Experiment in Obedience

• wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in WWII

• 65% of participants (2/3s) continued to the highest level of 450 volts

• all participants continued to 300 volts

• milligram carried out 18 versions of his study altering the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV)

Stanford Prison Effect Experiment

• findings point to the conclusion that compliance with norms can lead to negative conclusions