Social influence
Conformity:
Asch’s study on conformity - lab experiment - NAMED STUDY
Aim: to investigate group pressure in an unambiguous situation
Method:
participants were asked to identify which line was closest in length to a target line
confederates gave the wrong answer
123 American men
12 critical trials
Results:
participants gave the wrong answer 1/3 of the time
25% never gave the wrong answer
Conclusion:
people are influenced by group pressure
some can resist
Evaluation:
Weakness - only reflective of 1950s America - much less conformity in 1980s UK study - can’t be generalised everywhere
Weakness - trivial task - artificial task and situation involved strangers - not representative of everyday life
Weakness - doesn’t apply to all cultures - results are not the same in individualist and collectivist cultures and study only contained a limited sample of participants - can’t be generalised to different cultures
Social factors affecting conformity: (situational factors)
Group size: conformity increases from 2 to 3 confederates - more than 3 makes no difference
Evaluation: depends on task - when answer is not obvious/ambigous, no conformity until group is 8+ people
Anonymity: if answer is anonymously given conformity decreases
Evaluation: if participants are friends, conformity is higher
Task difficulty: more difficult task = more conformity (if comparison lines are more similar to target line, conformity increases)
Evaluation: experts less affected by task difficulty
Dispositional factors affecting conformity: (personal factors)
Personality: high internal locus of control = less conformity (people more likely to go with their own opinion)
Evaluation: less important in familiar situations
Expertise: people with specific knowledge or skills conform less
Evaluation: experts sometimes conform in order to be liked (eg. maths experts may conform even if they know the answer is wrong in order to be liked)
Obedience:
Milgram’s study on obedience
Aim: to investigate if Germans in WW2 were different in terms of obedience
Method:
teacher (participant) instructed to give electric shock to learner if they got a question wrong
Results:
extreme tension - 3 had seizures
no one stopped below 300 volts
more than half (65%) went up to maximum (450 volts)
Conclusion: obedience related to social factors (not disposition)
Evaluation: (don’t need to know in detail)
ethical issues
supported by other research
participants may not have believed shocks were real
Social factors that affect obedience: Milgram’s agency theory
Milgram’s agency theory - In the presence of someone who is perceived as being in authority, people experience an agentic shift from an autonomous state to an agentic state.
agentic shift - autonomous state → agentic state
autonomous state - own free choice
agentic state - follow orders with no responsibility (under the influence of authority)
cultural influence - we are socialised into believing that some people have more authority than others, depending on society and socialisation
proximity - participants in Milgram’s study were less obedient when in the same room as the learner, increasing moral strain
Evaluation:
weakness - doesn’t explain all of the findings - can’t explain why there wasn’t 100% obedience in Milgram’s study - dispositional factors must also play a role
strength - supported by research - people blamed the experimenter rather than the participants in Milgram’s study
weakness - offers an excuse for dangerous behaviour - can be used to excuse the behaviour of Germans under the Nazis
Dispositional factors that affect obedience: Adorno’s theory of the authoritarian personality
strong respect for authority and look down on people of lower social status
rigid cognitive style
do not like change
originates in childhood from strict parenting and conditional love
displaced anger at parents onto people who they see as socially inferior
Evaluation:
weakness - measured using the F scale - response bias -decreases validity
weakness - results are only correlational - does not mean causation - authoritarian personality may not cause obedience
weakness - social factors also apply - Germans were obedient in WW2 but did not all have the same upbringing - decreases validity
Prosocial behaviour:
Piliavin’s subway study on prosocial behaviour - field experiment - NAMED STUDY
Aim: to investigate bystander behaviour - whether characteristics of a victim affect whether or not help is given
Method:
103 trials
male confederate collapsed on a subway in new york
victim appeared either drunk or disabled (with a cane)
another confederate acted as a ‘model’ if no one else helped
Results: disabled victim given help 95% of the time, drunk victim given help 50% of the time. Help was equally likely in crowded and empty carriages.
Conclusion: characteristics of the victim do affect whether help is given. Not affected by number of onlookers.
Evaluation:
strength - took place in a natural setting - participants didn’t know they were being studied so more likely to act naturally - high realism
weakness - limited sample - all participants were from the city so may have been more used to emergencies - not generalisable
strength - produced quantitative data - observers noted remarks made by passengers - gives deeper insight
Social factors affecting prosocial behaviour:
Presence of others: the more people there are, the less likely someone will help
Evaluation: depends on situation - in serious situations likelihood of help correlated to severity of emergency
Cost of helping: the higher the cost of helping, the less likely people will help
(eg. danger to self/embarrassment, also cost of not helping, eg. guilt/blame)
Evaluation: interpretation of situation differs - eg. people less likely to intervene when a married couple was arguing than when they appeared to be strangers
Dispositional factors affecting prosocial behaviour:
Similarity to victim: help more likely if the victim is similar to self
Evaluation: help not always dependent on similarity (eg. in ambiguous/high cost situations)
Expertise: experts more likely to help (eg. nurse in a medical emergency)
Evaluation: may only affect quality of help given (not always shown to affect likelihood, eg. red cross trained people just as likely to help but gave better quality help when they did)
Crowd and collective behaviour:
Reicher’s case study: St Paul’s riot
Aim: to see if crowd behaviour is ruly or unruly
Method:
studied TV/news reports about the riot
interviewed 20 people
Results:
riots triggered by police raiding cafe which community felt was unjust
crowd threw bricks and burnt police cars
calmed when police left
Conclusion: damage was rule driven and targeted at police, reflecting the attitude of the area
Evaluation: (don’t need to know in detail)
may be biased as based on eyewitness testimonies
Social factors that affect crowd and collective behaviour:
Deindividuation: group norms determine crowd behaviour - people lose their individual identity
Evaluation: crowding may also influence behaviour - unpleasant experience - may explain antisocial behaviour
Social loafing: people put in less effort when working in a group because you can’t identify individual effort
Evaluation: depends on the task - people put in more effort when brainstorming in groups
Culture: collectivist cultures put in the same amount of effort whether in groups or not (eg. China) - not true of individualist cultures (eg. USA)
Evaluation: overgeneralised - some people belong to more than one culture - hard to make predictions
Dispositional factors that affect crowd and collective behaviour:
Personality: people with a high locus of control are less influenced by group behaviour
Evaluation: makes no difference when whistleblowing
Morality: strong sense of right and wrong (morals) helps to resist group pressure
Evaluation: backed up by real examples - eg. Sophie Scholl not following Nazis
Zimbardo’s study on deindividuation: (anonymous electric shock study)
Aim: to study the effects of deindividuation
Method:
female participants told to deliver fake electric shocks
individuated group wore normal clothes
deindividuated group wore coat & hood
Results: deindividuated participants more likely to shock and held the shock button down twice as long
Conclusion: anonymity increases aggression
Evaluation: (don’t need to know in detail)
real world application - managing sports crowds with TV screens
prosocial group norm (eg. nurses) encourages prosocial behaviour - does not always lead to antisocial behaviour, depending on group