Resistance to social influence

Social influence can have negative effects like obeying an authority figure who is asking you to do something immoral. Sometimes individuals may choose to assert their own free will and resist social influence. Resisting conformity is non-conformism and resisting obedience is disobedience.

Explanations of resistance to social influence

Social support: having another person on your side greatly increases non-conformism and disobedience

• Conformity - Asch observed that participants conformity declined from 32% to 5.5% when one of the confederates went against the group and said the correct answer. Having someone break the unanimity provided social support for the participant to give the answer he really thought

• Obedience - In a variation of Milgram’s experiments participants took part in the experiment with two other confederate teachers. When the other teachers refused to administer any more electric shocks and left the study participant obedience dropped from 65% to 10%

Locus of control: Rotter (1966) developed a scale to measure the extent to which individuals believed they are in control of their own life

• Internal locus of control - the person believes their own choices shape their life

• External locus of control - the person believes their life is controlled by things outside their control

Whether a person has an internal or external locus of control may affect their level of conformity and obedience

• Conformity - a meta-analysis by Avtgis (1998) found that people with an internal locus of control are less likely to conform to group influences than people with an external locus of control

• Obedience - research is more mixed but leans in the direction of also suggesting that those with an internal locus of control are less likely to obey an authority figure. This may be because they feel they have control over their actions and thus able to resist the influence of an authority

Other factors affecting resistance to social influence

• Resistance to conformity

  • Status - people with low status within a group may be motivated to conform in order to gain status

  • Ironic deviance - if a person feels that the group consensus has been artificially manufactured they are less likely to conform to it. Conway and Shaller (2005) describe how an office worker who sees his colleagues all using a particular software programme may infer that it is good and conform but if he knows they are all using it because the boss told them to he may be less likely to conform because he will not perceive the consensus as genuine

• Resistance to obedience

  • Systematic processing - if people are given the opportunity to think through their actions systematically they may be more likely to disobey unreasonable orders

  • Moral beliefs - people who base decisions on moral principles may be less likely to obey immoral orders. Milgram described how one of the participants disobeyed the experimenter because he was “obeying a higher authority”. This is further supported by Kohlberg who tested participants from Milgram’s studies and found those who based decisions on moral principles were less likely to obey

  • Reactance - if people feel an authority figure is restricting their free will they may deliberately go against the authority figure to reassert their free will