social influence

introduction to social influence

Social influence is the influence of a group (majority) or individual (minority or obedience) to change thinking, attitude or behaviour to others.

• Conformity: yielding to group pressure and changing our behaviour, values etc.

  • We are not asked to change our behaviour, but do so to be accepted/liked and fit in with our peers

  • Affects teenagers the most —> music, virginity, crime, drugs etc.

• Obedience: behaving as instructed

  • We are asked to change our behaviour by authority figures, in order to avoid punishments or negative consequences

conformity

types of conformity

• Compliance: conforming to the majority but not necessarily agreeing with them — public compliance with no attitude change. If group pressure removed, conformity ceases (group acceptance)

• Internalisation: no pressure needed as person genuinely believes in the norms of the group. This leads to acceptance of the group’s norms both publicly and privately

• Identification: conforms to social role and accept that what they are adopting is right (internalisation) but purpose of adopting them is to be accepted (compliance). Can value something as a group and want to be apart of it but don’t privately agree — only values internalised/changed.

explanations of conformity

The dual process dependency model (Dutch and Gerard):

• Informational influence

  • People conform because they have the desire to be correct

  • We change our own views if we are uncertain about them and see others as having superior knowledge about it

  • Or that we want to copy to not stand out

  • —> This leads to internalisation. where behaviour and private attitudes BOTH change

• Normative influence

  • People conform because they want to be liked, respected and accepted

  • We change our behaviour to avoid rejection but don’t really believe what we are following, usually linked to thinking we are under supervision

  • This leads to compliance, where behaviour changes but not private opinions and attitudes

ISI research — Jenness:

• Aim: investigate whether individual judgements of jellybeans in a jar was influenced by group discussions

• Procedure: ppts made a private estimate first, then answers were discussed. Overall group estimate was made and then another private estimate. The stooge claimed to know the correct answer to see if people changed towards their answer.

• Findings: second private guess estimates tended to converge towards the group estimate, this was more likely in women

• Conclusion: judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, esp. in unfamiliar situations — supporting ISI

Evaluations:

• High reliability

  • Standardised procedures, everyone saw same jar of beans in the procedures

  • Easily replicable to get same results, reliable

• Unethical

  • Used deception by avoiding telling ppts the true aim of the study to see if they conform

  • No informed consent, breached ethical guidelines

  • However, deception was necessary to avoid demand characteristics

• Scientific

  • Lab setting and control

  • Reliable as it can be easily replicated, extraneous variables controlled

  • However, it is unlike real life which could change how they act

• Acknowledges free will

  • Acknowledges situational factors

  • Suggests exercising personal responsibility for actions

NSI research — Asch:

• Aim: investigate the degree to which ppts would conform to group giving obviously wrong answers

• Procedure:

  • Group of confederates with only one naïve ppt (123 male student volunteers)

  • Asked to say what line was the same length, 12/18 trials the confederates gave the wrong answer and ppt had to give answer last or 2nd to last

  • Control group — 36 ppts tested individually on 20 trials

• Findings:

  • Control group only 0.04% — showed answers were obvious

  • On 12 critical trials, 32% conformity rate

  • 75% conformed at least once

  • 5% conformed to all incorrect answers

• Conclusion: judgements were affected by majority opinions even when answers were obviously wrong

Why did they conform?

1. Most people knew they were giving the wrong answers but didn’t want to stand out: (distortion of action/NSI)

2. Some ppts doubted their judgement so agreed with the majority: (distortion of perception and judgement/ISI)

Variations of Asch’s experiment:

• Task difficulty

  • Asch made more of the lines more similar in length to the matching line, conformity increased as the task got harder

• Size of the group

  • Asch introduced different size group of confederates

    • 1 confederate — low

    • 2 — 13%

    • 3 — 32%

  • Adding more than 3 had no effect on conformity, increases up to an optimal point

• Unanimity

  • Different variations had a different number of confederates going along with wrong answer (dissenters)

  • Breaking unanimity, the conformity will decrease

  • 1 confederate rebelling dropped to 5.5% conformity

Evaluations:

• Gender bias

  • Can’t generalise both genders with results for only males, lacks population validity

• Culture bias

  • Ethnocentric, only Americans used

• Unethical

  • Deception used so ppts wouldn’t know what the aim of the study was

  • However, prevented demand characteristics so was necessary

• Scientific

  • Carried out in a lab with control

  • Therefore, high internal validity and reliability (standardised procedures means easily replicable)

  • However, was not really a real life situation so can’t really be applied to other scenarios, and social dynamics/pressures are not reflected (low ecological validity)

Use of confederates meant original Asch study and replications could have confounded results as some actors could be more believing than others. Mori and Arai’s recreated Asch’s research without using confederates to combat this:

• Aim: investigate degree to which individuals would conform to majority obviously wrong answers on line judgement task without need for confederates

• Procedure: 52 males, 52 females (students) in groups of 4 (same sex) wore filter glasses that meant ppts saw different things, minority ppt wearing glasses that displayed line as longer or shorter went 3rd

  • Similar to Asch — 18 trials with 12 critical trials

• Results: female ppts had similar results to Asch, 28.6% conformity in 12 critical trials, for males, conformity was 5%. Overall, 19.6% conformity rate

  • Mistakes — 8.2% compared to 0.04% in Asch study, indicating task was harder than originally

• Conclusion: judgements of females more effected by majority opinions. If just looking at males to compare with Asch’s original androcentric study, conformity rate is much lower here

Evaluations:

• Internal validity

  • Ppts not knowing the true aim (told glasses reduce glare) means demand characteristics unlikely to occur and confound results

  • Cause and effect relationship establishable between majority answering incorrect and conformity

• Ethics

  • Deception used to avoid revealing the real aim to see if they would conform or not, therefore couldn’t give informed consent so breached ethical guidelines

• Mundane realism

  • Low ecological validity because laboratory has artificial environment, not a realistic test for people in a room wearing sunglasses to be estimating lines so it isn’t a good test of actual conformity in a real life

  • Cannot apply findings to other, more natural settings

Characteristics affecting conformity:

• Cognitive dissonance — internal conflict

• Gender — women conform more. 3 possible explanations:

  • Women are socialised to conform more

  • Women are biologically programmed to conform more due to evolution making them more nurturing and cooperative

  • Most studies are conducted by men using male type tasks which women are less familiar with and created more informational social influence in women

• Mood — conform more if in a good mood as more agreeable, also conform easier due to fear

• Culture — collectivist vs. individualist cultures

  • Berry et al found collective and traditional cultures like Temne more likely to conform to group

zimbardo et al

• Aim: investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guards and prisoner that simulated prison life

  • Reported guard brutality due to sadistic personalities (dispositional factors) or to do with prison environment (situational factors)

• Procedure:

  • 24 male student volunteered, randomly selected as guard or prisoner

    • Paid $15 a day

  • Fake prison in university, given uniform and number to be referred by

  • 23 hours a day in a cell for 2 weeks

  • Guards given uniform, sticks and sunglasses, a shift rota and got to go home

• Findings:

  • Experiment called off after 6 days

  • Guards became so brutal that 2 prisoners had nervous breakdowns with 1 having a rash and 1 went on hunger strike, 1 sent home

  • Prisoners internalised their crimes

  • Guards gave orders, prisoners became apathetic

  • Within hours, guards began to harass prisoners, had lasting consequences

• Conclusion: ppts in authority position acted their role and so did prisoners

Guard brutality may be due to situational factors or adapted roles but could also be demand characteristics (guards told the standard to treat prisoners).

Evaluations:

• Qualitative data

  • Used observations (covert and overt), interviews and questionnaires

• Highly applicable

  • Juveniles no longer housed with adult prisoners before trial due to potential violence, and can help explain prison-based violence and police brutality

• Some control and ecological validity

  • Tightly controlled as ppts were randomly allocated into guards and prisoners, were selected with harsh criteria (e.g mental and physical health) and the prison was extremely realistic (e.g prisoners arrested from their homes by real officers)

• Ethics

  • Consent obtained in advance and ppts told the nature of the research but not told they’d be arrested by real police officers and strip searched

  • Right to withdraw appears dubious, some left but rumours that Zimbardo wasn’t letting people leave

  • Ppts subjected to physical and psychological harm

  • Paid $15 a day, felt they had to complete study

• Lacks realism + demand characteristics

  • Argued that ppts had guessed the purpose of the experiment and acted accordingly (e.g guards acted hostile and domineering etc), lowers ecological validity

obedience

milgram

• Aim: if people would obey the orders of an authority figure agaisnt their moral code

• Method:

  • 40 ppts (male students), drew lots to decide teacher and learner but rigged with ppts always being teacher and confederate as learner

  • Learner taken to a room and had electrode attached, teacher taken to room next door with electric shock generator 15-450 volts and instructed to shock if learner doesn’t remember the right pair of words

  • 180 volts — said he couldn’t take the pain, 300v — begged to be released, 315v — silence

  • Prods if participant didn’t want to continue: ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires you to continue’, ‘it is essential that you continue’, ‘you have no choice but to continue’

• Results: 100% gave 300, 65% gave 450 volts

• Conclusion: ppts would obey orders of an authority figure

Variations of the study:

• Proximity

  • Teacher and learner in same room: obedience fell to 40%

  • Teacher forces learner’s hand onto an electric plate: obedience fell to 30%

  • Experimenter gives instructions over the phone: only 21% continued to maximum voltage, and some gave the weakest shock level while telling experimenter they were increasing voltage

  • —> decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance from their actions, increased proximity equals less obedience

• Location

  • Original study carried out at Yale university which some ppts said gave them confidence in the integrity/legitimacy of the study (they trusted the university and thought that nothing unsafe would be happening)

  • Experiment was replicated in a run-down office: dropped to 48%

• Uniform

  • Original study had experimenter wearing a lab coat (symbol of authority, trustworthiness, legitimacy etc.)

  • Experimenter called away and replaced with confederate wearing normal clothes: obedience rate dropped to 20%

Additional facts:

• Ppts debrief after to assure normal behaviour, questionnaire follow up found 84% were glad to have participated

• Qualitative data was also collected, showing signs of distress/tension like sweating, stuttering, trembling

Evaluations:

• Internal validity

  • Orne and Holland: argued they knew it wasn’t real, though 75% believed it to be in the post-study and their extreme responses were also proof of that

  • Lab experiment with variables controlled

• External validity

  • Androcentric, cannot generalise to females

  • Sheridan and King: asked to shock puppy that makes mistakes to commands, mild (not + by 15v each time) but made them jump and howl. Anaesthetic gas pumped into air to make them unconscious to seem dead

    • 54% males and 100% females obeyed to 450v

  • Culture bias and historical validity

• Ethics

  • Deception

hofling

• Aim: see if nurses would prescript patient’s a drug that went against hospital guidelines because an authority said so

• Procedure: nurse phoned by a doctor she knew worked at the hospital but had never met and was asked to prescribe a patient with a drug dosage too high and without written orders

• Results: 21/22 gave the medication and didn’t question the doctor. In interviews, they said they did this because in the past doctors had become annoyed when they’d questioned them. The 1/22 who didn’t did so because she asked a colleague who thought she shouldn’t

• Conclusion: in real life situations, most people will obey orders given

berger

• Aim: to develop a variation of Milgram’s procedure allowing comparison with original investigation while protecting wellbeing of ppts

• Procedure:

  • Same words, memory test and same lab coat as Milgram

  • No one w/ knowledge of Milgram’s study was used and maximum apparent shock was 150 volts — the level at which the learner cried in pain — in order to protect ppts from intense stress

  • 2-step screening process for ppts was used to exclude any who might react negatively. No one with a history of mental health or stress reactions were accepted

  • Ppts were told 3 times they could withdraw at any time and received only a 15 volt shock as opposed to 45 volts

  • The experimenter was a clinical psychologist who could protect ppts

  • The experimenter was a clinical psychologist who could protect ppts

  • 70 male and female ppts were used

• Results: Berger found obedience rate of 70% with no difference between male/female obedience rates. Another condition where a second defiant confederate was introduced, failed to reduce obedience significantly unlike Milgram’s study

• Conclusion: it is possible to replicate Milgram’s study in a fashion non-harmful to ppts. Obedience rates have not changed dramatically in decades since original study.

• Evaluations:

  • Ethics — effort to improve study can be argued to be ineffective and pose impractical demands. The study highlights the difficulties of extending research in destructive obedience in the context of contemporary ethical guidelines

  • Inconsistent — different procedures used by Milgram and Berger don’t allow for clear comparison of results

  • Generalisability — male and female used to be more representative than original study

explanations of obedience

agency theory — situational explanation

Two states:

• Autonomous state — normal state, conscientious and aware of the consequence of our behaviour

Agentic shift occurs

• Agentic state — under certain circumstances, seeing ourselves as puppets of others and no longer responsible for our actions

Research evidence from Milgram: variations —> telephone orders where authority figure not in the room, obedience dropped to 21%. More proximity = more autonomy, responsible as authority not present

Legitimacy of authority:

• Society gives power to certain people that they are able to exercise over others

Research evidence from Milgram: found some ppts ignored the learner’s distress and focused on the instructions from the authority figure

Situational factors affecting obedience:

• Proximity

  • Closer to consequence (learner): less obedience

  • Further from consequence (experimenter): more obedience

  • Supporting research: teacher + learner 40%, forced hand 30%

• Location

  • Institutionalised settings = highest obedience because they look important

  • Supporting research: at run-down office 47% —> see authority as less legitimate so they felt more responsible in autonomous state

• Uniform

  • Uniform can give perception of added legitimacy to authority figures

  • Supporting research: lab coat 62.5%, normal clothes 5%

  • Bickman: new York, authority asks people to pick up rubbish, give a coin to a stranger or move away from bus stop, 14% obey milkman, 36% obey security guard

authoritarian personality — dispositional explanation

Disposition: focus on internal factors such as personality traits, beliefs and attitudes to explain behaviour

• Authoritarian personality — personality type characterised by strict obedience to conventional values, submission to authority, aggression to lower status individuals or deviants

minority influence

Minority influence — motivates individuals to reject established majority norms and follow the minority

—> conversion process, if minority is committed and consistent then majority scrutinises their message and wants to find out why they hold the different view, then it is internalised and snowball effect occurs.

Factors required:

• Consistency — unchanging views

  • Synchronic: agreement in the group

  • Diachronic: same view over time

• Commitment — consistent and made a sacrifice for the message

  • Augmentation principle

• Flexible: relentless consistency = annoying and off-putting, cooperation and compromising with counter arguments is more persuasive

moscovici — consistency

• Aim: to investigate the effects of a consistent minority on a majority

• Procedure:

  • 2 confederates, 4 genuine participant

  • 36 slides showing different shades of blue, asked to state the colour

  • First part: confederates answer green for every slide —> totally consistent

  • Second part: 24 times green and 12 times blue —> less consistent in their answers

• Findings:

  • Condition 1: 8.42% said green

  • Condition 2: only 1.25% said green

  • 1/3 (32%) judged the slide to be green at least once

• Conclusion: minorities can influence a majority, but not all the time and when they behave in certain ways (e.g consistent + behaviour style)

• Evaluations:

  • Internal validity — lab experiment, cause-effect relationship established

  • External validity — not a real life situation / artificial environment, chances for demand characteristics and less natural behaviour

  • Ethics — deception (though necessary to combat demand characteristics)

nemeth — flexibility

• Aim: to investigate the influence of perceived autonomy and consistency of minority influence

• Procedure:

  • Mock trial, groups of 5 with 1 confederate

  • Had to deliberate the amount of compensation due to a victim of an injury, listened to facts and then made an individual verdict

  • Sat at a table with 4 chairs on sides and 1 at head

  • Condition 1: confederate chooses to sit at head

  • Condition 2: experimenter directs ppts where to sit

  • Confederate —> deviant position, suggested compensation of $3,000 when others were suggesting $10,000-25,000

• Findings:

  • Confederate exerted influence when he was consistent, perceived to be autonomous as he had chosen his seat rather than seated by experimenter

  • When sat at head of table, he was seen as more confident and consistent so a better influence

• Conclusion: seeing someone as more autonomous increases likeliness to be influenced by them

—> practical application to jury room

wendy williams meta analysis

Wendy Williams combined many studies on minority influence to understand what factors make it effective. She found consistency as key factor in minority influence as it was more persuasive — supporting Moscovici’s study.

Consistent minority found to make majority question beliefs and genuinely change them privately, strong evidence for Moscovici and strengthens idea that minority influence is a real psychological effect.

Evaluations: meta analyses can be affected by publication bias, where only studies with positive results are published

independent behaviour

Independent behaviour is behaviour that isn’t altered despite pressures to conform or obey.

Anti-conformity is when someone deliberately goes against others, it is different to independent behaviour which may or may not coincide with others’ behaviour because anti-conformity always goes against others.

• Asch’s independence rate: 25%

• Milgram’s independence rate: 35%

• Hofling’s independence rate: 1/22

LOC on social influence:

• High internals — active seekers of information that is useful to them, rely less on the opinions of others

• High internals are more achievement-orientated and so are more likely to become leaders. Spector found internals are more persuasive and goal-orientated

• High internals are better able to resist coercion from others. The greater the pressure, the greater the difference between internals and externals

Additional:

• Twenge et al (meta-analysis) — Americans becoming more external in student and child sample, negative as external correlated with poor achievement, decreased self control and depression

• Twenge also found people more resistant to obedience, challenging the link between internal LOC and resistance against authority

• Rotter — LOC only significant in novel situations, little influence over behaviour in familiar situations where previous experiences more important, people who obeyed/conformed in past are likely to do so again, even if they have high internal LOC

explanation of independent behaviour — situational

Asch’s variations (conformity):

• Majority strangers

  • Williams and Sogon found less conformity when members of the group are strangers as opposed to friends

• Support from another non-conformist

  • Asch — 5.5%, broken unanimity = other ways to respond and makes individual more confident. Rank and Jacobson — 2/18 conformed

  • Size of majority is reduced

Milgram’s variation (obedience):

• legitimacy of authority/uniform

• Social support

  • Disobedient peer as role model in disobedience, variation w/ ppt + 2 disobedient confederates = 10% conformity

• Proximity

explanation of independent behaviour — dispositional

Locus of control is the perception of personal control an individual feels over their own behaviour.

• High internal control — ‘I control my destiny’

• High external control — ‘others control my destiny’

Evaluations:

• Supporting evidence that ID is influenced by dispositional factors

  • Research support for idea that internal LOC are less likely to conform. Spector found that individuals with high internal LOC were less likely to conform than those with high external but only in situations of normative social influence. LOC is related to NSI but not ISI

• More convincing evidence that internal LOC encourages independent behaviour

  • Blass — meta-analysis of a number of variations of Milgram’s study and found ppts with an internal LOC more likely to act independently. However, to be noted that it was difficult to make clear conclusions because research evidence was mixed and LOC can’t be concluded to be the ONLY factor causing resistance

  • Holland — reported Milgram’s baseline experiment. 37% of internals and 23% of externals did not continue and internals showed greater resistance to authority adding validity to LOC explanation

• Dispositional account accused of providing too simplistic of an explanation

  • Situational factors in obedience and conformity not considered, this means explanation is reductionist

other factors affecting independent behaviour

Systematic processing: less likely to obey orders that have negative outcomes if given time to consider the consequences.

• Martin et al — when ppts allowed to consider the content of the unreasonable order, less likely to obey

• Taylor et al — disobedience increased when ppts encouraged to question the motives of authority

Morality: individuals who make decisions on whether or not to obey based on moral considerations are more resistant to obedience.

• Milgram — 1 ppt who did not fully obey stated that he was a vicar and his disobedience to the task was due to ‘obeying a higher authority’

• Kohlberg — gave moral dilemmas to ppts from Milgram study, finding those who based decisions on moral principles were less obedient

Personality: individuals who empathise with the feelings of others more able to resist orders with destructive consequences

• Oliner + Oliner — 406 people who sheltered Jews in Nazi Europe compared to sample of 126 who didn’t. Found that those rescuing Jews had upbringings that stressed helping others and emphasised empathy

social change

Social change is when a society adopts a new belief that becomes a new social norm. Minority influence is the main driving force —> majority —>new norm

• Positive social change: Mahatma Gandhi’s dissent on the British salt tax in India started widespread social reform

• Negative social change: Nazi extermination of Jews

Social crypt amnesia happens when people adopt belief and then forget original source of that idea/how change occured

Martin, Hewstone and Martin:

• Aim: investigate whether attitudes changed through minority influence are more resistant to counter-persuasion than those changed through majority influence

• Procedure:

  • Ppts exposed to initial persuasive message, attributed to minority or majority source

  • Ppts attitudes were measured

  • They were exposed to counter-persuasive message arguing opposite view

  • Ppts attitudes were measured again

• Findings: key findings was that attitudes changed through minority influence were more resistant to change when faced w/ counter, compared to attitudes changed by majority influence

• Conclusion: suggests minority influence leads to deeper, more systematic processing of the message, resulting in stronger, more enduring attitude change that is less easily swayed by opposing arguments

Evaluation:

• Limitation

  • Methodological issues with research like Asch, Milgram can be criticised on basis of low generalisability, demand char., gender bias etc.

  • Doubts on validity of some processes involved in social influence and change due to research informing these theories, undermines link between social influence processes and social change