Social Influence

Conformity
1. Results in exposure to majority position
2. Compliance
  1. Accepting views of majority without agreeing
  2. Result is public compliance with little or no change in private attitude
3. Internalisation
  1. Exposed to views of majority individuals
  2. Encouraged to engage in validation process
  3. Considering own beliefs to see if they or others are correct
  4. Leads to decision that majority were correct
    1. Acceptance of the group
      1. Views changed publicly and privately
4. Identification
  1. People may yield to majority opinion to establish a relationship with group or individual
  2. Adopt attitudes to feel part of the group
  3. Elements of compliance and internalisation
5. Asch's Study
  1. 123 American undergraduates > Showed lines to ppts around the table (1 true ppt) > Ppts answered in same order > confederates instructed to give same
    1. 36.8% responses from true ppts incorrect (conformed) > ¼ never conformed
    2. Compared to control trial where confederates didn’t give wrong answer > found ppts made mistakes 1% of the time
  2. Reasons for Conformity
    1. Distortion of Perception
      1. Small number of ppts see lines same way as majority
    2. Distortion of Judgement
      1. Doubt about accuracy of judgement
    3. Distortion of Action
      1. Ppts pretend to agree with majority to avoid disapproval
        Didn't change private opinion
  3. Evaluation
    1. Validity
      1. Judging lines seen as insignificant task - more willing to conform
      2. Hard to generalise
        All ppts American males
    2. Ethics
      1. Ppts being deceived and gave no informed consent
    3. People more likely to conformed if they know each other
Why do people conform?
1. Normative Social Influence
  1. Wanting to be liked and to be part of the group
  2. Going against majority isn't easy
  3. Evaluation
    1. Garandeau and Cillessen
      1. Groups with low quality interpersonal friendships may be manipulated by skilful bully
        Creates pressure as children in the group don't want to be cast out
  4. Humans are social species
    1. Need for companionship and fear of rejection
2. Informational Social Influence
  1. Wanting to be right
  2. Agreeing because we believe others are correct
    1. Internalisation
  3. Most likely to occur
    1. Situation is ambiguous
    2. Situation is a crisis
    3. Believe others are experts
  4. Evaluation
    1. Witterbrink and Henly
      1. Ppts exposed to negative comparison information about African Americans (believed was view of majority)
        Reported more negative beliefs about black target individual
        Ppts assumed comparison group had more knowledge.
    2. Fein et al
      1. Judgements of candidate performance of US presidential debates > influenced by knowledge than reactions
        Ppts saw reaction of fellow ppts on screen during debate
        Large shifts in ppt judgement of candidates performance.
3. Social Impact Theory
  1. Latane
    1. Number
      1. More people=More influence
      2. Stops at a point
        Asch > conformity up to 3 or 4 confederates, not beyond
    2. Strength
      1. More important people=More influence
    3. Immediacy
      1. More likely to listen to speaker when in small group
  2. Evaluation
    1. Sedikides and Jackson
      1. High strength and immediacy had more impact than low strength and immediacy
Obedience to Authority
1. Obedience
  1. Behaving as instructed
  2. Usually takes place in hierarchy - person issuing the order has higher status
  3. Milgram
    1. Two confederates - one as experimenter and one as learner > Ppt was teacher - 40 male ppts
      1. If learner said incorrect answer they were given an electric shock which increased every time.
        65% ppts went to 450 volts - all went to 300 volts - 5 stopped at 300 volts
    2. Sheridan and King
      1. Hypothesized some of Milgram's subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking
        Repeated the experiment with a puppy who was given real electric shocks
        They found that 20 out of the 26 participants complied to the end
        Six that had refused to comply were all male > 54% of males were obedient - all 13 of the women obeyed to the end.
Why Do People Obey?
1. Gradual Commitment
  1. Ppts give low-level shock – harder to resist requirement to increase shocks.
  2. Ppts found it hard to change their minds about shocks
  3. Foot-in-Door method of persuasion.
2. Agentic Shift
  1. State a person is in when they see themselves acting as a agent for carrying out another person’s wishes
  2. People shift between Agentic State and Autonomous State
    1. Seeing themselves acting on their own accord
  3. Individual no longer sees himself acting on his own accord
3. Role of Buffers
  1. Teacher and learner in different rooms
  2. Teacher protected (buffered) from the victim (learner)
  3. Victim in same room buffering is reduced
  4. Tendency to obey experimenter – less obedience when victim was present.
4. Justifying Obedience
  1. Ppts gave the shocks because science required it.
  2. By offering ideologies people are willing to surrender their freedom believing they are serving a justifiable cause.
5. Evaluation
  1. Monocausal
    1. Mandel
      1. Argued that by focusing on obedience Milgram ignored many other explanations, such as anti-semitism.
  2. Was the agentic shift in Milgram’s experiment as strong as that in the Holocaust?
  3. 'Obedience alibi” act as an excuse for actions rather than a justification
Explanations of independent Behaviour
1. Insights of Asch's Research into Conformity
  1. Social support
    1. Another person giving the same answer is enough to cause conformity levels to plummet.
  2. Allen and Levine
    1. No support
      1. Ppt conformed to majority influence
    2. Social support but of poor quality (invalid)
      1. Supporter had poor eyesight – ppt still conformed less to the majority than when no support.
    3. Social support of good quality (valid)
      1. Supporter had normal eyesight – participant very likely to resist conforming to majority view
  3. Evaluation
    1. Physical Reality – Artificial task meaning levels of conformity increases
    2. Moral Judgement – Conformity as it has an effect on the ppt.
    3. Hornsey et al
      1. Little movement to majority on attitudes that had moral significance for individual even when in involved public behaviours
2. Insights from Milgram’s Research into Obedience
  1. Experiment moved away from Yale University to a downtown office, more people felt able to resist authority - Status is key factor in obedience/resista
  2. Resistance increased when the victim could be seen / when other confederates were present
    1. Shows that awareness of the effects of actions and having social support help increase resistance
  3. Kohlberg
    1. Presented group of Milgram’s ppts with set of imaginary moral dilemmas.
    2. Dilemmas determined not what people would do in situations, but why they would behave that way.
    3. Found those who based decisions on more general moral principles were more defiant in Milgram’s study
    4. Those at more restricted level of moral development obeyed the experimenter completely
3. Locus of Control
  1. High internal locus of control
    1. Person believes behaviour is caused by own personal decisions and efforts. It is within their control
  2. High external locus of control
    1. Person believes behaviour is caused mainly by fate, luck or other circumstances beyond their control
  3. Twenge et al
    1. Meta-analysis – Young Americans believe their lives are controlled by outside forces than own behaviour
    2. Studies found more external locus of control in students and children between 1960 and 2002
    3. Suggests implications are uniformly negative – external negatively correlated with poor school achievement, decreased self-control and depression
Understanding Social Change
1. Social Change
  1. Society adopts new belief or behaviour which becomes accepted as the ‘norm’
  2. Can positive or negative
2. Minority Influence
  1. Form of social influence - people reject the established norm of the majority of group members and move to the position of the minority
3. Moscovici
  1. Minorities are also capable of social change
  2. If individual is exposed to persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change own views to match the minority
  3. Called this “conversion” - a prerequisite of social change
4. Conditions necessary for social change
  1. Drawing attention to an issue
  2. The role of conflict
  3. Consistency
  4. The augmentation principle

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	Created by doyea001 over 11 years ago