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Summary Paper One - AQA Psychology
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Social InfluenceConformity and Asch
WHAT IS CONFORMITY?
Conformity is giving in to social or group pressure.
TYPES OF CONFORMITY
Compliance - Individuals publicly go along with the majority view but privately disagree with it making
it a temporary type of conformity.
Identification - Individuals adopt the behaviour of the group because they value the group and its
membership. Individuals may not agree with everything the group stands for and conformity will last
as long as the group membership exists.
Internalisation - Individuals take on the expressed view both publicly and privately as they believe it is
correct. These individuals would experience a permanent change in behaviour.
DEAUTSCH AND GERARD - EXPLANATIONS FOR CONFORMITY
Informational Social Influence - A person conforms because they have a desire to be right and look to
others who they believe may have more information
Normative Social Influence - A person conforms to fit in with the group because they do not want to
appear foolish or left out. NSI is associated with compliance as an individual will change their public
behaviour but not their private beliefs. This occurs when a person is unsure of a situation or lacks
knowledge and is associated with internalisation.
ASCH
Aim - To investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was
obvious.
Sample - 123 American male student volunteers.
Procedure - A participant was seated 6th in a row of 7 seats amongst confederates. The goal of the
study was to examine perceptual judgments and the participants were instructed to pick which of 3
lines “matched” a standard line. The participant could see that one of the lines was obviously a match,
the others obviously wrong. In 12 out of the 18 critical studies the confederates were told to give the
wrong answer. In 6 trials they gave the wrong answer of a longer line and in 6 trials a wrong short line
was identified. The participant was seated second to last so listened to the same wrong answer
before giving theirs.
Findings -
The overall conformity rate to wrong answers was 32%.
5% of participants conformed on every critical trial.
25% remained independent and gave the correct answer on all 12 trials.
75% of participants conformed to at least one answer.
ASCH EVALUATION
Based on an artificial task - lacks ecological validity and mundane realism - lacks significance to real
life scenarios
Uses only male participants - androcentric - lacks population validity
Experiment is highly controlled - increases validity
Iconic piece of research that has been repeated and triggered research in other areas
ASCH FURTHER TRIALS
In further trials, Asch changed the procedure to investigate which situational factors influenced the
level of conformity.
,Group Size - The bigger the majority group (confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to
a certain point. With one confederate in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to
13%, and with three or more it was 32% (or 1/3). However, conformity did not increase much after the
group size was about 4/5.
Group Unanimity - A person is more likely to conform when all members of the group agree and give
the same answer. When one other person in the group gave a different answer from the others, and
the group answer was not unanimous, conformity dropped.
Task Difficulty - When the lines were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct
answer and conformity increased. When people are uncertain they look to others for confirmation
meaning the more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.
Answer in Private - When participants were allowed to answer in private conformity decreases. This is
because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful.
Conformity to Social Roles and Zimbardo
SOCIAL ROLES
When an individual adopts a certain social role (e.g. mother or teacher) they have to fulfil specific
expectations and norms associated with that role.
ZIMBARDO
Aim - to investigate how readily people would conform to the social roles of guard and prisoner in a
role-playing exercise that simulated prison life.
Sample - 75 male university students responded to a newspaper advert that offered $15 a day to take
part in an experiment. 21 students were picked (the most mentally and physically stable – 10 guards
and 11 prisoners).
Procedure - The 21 students were randomly allocated to their role as prisoner or guard and Zimbardo
played the role of superintendent. The prisoners were dehumanised, deloused, fingerprinted and
stripped. Prisoners were given uniforms that were bleak, whilst guards were given a superior uniform
with sunglasses and handcuffs. 9 prisoners were placed 3 to a cell and the study was planned to run
for 2 weeks, but was eventually cut short.
Results -
The groups settled quickly to roles and an early prisoner revolution was crushed and the guards
consolidated their power by using severe punishments.
The prisoners failed to seriously question the guard’s motives and delegation of tasks, suggesting
they were conforming to their given social roles.
One prisoner was withdrawn after 36 hours due to uncontrollable crying and rage, three more
prisoners experienced the same symptoms in the following days.
The study was stopped after 6 days after Zimbardo was shown the extent of the damage by a visiting
psychologist.
Both the prisoners and guards expressed surprise at how they acted in the experiment.
ZIMBARDO EVALUATION
Ethical issues led to the implementation of ethical guidelines
Demand characteristics - guards claimed they were simply acting - cannot generalise to real life - low
ecological validity
Carried out in America on male American students - androcentric - population validity
Participants were not protected from harm - may have caused long lasting issues - lacks significance
because participants were treated unfairly.
,Obedience and Milgram
AGENTIC STATE - PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS
This is the proposal that people obey because when they are given a command by an authority figure,
they ‘switch into’ a different state where they no longer feel personally responsible for their actions.
Because of this they see themselves as an agent of the authority figure. Individuals would experience
an obedience alibi whereby they give up their free will and no longer see themselves as acting
independently but rather as an instrument for authority. Milgram suggests that someone in an agentic
state will experience moral strain (feeling uncomfortable as a consequence of going against your own
conscience) which may lead to repression and denial.
AGENTIC STATE EVALUATIONS
Socially sensitive - suggests that humans do not have free will - may be disregarded by society
despite the fact it may be valid.
Research support - Milgram - increased scientific support - increases credibility.
LEGITIMACY OF AUTHORITY - PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS
This is the proposal that if people perceive an authority figure to have the power to tell them what to
do, they are more likely to obey them. Authority figures may be recognised by what they look like
(scruffy or smart), how they behave (confident or unconfident) and symbols of authority (uniform or
name badge). It is argued that people are socialised to recognise authority figures because they trust
them or because they have the power to punish.
LEGITIMACY OF AUTHORITY EVALUATIONS
Face validity - makes logical sense that we obey authority figures - clear real life examples (high-vis
jackets) - improves the significance of the theory.
Research support - Milgram - high degree of obedience due to Milgram’s careful presentation of a
supremely authoritative figure - increased validity due to strong level of support.
SITUATIONAL EXPLANATIONS
Authority Figure Wearing a Uniform - Milgram’s experimenter wore a laboratory coat, which gave him
a high status, but when the experimenter dressed in everyday clothes, obedience was very low.
Status of location - Milgram's experiment was conducted at Yale, a prestigious university in America.
The high status of the university gave the study credibility and respect in the eyes of the participants,
thus making them more likely to obey but when Milgram moved his experiment to a set of run-down
offices, obedience dropped to 47.5%.
Proximity of Authority Figure - In Milgram's study the experimenter was in the same room as the
participant. If the authority figure is distant it is easier to resist their orders. When the experimenter
instructed and prompted the teacher by telephone from another room, obedience fell to 20.5%. Many
participants cheated and missed out shocks or gave less voltage than ordered to by the experimenter.
AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY - DISPOSITIONAL EXPLANATIONS
This theory suggests that people are more likely to obey if they have a more obedient personality.
Adorno proposed that people with an authoritarian personality are more obedient as they have more
respect for order and hierarchy. Fromm developed a questionnaire called the F-scale that asks
respondents a variety of questions about their attitudes towards authority figures. The higher the
score on this questionnaire, the more likely they are to be obedient.
EVALUATION OF AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Only a correlation between strict parenting and obedience - no causation can be established - lowers
validity - further research needs to be done to establish cause and effect.
, Effectively explains individual differences in obedience - suggests that situational explanations are
ineffective - seen in Milgram that when the environment was standardised, some people still
disobeyed.
The measurement of authoritarian personality may be biassed - people may show social desirability
bias in questionnaires - lowers the validity - not a significant judgement.
MILGRAM
Aim - To test the ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis which suggested Germans, by their very nature,
were an obedient nation that complied with Hitler and his desires of the Final Solution.
Sample - 40 American males aged between 20-50 recruited via volunteer sampling and told to go to
Yale university.
Procedure - Participants were met by the experimenter and ‘Mr Wallace’ (the learner). Both
individuals were ‘randomly’ assigned to a role but this was rigged so that the participant was always
the teacher. The participant and the experimenter attached Mr Wallace to the equipment and the
participant sampled a 45v shock to authenticate the shocking machine. In an adjoining room, the
participant asked Mr Wallace a question and had to shock him if he answered incorrectly. The shocks
started at 15v and went up incrementally in 15v until 450v (marked XXX on the machine). At 150v, Mr
Wallace would protest and demand to be released. At 300v he refused to answer any more questions.
At 315v he screamed loudly and from 330v he was silent. Every time the participant attempted to
leave, he was told one of four ‘prods’ by the experimenter that were designed to persuade him to
continue shocking.
Findings -
65% went to 450v before stopping and were regarded as ‘obedient’ individuals.
35% were regarded as ‘disobedient’ regardless of whether they stopped at 300v or 435v.
Every participant went to 300v (a potentially deadly amount).
Participants showed visible signs of stress- twitching, sweating and nervous laughter.
Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, one was allowed to have the experiment stopped.
MILGRAM EVALUATIONS
Artificial environment - carried out in a lab - lacks ecological validity - results cannot be generalised.
Gender bias - androcentric - unable to generalise results to females.
Standardised procedure - highly controlled lab experiment - improves reliability - establishes causal
relationships.
Ethical issues - no protection from harm - experiment may be disregarded for ethical reasons.
Resistance to Social Influence
SOCIAL SUPPORT - SITUATIONAL FACTORS
The presence of others who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others do the same. These
dissenters act as models to show others that resistance to social influence is possible. For example,
in one of Asch’s variations, he showed that the presence of a dissident led to a decrease in the
conformity levels of participants as it appeared this gave them social support and made them feel
more confident in their decision.
LOCUS OF CONTROL - DISPOSITIONAL FACTORS
Rotter argued that individuals can either have a high internal locus of control (believing they are
responsible for what happens to them due to their own choices and decisions) or a high external locus
of control (believing that what happens to them is due to luck or fate). Rotter suggests that having a
high internal locus of control makes people more resistant to social influence as they believe they are
in control of situations and perceive themselves as being able to make their own decisions.
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