AQA Psychology notes on Social Influence (Explanations for conformity)
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Course
Social Influence
Institution
AQA
These notes include content from AQA A-level Psychology and focus on 'Explanations for conformity'. It covers all AO1 content, as well as evaluations (AO3) and application (AO2). The main points include why people conform : informational social influence + normative social influence. I have made no...
Paper 1 - SOCIAL INFLUENCE
Explanations for Conformity
What do I need to know?
What is informational social influence?
What is normative social influence?
How can each explanation be evaluated?
Notes
Informational Social Influence:
- Believe the group is correct, and they want to be correct too.
- Can lead to internalisation
- Cognitive process (changing the way we think) - permanent.
- When might it happen ? -
● Situations that are new to a person
● In crisis situations
● Group is regarded as being experts
Normative Social Influence:
- Fear of rejection
- Gain social approval / be liked
- Public but not private agreement (compliance)
Emotional process - temporary
- When might it happen?
● Situations with strangers (fear of rejection)
● Also occurs with people you know ( social approval of friends)
Use the research to complete the 4 PEEs
A strength of ISI is that there is research support. Lucas et al (2006) asked students to
give answers to maths problems that were easy or difficult. They found greater conformity to
incorrect answers when they were difficult, rather than easy (especially for students who
rated their mathematical ability as poor). This shows that people conform in situations where
they don’t know the answer, which is exactly the outcome predicted by the ISI explanation.
A strength of NSI is that there is research support. Asch (1951) found that many of his
participants went along with a clearly wrong answer just because other people did. When
asked why they did this in post-study interviews; participants said that they knew that their
answers were wrong, but they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer and were afraid
of rejection.
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