A complete and detailed revision summary for the social Influence topic including AO1 and AO3 points for all parts of the specification. Created for use with AQA A-Level Psychology Specification
Notes are concise and colourful to aid revision and secure top grades in exams!
Social Influence
the way peoples’ thoughts, feelings and behaviours are affected by
Social Influence
other people
The tendency to change what we do think or say in response to the
Conformity
influence of real or imagined pressure from others
Herbert Kelman (1958) - types of conformity:
↓ Compliance Appearing to agree in public but not in
private (superficial)
↓ Identification Acting in the same way as the group to
belong but not necessarily agreeing
↓ Internalisation Agreeing both in public and private
Explanations for Conformity
Deutsch & Gerard (1955) - 2 process theory
Informational Social Influence Normative Social Influence
We conform because we believe the majority to be We conform because we wish to be liked by the
right majority
Wittenbrink & Hendey - P’s exposed to negative Schultz et al. - told hotel guests that other hotel
info about African Americans later reported guests are reusing towels = P’s reduced towel use
negative beliefs about a black individual Demonstrating NSI
Evaluations
- Lucas et al. - students conform to an - Individual differences in the need to be
incorrect answer if the question is harder liked change NSI
⤷ People conform when they feel they - McGhee & Teevan
don’t know the answer ⤷ Students in high need for affiliation
- Perrin & Spencer - found individual are more likely to conform
differences affect ISI - how sure about
yourself you are
Four Key Studies
Asch Line length judgement experiment
Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment
Milgram Electric shocking in memory test
, Asch’s Research (1951)
- Naive participants in a room with 7 confederates
- Seated around the table so that the real participant always gives the
6th answer
- Group shown a line asked to select the matching line from 3
Procedure
Confederates give a deliberately wrong answer
12/18 times (the ‘critical’ trials)
Participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
Results
75% of participants conformed with the obviously incorrect majority at least
once
Didn’t want to anger the group
NSI
Didn’t want to make a fool of themselves
Explanation Others must be right
ISI
Must be an eyesight problem
Small minority genuinely saw the lines incorrectly
1. Group size 3+ confederates = ~30% conformity
2. Unanimity Presence of non-comforming
confederate = 25% conformity
Variations
3. Task Difficulty The more similar the line lengths the
higher the conformity
= ISI has more influence in harder tasks
- Child of its time
1950’s america was more conformist = temporal validity
⤷ Perrin & Spencer (1980) - repeated experiment on 1980s UK
engineering students = significantly less conformist
- Artificial task
Evaluation Demand characteristics, groups were artificial
- Limited application
Only men, USA individualism compared to collectivism
- Ethical issues
P’s deceived thinking confederates were legitimate
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