This document covers the Social Influence topic in A level Psychology: types of conformity, Asch's line study and variations, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram's shock study and variations, situational and dispositional explanations for obedience, resistance to social influence, and mi...
Conformity - a type of social influence in which individuals change their behaviour, attitudes
or beliefs in order to adhere to existing social norms
● Can be said to occur in any situation where an individual/small group of people is
exposed to a majority
● Majority influence
● Social norms = key cause of people conforming
Types of conformity:
Internalisation
● When an individual accepts the group norms
● Results in private and public change of opinion and/or behaviour
● Permanent change, continues in the absence of group members because attitudes
have become a part of how the person now thinks
● The view is internalised (genuinely believes it to be true)
Compliance
● ‘Going along’ with a view
● Only happens in public, do not actually believe the view is correct (PUBLIC ONLY)
● Results in superficial change (while with the group) - due to group pressure =
temporary change only
● The view and/or behaviour stops as soon as the group pressure ceases
Identification
● When an individual identifies with a group that they value (may value for e.g. status)
● Want to be part of the group
● Public change in opinion/behaviour, even if don’t privately agree with everything the
group stands for (public acceptance only)
● (I.e. smoking to fit in with a group)
Explanations for conformity:
Informational social influence (internalisation)
● A cognitive process
● A need to be right
● You don’t have the info, so you look to others for the info, and you accept their
answer as you don’t know (internalised it = internalisation)
● Occurs in ambiguous (unclear/new) situations, new situations or crisis situations
● (I.e. get picked on for an answer in class, don’t know the answer, someone whispers
it, you say it even though you don’t know if it’s right)
Normative social influence (compliance)
● An emotional process
● A need to be liked, accepted, gain social approval
● Accept view to ‘fit in’, avoid rejection (even if don’t agree - compliance)
, ● Can occur in new situations with strangers if you don’t want to be rejected, or with
people we already know because we seek approval
AO3
Jenness (1932)
● Jenness asked students, first to estimate individually the number of beans in a bottle
● Subsequently, he put students in small groups and asked each of them to discuss
and estimate the number of beans again
● Finally, he asked the same students, on an individual basis, to estimate the numbers
of beans in the bottle
● Findings - in the group condition students moved to a group position which then
persisted when students were asked individually again
● Supports informational social influence (need to be right)
Schultz (2008)
● Found they were able to change the behaviour of hotel guests by using printed
messages encouraging them to save energy
● The messages suggesting that other guests were using fewer bath towels were the
most successful
● Led to 25% increase of people reusing bath towels
● Supports normative social influence (norm to reuse, want to ‘fit in’ with the norm and
be approved)
Lucas (2006)
● Asked students to give answers to maths problems that were easy or difficult
● There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult (ppts
knew easy questions)
● For hard questions, the situation was ambiguous, they relied on others’ answers
● This supports informational social influence because they have a need to be right
and they don’t know the answer as it’s hard (ambiguous).
Asch
● 37.5% of ppts conformed rather than gave the correct answer because they were
afraid of disapproval. When ppts wrote down answers conformity fell to 12.5%
● Shows normative social influence due to fear of rejection/want to ‘fit in’
● This shows that at least some conformity is due to a desire not to be rejected by the
group for disagreeing with them
Weaknesses -
● Unclear if normative social influence or informational social influence operates in
studies and real life. A dissenter may reduce the power of normative social influence
or reduce the power of informational social influence. Therefore informational and
normative social influence are hard to separate. They work together in real world
situations.
McGhee (1967)
● Found that students who were nAffiliators (people who have a strong need for
affiliation) were more likely to conform
, ● This shows normative social influence underlies conformity for some people more
than others - individual differences are not explained
ASCH LINE STUDY
(Conformity)
AO1 (but the two parts below are in different essays)
Explaining normative si - Asch line study
● Aim: To see if a person will conform to an obvious incorrect majority
● Ppts told it was a study on perception
● Pilot study - needed to make sure line task was obvious. 36 ppts judged 20
slides. 717 were clear and obvious.
Procedure:
● Ppts placed in groups with six confederates whose responses were predetermined
(prior to the experiment)
● Ppts asked to match a target line with line A, B or C
● On 12 to 18 trials (critical trials) confederates were instructed to give the same
incorrect answer. Therefore for the first 6 trials they gave the correct answer then
from trial 7 and onwards gave the incorrect answer,
● The ppt was always asked to judge last. Each person had to state their answer
aloud.
Findings
● The ppt conformed 37% of the time, this is high conformity as the situation was not
ambiguous
● 75% conformed at least once
● 25% of ppts never conformed
● 5% conformed all of the time
● When interviewed after, to why they conformed, a majority said to avoid rejection
Variations of Asch study:
(All have same procedure as before, but…)
Group size
● Large group = ⬆️conformity
● 2 confederates = 14%
● 3 confederates = 32%
● 4+ confederates = 37% (adding more confederates after this made little differences
to the rate of conformity)
● Increases due to normative - need to fit in
Unanimous position/unanimity
● Dissenting confederate - always went against the majority and gave a correct answer
OR the other incorrect answer
● When one confederate gave the correct answer on all the critical trials conformity
dropped from 37% to 5% - decreased due to pressure to conform removed as now
have a ‘friend’ that broke the unanimous position - ⬇️fear of rejection
● In a dissenting peer condition - 1 person went against majority
Task difficulty
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