AQA A-Level Psychology notes on the topic of Social Influence (which appears on paper one!)
Notes are detailed, containing both AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO3 (analysis and evaluation), allowing them to be used to answer any form of question that could come up in the exam from multiple ...
1 – Social Influence
Contents
Conformity...................................................................................................................................................2
Asch’s research........................................................................................................................................2
Types of conformity.................................................................................................................................3
Explanations for conformity....................................................................................................................4
Informational Social Influence (ISI)......................................................................................................4
Normative Social Influence (NSI).........................................................................................................4
Conformity to social roles........................................................................................................................5
Obedience...................................................................................................................................................7
Milgram’s research..................................................................................................................................7
Situational variables............................................................................................................................8
Explanations for Obedience...................................................................................................................10
Situational explanations.....................................................................................................................10
Dispositional explanations.................................................................................................................12
Resistance to Social Influence....................................................................................................................13
Social support........................................................................................................................................13
Locus of control (LOC)............................................................................................................................14
Minority Influence.....................................................................................................................................15
Social influence and social change.............................................................................................................16
Lessons from minority influence research.............................................................................................16
Lessons from conformity research.........................................................................................................17
Lessons from obedience research.........................................................................................................17
1
,Conformity
Conformity: A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a
person or a group if people
Asch’s research
o 123 male American participants were tested, each in a group with 5 to 7 actors (or
“confederates”).
o Participants and confederates were presented with 4 lines; 3 comparison lines and 1 standard
line. They were asked to state which of three lines was the same length as a stimulus line. The
real participant always answered last or second to last Confederates would give the same
incorrect answer.
o Findings: 36.8% of the time participants conformed, and 25% of participants never conformed.
Only 1% of non-conforming responses were incorrect, which eliminates eyesight/perception as
an extraneous
Variations to investigate:
Group size
o Asch varied the number of confederates between one and fifteen and found a
curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate meaning conformity
increased with group size, but only up to a point.
o With three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but after that
the presence of more made little difference on the rate of conformity.
Unanimity
o In the presence of a confederate that disagreed with the others (“a dissenter”), the
genuine participant conformed far less often: the rate decreased to less than a quarter
of the level it was when the majority was unanimous.
o This shows non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority’s
unanimous view
Task difficulty
o Asch increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the
comparison lines more similar to each other in length, causing it to become harder for
the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines; this increased the
rate of conformity
2
, Evaluation
Strengths
It was a lab experiment, meaning extraneous variables (such as timing of assessment
and the type of task used) and confounding variables are strictly controlled which
results in a high internal validity. It also means that replication of the experiment is easy.
Successful replication increases the reliability of the findings because it reduces the
likelihood that the observed findings were a ‘one-off’.
Supported by Lucas et al (2006)’s research, which showed that participants were more
likely to conform to answers given by confederates when presented with a difficult math
problem compared to an easy one.
Weaknesses
Lacks ecological validity: it was based on peoples’ perception of lines and so the findings
cannot be generalised to real life as it does not reflect the complexity of real-life
conformity i.e., where there are many other confounding variables and majorities exert
influence irrespective of being a large group.
Participants were only American male undergraduate students, so the research cannot
be generalised to other cultures/ages/genders
Ethical issues: Deception (participants were tricked into thinking the study was about
perception rather than compliance) meant they could not give fully informed consent.
Lacked validity: The social context of the 1950s may have affected results. For example,
Perrin and Spencer criticised the study by stating that the period that the experiment
was conducted in influenced the results because it was an anti-Communist period in
America when people were more scared to be different i.e., McCarthyism. Thus, the
study can be said to lack temporal validity because the findings cannot be generalised
across all time periods.
Types of conformity
Proposed by Kelman.
Internalisation = Making the beliefs, values, attitude and behaviour of the group your own (the
strongest type of conformity, and often occurs as a result of ISI). An individual’s change of view is
permanent e.g., being brought up in a religious household and becoming religious yourself.
Identification = Temporary/short term change of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence of a group
(middle level) e.g., acting more professional and less silly when you arrive at your office to work.
Compliance = This means to follow other people’s ideas/to go along with the group to gain their
approval or avoid disapproval. You publicly agree but privately disagree (lowest/ weakest level of
conformity) An individual’s change of view is temporary and is likely to occur as a result of normative
social influence e.g., when friends pressure you into drinking alcohol when you don’t truly want to, and
will not drink outside of such social situations.
3
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