Social Influence 16 Mark Essay Plans
Discuss Types and Explanations for Conformity
AO1 Conformity is a change of behaviour/ views due to social influence.
Types:
Compliance- agree with the group externally but keep personal opinions.
Identification- behaviour and opinions change only when with the group.
Internalisation- personal opinions match up with the group’s opinions (permanent change)
Explanations:
Normative social influence- when an individual’s opinions/ behaviour change to match the
groups to fit in and avoid rejection, this type of conformity is often compliance and is
temporary.
Informational social influence- looking to the group for guidance if the individual is uncertain
as the individual believes the group has more knowledge. This often leads to internalisation
and is driven by the need to be correct.
AO3 1. Asch’s 3-line experiment shows evidence for normative social influence. This study
involved a group with 1 participant and the rest were confederates. They were then
presented with a card with three lines and a card with 1 line and asked to match
which line (of 3) was the same length as the single line, but confederates gave the
wrong answer every 12/18 trials. Asch observed whether the participant conformed
by giving the same incorrect answer. They found that 75% conformed at least once,
showing evidence for normative social influence.
2. When the conforming participants were interviewed to discover why they conformed,
many answered that it was to avoid rejection, providing evidence for NSI.
3. Strengths of this study are that it is a lab study so there was high control of
extraneous variables, meaning we can determine a cause-and-effect relationship and
the results had high internal validity and are reliable (as the study is easily
replicable).
4. Limitations; as it was a lab study and uses an artificial task, it has low ecological
validity meaning we cannot generalise the results to real life situations. Furthermore,
as it took place in a lab, the participant may have guessed the true aims of the study
and presented demand characteristics in order to please the researcher, decreasing
the validity. There are population issues with this study due to the small sample size
of only American undergraduate males, so this population is not representative of the
population, yet the results were generalised to an entire population, including
females so this is an example of beta bias. Finally, there are ethical issues regarding
this study as the participant was deceived as they did not know the true aims of the
study so could not give informed consent. A cost/ benefit analysis needs to be done
to analyse whether the ethical issues are smaller than the benefits.
5. Asch’s variations also investigated the effects of group size, task difficulty and
unanimity and observed its effects on conformity.
6. Difficult to separate the two explanations and determine which one is at play as they
are not exclusive. This suggests that they should be seen as complementary.
7. Research support for ISI from Jenness who asked participants separately and then in
groups, then make a second guess of the number of sweets in a jar. The individuals
second private guess was closer to the groups guess then the first private guess,
providing evidence for ISI.
, Obedience
AO1 Authoritarian Personality:
- This is a type of personality where the person Is particularly vulnerable to obeying authority, it is
measured on the F- scale which was developed by Adorno base don 2000 white middle- class
Americans.
- These people often have strong prejudices and stereotypes and are highly dismissive to people they
view as inferior. This can develop in childhood due to authoritative parenting.
Agentic State
- A state of mind where the person believes they have no responsibility for their actions and that they
are acting on the behalf of someone else so therefore don’t feel guilty doing morally incorrect
behaviours, this is the opposite to autonomous state.
- if a person is in an agentic state, they are more likely to obey authority.
Legitimacy of Authority
- individuals accept that those who are higher up in the social hierarchy should be obeyed as they have
a sense of duty to them, and they are able to give out punishment.
- This is learnt in childhood through the socialisation process, and it is accepted by most people that
legitimacy of authority is needed for society to function properly.
Milgram Study:
- Milgram conducted a study where participants were asked to teach a learning task to a learner and
when they got an answer wrong, they were asked to give an electric shock which increased in
intensities up to 400mV which was a lethal shock.
- The participants were deceived as there was no real learner, however every time an electric shock
was given, a screaming sound was played by a CD which got increasingly more intense and then
produced no sound (indicating unconsciousness)
- If the participant asked to stop/ leave an experimenter in the room would tell them they must
continue to finish the experiment and were not allowed to leave.
- Situational variables such as proximity, location and uniform were tested.
Findings:
- All participants went up to 350 volts and 65% went to 450 volts.
- Provides evidence that people will obey authority, even if it goes against their moral values.
AO3 1. Ethical issues include deception as the participants were unaware that the learner was not real,
psychological harm as the participants were put under high levels of distress during the experiment
with one even having a seizure, lack of right to withdraw as when participants asked to leave, they
were told they couldn’t.
2. This study is limited due to the lack of mundane realism of the task which could have produced
demand characteristics if the participants guessed the true aims of the study or that the electric
shocks were not real, decreasing the internal validity. It also lacks ecological validity as it was an
artificial task completed in a lab the results may not be generalisable to the real world. However, it
does have high control over extraneous and confounding variables, increasing the reliability.
3. Agentic state excused war crimes such as the Nazi’s killing the Jews in the second world war.
4. The F- scale which measures authoritarian personality has been criticised for lacking internal validity
as all the questions were written in one direction, meaning agreeing to all the statement would label
someone as an authoritarian- response bias. Furthermore, authoritarian personality is seen as a left-
wing theory and inherently bias, as it identifies people of a conservative political mindset as having a
psychological disorder. Finally, the link between people with an authoritarian personality and obeying
orders is simply correlational, there could be a third factor such as income or education.
5. A strength of the authoritarian personality is that research has shown that the participants who went
to 450 volts in Milgram’s study scored highly on the F-scale, indicating an authoritarian personality.
6. Bickman provided research support for legitimacy of authority increasing obedience rates using his
field study where fewer people picked up litter if they were asked to by someone dressed as a milk
man than a security guard.
