Detailed Social Influence Essay plans of the whole AQA Psychology Topic. Simplified for revision purposes with detailed AO1 and AO3 paragraphs also includes topic keywrds when needed.
● A01 Asch’s Study (1956)
Aim: To determine to what extent a person would conform to majority
influence
Procedure: 123 male american graduates in groups with confederates all
but one: who believed they were taking part in a vision test.
The subject was deceived that the 6 confederates were participants just
like them. The subject was placed on the second last seat so they will be
the second last to give an answer.Presented with 4 lines; 3 comparisons
and 1 standard, asked to state which one was the same length as the
stimuli line. Confederates were instructed to answer correctly on some of
the cards but answer incorrectly for 12 out of 18 trials. Asch observed how
often participant conformed to majority or gave correct answers
Findings: Over the 12 critical trials, 75% of participants conformed at least
once.25% of participants never conformed.In the control group, with no
pressure to conform to the majority of confederates, less than 1% of
participants gave the wrong answer. Real ppts conformed to the incorrect
answers on 32%
Conclusion: People yield to group pressure in order to gain approval
● AO1 Variations of Asch’s study
Task Difficulty: Asch made the differences between the line lengths much
smaller. Created an absence of an objectively correct answer . Suggests
that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes hard when ppts are in
an ambiguous situation. More likely to look at others for guidance
Group Size: Conformity increased with group size, when there's no
objectively correct answer but only up to a point. 1 other person in the
group conformity was 3%, 2 others it increased to 13% and 3+ it was 32%
this was optimum. Increasing the size of the majority beyond 3 did not
increase the levels of conformity found. The presence of another
dissenter/non-conformist: if there is at least one dissenter, conformity
rates drop to near zero.
Unanimity of the majority: The extent at which a group agrees. When one
confederate was told to give the right answer Asch found that conformity
dropped considerably from 30% t0 5.5%. Even when one confederate was
told to give a different wrong answer to the majority, breaking unanimity,
the conformity dropped from 30% down to 9%. The absence of group
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