Year 2/A2 AQA A-Level Psychology Exam Revision Notes for Social Influence
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Social Influence
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AQA Psychology for A Level Year 2
Year 2/A2 AQA A-Level Psychology exam revision notes for the option Social Influence. This is on an A3 sized paper digital paper. This has been simplified to make it easier to pick out important information and revise key notes.
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5.1 Types of conformity: internalisation, identification and compliance
Internalisation 5.2 Explanations for conformity: informational social
- Genuinely accepts the group norms influence and normative social influence, and 5.4.2 Dispositional explanation for obedience: the Authority Personality
-
For
Private and public change of opinions/ behaviour variables affecting conformity - Adorno felt that personality(dispositional) factors rather than situational factors could explain
- Permanent Informational obedience
- Stays even in the absence of the group because attitudes have - Desire to be right - Proposed an authoritarian personality; where someone favors an authoritarian social system an
become part of how the person thinks - Situation: lack knowledge and unsure of admires obedience to authority figures
- Jenness situation - Formed in childhood through parenting; extremely strict, expectations of loyalty, severe criticism
Identification - Looks to others for guidance impossibly high standards. Also conditional love
- When we identify with a group that we value, want to fit in/ be a part of - Leads to internalisation - Hostility towards/fear of parents is displaced onto those who are socially inferior; scapegoating
it Normative (psychodynamic explanation)
- Publicly change our opinions/ behaviours - Desire to be liked Characteristics:
- Even if we do not privately agree with everything the group stands for - Situation: to fit in, don’t want to appear - Hostile to those of inferior status
- Zimbardo foolish or be left out - Obedient to those of high status
Compliance - Lead to compliance (usually temporary - Have conventional attitudes towards race and gender
- Going along with others with group in public change) Adorno et Al. study:
- Privately our opinion is not changed - Fear of rejection Aim:
- Asch’s study - Leads to compliance - To investigate unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
Two-process theory: Method:
- Deutsch and Gerard brought ISI and NSI together in their two-process - 2000 middle class white Americans
theory of social influence - Given the F-scale/ fascism scale
- Argued that people conform because of two basic human needs: the - Examples of questions =
need to be right (ISI) and the need to be liked (NSI) 1. Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to l
2. There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude
respect for his parents
Findings
- Authoritarians; high on f-scale identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the we
5.2.1 Variables affecting conformity including group size, unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch - Conscious of own status = excessive respect of those of higher status
Asch’s study: - Also had a cognitive style; no fuzziness between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive
Aim: stereotypes about other groups
- The purpose was to see how the naïve participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates
Method
- 123 male US undergraduates were tested they were asked to look at 3 different lines at different lengths and state which
one is the same as the standard line
5.4 Explanations for obedience: agentic state and
- They took turns saying which line was the most similar
legitimacy of authority,
- The naïve participant was always the last or second last ppt to call out the line
Agentic state:
Findings
- States that people wit obey an authority
- On 12 critical trials the average conformity rate was 33%.
figure when they believe that the authority
- One quarter of ppt never conformed on any of the trials
- One in 20 of the ppt conformed on all 12 of the critical trials. will take responsibility for the consequences
of their actions
Variables affecting conformity
- Supported by aspects of Milgram’s
Group Size:
- The bigger the majority group, the more people conformed to a certain point research such as … when ppts were
reminded that they had responsibility of
- With 1 other person in the group conformity dropped to 3%
- With 2 others it increased to 13% their own actions, almost none of them
were prepared to obey.
- With 3 or more it was 32% (or 1/3)
- Further increase in the size of the majority (the group size was 4/5) did not increase this level of conformity substantially. - However, many ppts refusing to go on did
- Brown and Byrne; suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond three or four so if the experimenter said that he would
take responsibility.
- Hogg and Vaughan; the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full extent with 3-5 person majority, with
- Milgram’s; ppts could instruct an assistant
additional members having little effect
(confederate) to press the switches, in this 5.5 Explan
Group unanimity :
cond. 92.5% shocked to the maximum 450 support an
- The correct answer was given throughout by the confederate, conformity levels dropped significantly from 33% to 5.5%.
volts. Locus of c
- When the group was not unanimous (another person gives the correct answer)
Legitimacy of authority figure: -
- Presence of one confederate that goes against the majority can reduce conformity as much as 80%
- People tend to obey others if they
Task difficulty
recognize their authority as morally right Social sup
- Comparison lines = more similar in length; harder to judge the correct ans.
and/or legally based (legitimate) Perception
- We are uncertain, look to others for confirmation
- This response is learned in multiple situations people an
- More difficult the task, the greater the conformity
for example, family, school and workplace -
- Milgram’s; the experimenter is seen to have
legitimate authority as he has scientific -
status
5.4.1 Situational variables affecting obedience including proximity, location and -
uniform, as investigated by Milgram -
Milgram
Aim: Research =
5.3 Conformity to social roles as investigated by Zimbardo them. Diso
• He was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an
Zimbardo’s study: can mode
instruction if it involved harming another person.
Aim :
• Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be
To investigate how easily people will conform to social roles
influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.
Method:
Procedure:
- In the Stanford university basement
• His study involved 40 participants, in each condition.
- Mock prison
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