Social Influence

Social Influence

1. Conformity

   • Results in exposure to majority position
   • Compliance
     • Accepting views of majority without agreeing
     • Result is public compliance with little or no change in private attitude
   • Internalisation
     • Exposed to views of majority individuals
     • Encouraged to engage in validation process
     • Considering own beliefs to see if they or others are correct
     • Leads to decision that majority were correct
       • Acceptance of the group
         • Views changed publicly and privately
   • Identification
     • People may yield to majority opinion to establish a relationship with group or individual
     • Adopt attitudes to feel part of the group
     • Elements of compliance and internalisation
   • Asch's Study
     • 123 American undergraduates > Showed lines to ppts around the table (1 true ppt) > Ppts answered in same order > confederates instructed to give same
       • 36.8% responses from true ppts incorrect (conformed) > ¼ never conformed
       • Compared to control trial where confederates didn’t give wrong answer > found ppts made mistakes 1% of the time
     • Reasons for Conformity
       • Distortion of Perception
         • Small number of ppts see lines same way as majority
       • Distortion of Judgement
         • Doubt about accuracy of judgement
       • Distortion of Action
         • Ppts pretend to agree with majority to avoid disapproval
           • Didn't change private opinion
     • Evaluation
       • Validity
         • Judging lines seen as insignificant task - more willing to conform
         • Hard to generalise
           • All ppts American males
       • Ethics
         • Ppts being deceived and gave no informed consent
       • People more likely to conformed if they know each other

2. Why do people conform?

   • Normative Social Influence
     • Wanting to be liked and to be part of the group
     • Going against majority isn't easy
     • Evaluation
       • Garandeau and Cillessen
         • Groups with low quality interpersonal friendships may be manipulated by skilful bully
           • Creates pressure as children in the group don't want to be cast out
     • Humans are social species
       • Need for companionship and fear of rejection
   • Informational Social Influence
     • Wanting to be right
     • Agreeing because we believe others are correct
       • Internalisation
     • Most likely to occur
       • Situation is ambiguous
       • Situation is a crisis
       • Believe others are experts
     • Evaluation
       • Witterbrink and Henly
         • Ppts exposed to negative comparison information about African Americans (believed was view of majority)
           • Reported more negative beliefs about black target individual
             • Ppts assumed comparison group had more knowledge.
       • Fein et al
         • Judgements of candidate performance of US presidential debates > influenced by knowledge than reactions
           • Ppts saw reaction of fellow ppts on screen during debate
             • Large shifts in ppt judgement of candidates performance.
   • Social Impact Theory
     • Latane
       • Number
         • More people=More influence
         • Stops at a point
           • Asch > conformity up to 3 or 4 confederates, not beyond
       • Strength
         • More important people=More influence
       • Immediacy
         • More likely to listen to speaker when in small group
     • Evaluation
       • Sedikides and Jackson
         • High strength and immediacy had more impact than low strength and immediacy

3. Obedience to Authority

   • Obedience
     • Behaving as instructed
     • Usually takes place in hierarchy - person issuing the order has higher status
     • Milgram
       • Two confederates - one as experimenter and one as learner > Ppt was teacher - 40 male ppts
         • If learner said incorrect answer they were given an electric shock which increased every time.
           • 65% ppts went to 450 volts - all went to 300 volts - 5 stopped at 300 volts
       • Sheridan and King
         • Hypothesized some of Milgram's subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking
           • Repeated the experiment with a puppy who was given real electric shocks
             • They found that 20 out of the 26 participants complied to the end
               • Six that had refused to comply were all male > 54% of males were obedient - all 13 of the women obeyed to the end.

4. Why Do People Obey?

   • Gradual Commitment
     • Ppts give low-level shock – harder to resist requirement to increase shocks.
     • Ppts found it hard to change their minds about shocks
     • Foot-in-Door method of persuasion.
   • Agentic Shift
     • State a person is in when they see themselves acting as a agent for carrying out another person’s wishes
     • People shift between Agentic State and Autonomous State
       • Seeing themselves acting on their own accord
     • Individual no longer sees himself acting on his own accord
   • Role of Buffers
     • Teacher and learner in different rooms
     • Teacher protected (buffered) from the victim (learner)
     • Victim in same room buffering is reduced
     • Tendency to obey experimenter – less obedience when victim was present.
   • Justifying Obedience
     • Ppts gave the shocks because science required it.
     • By offering ideologies people are willing to surrender their freedom believing they are serving a justifiable cause.
   • Evaluation
     • Monocausal
       • Mandel
         • Argued that by focusing on obedience Milgram ignored many other explanations, such as anti-semitism.
     • Was the agentic shift in Milgram’s experiment as strong as that in the Holocaust?
     • 'Obedience alibi” act as an excuse for actions rather than a justification

5. Explanations of independent Behaviour

   • Insights of Asch's Research into Conformity
     • Social support
       • Another person giving the same answer is enough to cause conformity levels to plummet.
     • Allen and Levine
       • No support
         • Ppt conformed to majority influence
       • Social support but of poor quality (invalid)
         • Supporter had poor eyesight – ppt still conformed less to the majority than when no support.
       • Social support of good quality (valid)
         • Supporter had normal eyesight – participant very likely to resist conforming to majority view
     • Evaluation
       • Physical Reality – Artificial task meaning levels of conformity increases
       • Moral Judgement – Conformity as it has an effect on the ppt.
       • Hornsey et al
         • Little movement to majority on attitudes that had moral significance for individual even when in involved public behaviours
   • Insights from Milgram’s Research into Obedience
     • Experiment moved away from Yale University to a downtown office, more people felt able to resist authority - Status is key factor in obedience/resista
     • Resistance increased when the victim could be seen / when other confederates were present
       • Shows that awareness of the effects of actions and having social support help increase resistance
     • Kohlberg
       • Presented group of Milgram’s ppts with set of imaginary moral dilemmas.
       • Dilemmas determined not what people would do in situations, but why they would behave that way.
       • Found those who based decisions on more general moral principles were more defiant in Milgram’s study
       • Those at more restricted level of moral development obeyed the experimenter completely
   • Locus of Control
     • High internal locus of control
       • Person believes behaviour is caused by own personal decisions and efforts. It is within their control
     • High external locus of control
       • Person believes behaviour is caused mainly by fate, luck or other circumstances beyond their control
     • Twenge et al
       • Meta-analysis – Young Americans believe their lives are controlled by outside forces than own behaviour
       • Studies found more external locus of control in students and children between 1960 and 2002
       • Suggests implications are uniformly negative – external negatively correlated with poor school achievement, decreased self-control and depression

6. Understanding Social Change

   • Social Change
     • Society adopts new belief or behaviour which becomes accepted as the ‘norm’
     • Can positive or negative
   • Minority Influence
     • Form of social influence - people reject the established norm of the majority of group members and move to the position of the minority
   • Moscovici
     • Minorities are also capable of social change
     • If individual is exposed to persuasive argument under certain conditions, they may change own views to match the minority
     • Called this “conversion” - a prerequisite of social change
   • Conditions necessary for social change
     • Drawing attention to an issue
     • The role of conflict
     • Consistency
     • The augmentation principle