Social Influence

Social Influence

1. Conformity

   • A change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
   • Types of conformity
     • Compliance - 'going along with others' in public but privately not changing opinions/behaviour. Results in a superficial change.
     • Identification - publically changing our opinions/behaviour even if we don't privately agree with everything the group stands for.
     • Internalisation - When a person genuinely accepts group norms. Results in a private as well as public change or opinions/behaviour. More likely to be a permanent change.
   • Explanations for conformity
     • Normative social influence (NSI) - the desire to be liked. Concerns what is 'normal' or typical behaviour for a social group. Norms regulate the behaviour of groups and individuals. NSI is an emotional process. Occurs in situations where you don't know how to behave.
       • A limitation of NSI is that there are individual differences. People who care more about being liked are more affected by NSI. They are nAffiliators - people who have a greater need for social relationships. McGhee and Teevan found that students who were nAffilliators were more likely to conform. The desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. One general theory does not cover the fact there are differences.
       • A strength of NSI is that there is research support. Asch asked participants to explain why they agreed with the wrong anser. Some said they felt self - conscious giving the right answer and were afraid of disapproval. When Asch asked participants to write down their answers, conformity rates fell to 12.5%. This supports the participants own reports that they were conforming because of NSI.
       • A limitation of ISI and NSI is that the 'two - process' approach is oversimplified. This approach states that behaviour is due to either NSI or ISI. However, conformity was reduced when there was a dissenting partner in the Asch experiment. This dissenter may reduce the power of NSI (by providing social support) or reduce the power of ISI (because they are an alternative source of information)
     • Informational social influence (ISI) - the desire to be right. We are often uncertain about what behaviour or beliefs are right or wrong. You go along with people because you feel they are probably right. ISI is a cognitive process. Most likely to occur in ambiguous situations where the answer isn't clear.
       • A strength of ISI is that there is research support. Lucas et al asked students to give answers to easy and more difficult maths problems. There was more conformity to incorrect answers when the problems were difficult. This was most true for students who rated their maths ability as poor. People conform in situations where they feel they don't know the answer (ISI). We look to others and assume they know better than us and must be right.
       • A limitation of ISI is that there are individual differences. Asch found that students were less conformist (28%) than other participants (37%). Perrin and Spencer's also found less conformity in students - in this study they were engineering students (i.e. confident about precision). People who are knowledgeable and/or more confident are less influenced by the apparently 'right' view of a majority. Therefore there are differences in how individuals respond to ISI.
   • Asch's conformity research
     • Aim - To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform
     • Procedure - 123 American male students. Each tested individually with a group of between 6 and 8 confederates. On each trial participants identified the length of a standard line. First few trials confederates gave correct answers but then all selected the same wrong answers. Each participant completed 18 trials. On 12 'critical trials' confederates gave the wrong answer.
     • Findings - Naïve participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time (i.e. proportion of the critical trials when the participant agreed with the confederates wrong answers). This shows high level of conformity (Asch effect - the extent to which people conform even in an unambiguous situation). There were considerable individual differences: 25% of participants never gave a wrong answer meaning that 75% conformed at least once. A few participants conformed most of the time.
     • Conclusion - Most participants said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI) and continued to privately trust their own opinions (compliance).