social influence

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Types of conformity

Internalisation- Where a person takes on the groups beliefs both Publicly, privately and permanently., As they have genuinely have accepted the groups norms.

Identification- the group takes on the attitudes and beliefs of the group because there is something about the group that they value and like. This change is not nessicaly permenant, and it may not be private as we may not agree with everything that the group is saying.

Compliance- A superficial and short term form of conformity, it is not permentant as it only lasts as long as the group is present. The person who is conforming is simply going along with others, and most likely privately disagrees with everything the group says.

Deutsh and Gerard (1955)

Informational social influence- Agree with the majority as they believe that the group is right. They don't want to be wrong, so they go along with what the group wants. An example of this is in a classroom where a teacher has asked students to raise their hand for the correct answer. If they raise their hand for the first answer, and one child does not, there is a high chance that he will, as he believes himself to be wrong. As not the whole of the class can be wrong. This could lead to internalisation

Normative Social Influence- An explanation for conformity that says that we conform as we wish be to be liked and accepted by the group. Therefore we go along with the groups norms, however we may not agree with the groups norms so it may lead to compliance.

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Research support for ISI- Lucas et al (2006) asked students to answer maths questions, varying on difficultness. He found people were more likely to conform to the majority view on the harder questions. SUpporting isi.

Individual differences in NSI- people affected by normative social influence usually lack the confidence that those who have ISI seem to hav. This makes them something called a naffilator, This means they have a greater need to be liked.

ISI and NSI work together- more often than not, both processes are involved, and not either or. Evidence of this is in Aschs lab study, as the dissenter may provide social support of more information.

Agentic state- People may obey when they believe that they are acting on the requests of others. This is the "agentic state" as you are an agent for another person. How ever there is an autonomous state, which is where you are in charge of your own actions. The shift between these two is the agentic shift. The agentic shift may occur when a teacher tells a student to go and report a students misbehavour. As usually a student wouldnt tell on a friend, but they are not acting for themselves, but for their teacher. A reason that a person is in the agentic state may be something to do with binding factors, these binding factos were noticable in milgrams study. A binding factor is where they place their moral strain onto another person, and say its their fault.

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Research support- Blass and Schmitt (2010) showed a film of milgrams study to students and asked them who was responsiable for the harm caused. The students blamed the experimenter rather than the particpant, showing they saw him as a legitmate authroity.

Limited explanation- the agentic shift doesn't explain many of the research findings, for example, it does not explain why some of the partcipants did not obey. It also does not explain why the hoffling nurses didnt show signs of anxiety or moral strain. therefore it can only accoount for some obdience.

Legitmacy of authority- Most socities are structured in a hierahacal way-this means we obey to those who are higher than us in on the social hieracy. We are even willing to give up our independence to those in authroity to puinish, in hope they'll use their power correctly.

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A strength of the legitmacy of authroity is that it shows cultural differences in authroity- Kilham and Mannn (1974) replicated milgrams results, and found only 16% of austriallians went to 450V but 85% of germans did. it shows how other cultures respond to autority

The authoritarian personality

Adorno (1950) investigated 2000 middle class Americans on their unconcious attitudes towards other racial grouos. He investigated them using the Fscale with is used to measure the authortarian personality. Questions on the f scale included, "no body ever learned anything unless they were sufferring"

Adorno found that those with an authortarian personality tended to be more repsectfull and obdient to authroity. He found that they identified with strong people and were compentous of the weak. They were very concious of the weak. They were very aware of status, shower extreme respect to those of a higher status. They