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Social Influence - Coggle Diagram
Social Influence
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Conformity
Explanations AO1
- internalisation - deepest, personal opinions genuinely change to match group, permanent change
- identification - conform to behaviour to be part of group even if you don't fully agree, value membership of group
- compliance - agreeing with group but keeping personal opinions, temporary change in behaviour
- normative SI - want to appear normal and one of majority to be approved, results in compliance
- informational SI - correct behaviour is uncertain, look to majority for guidance, want to be correct, results in internalisation
Conformity - a type of social influence, yielding to a group pressure, behaviour/beliefs influenced by larger group
Social influence - the process by which attitudes, beliefs, behaviours are modified by presence and actions of others
Explanations AO3
- Asch, members went along with obviously wrong answer, when asked why, avoid disapproval from rest of group, compliance occurred to fit in, later variation, write down answers, conformity rates fell to 12.5%
- individual differences, processes don't apply to all, Perrin & Spencer, Asch experiment with engineering students, 1 conformity of 400 trials, more confident in ability, due to experience, nomathetic, can't be applied universally
- Schultz et al, control, hanger with environmental benefits of reusing towels, other, 75% of guests reuse towel, normative one reduced need for fresh towels by 25%
Asch AO1
- aims - extent to which social pressure from unanimous majority affects conformity in unambiguous situation
- procedure - 123 male undergraduate students USA, believed it was vision test, line judgement, one ppt, 6-8 confederates, ppt seated second from last, answer out loud, correct answer obvious, 18 trials per ppt, confederates gave same incorrect answer in 12, called 'critical trials'
- findings - 32% conformed to incorrect answers, 74% conformed at least once, control, no confederates, less than 1% gave incorrect
- conclusions - interviewed, conformed to 'fit in', NSI
variations
- group size - 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%, larger group made little difference
- unanimity - one confederate sometimes gave right answer, conformity lowered to 25%
- task difficulty - made task harder, conformity rose
Asch AO3
- biased sample, male students from USA, not generalisable to all, lacks population validity, don't know if it's the same for all, beta bias, ignored gender differences
- low ecological validity, artificial task, not everyday life, can't generalise to real life, limited application
- ethically questionable, deceived ppts, deception and no protection from psychological harm, ppts reported feeling stressed when disagreeing, however, if ppts knew aim, may have demand characteristics and acted differently, interviewed after to overcome
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minority influence
AO1
- minority gradually win over majority
- takes longer than majority social influence
- Moscovici - 172 females, groups of 6, 2 were confederates, shown 36 blue slides, state out loud colour, in one confederates said all 36 slides were green, in the other they said 24 were green, consistent - 8.2% agreement, inconsistent - 1.25% agreement, consistency important in minority influence
- consistency - confident in its view, argument seems more powerful and draws attention, synchronic - people in the minority all saying same thing, diachronic - been saying the same thing for some time
- commitment - willing to suffer for their views, taken more seriously, augmentation principle
- flexibility - consider valid counter arguments and compromise, more persuasive
AO3
- methodological issues, slide task is artificial, lacks mundane realism, impact of real-life cases are grossly disproportionate to that of a lab setting, real life could be life or death, Moscovici lacks external validity
- Nemeth, 3 ppts, 1 confederate, confederate would show inflexibility, (low level of compensation for imaginary ski accident), in other condition would be flexible and ppts were more likely to make offer closer to confederate
- Martin et al, one group heard message supporting a viewpoint from a majority and the other from a minority, exposed to conflicting view, less willing to change opinion if listened to minority, minority had been more deeply processed
Social change
AO1
- whole societies adopt new beliefs/behaviours
- conditions for social change via minority influence
- drawing attention - make others aware of the issue, causes inner conflict people want to resolve
- consistency - express views with same message over time, taken more seriously as shows they believe themselves
- deeper processing - inspire people to seriously consider
- augmentation principle - willing to suffer, taking risks means more attention
- snowball effect - spread message widely
- social cryptoamnesia - minority view is norm, can't remember time when it wasn't
AO3
- Nolan et al, decrease in energy use, hung messages on front doors stating most residents are trying to reduce energy usage, control that didn't mention other residents, conformity through NSI can lead to social change
- Bashir et al, people resist social change, minorities live up to stereotypes, e.g. environmental activists, can be off putting for outsiders, majority don't want to associate out of fear of being stereotypically labelled
- methodological issues, may undermine link between SI and social change, most research has low mundane realism and ecological validity, doubts about external validity, due to research informing theories