Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Social Influence, Authoritarian Personality - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Motivation to conform
        
        The researchers, Deutsch and Gerrard (1955) categorised the motivation to conform into two types: normative social influence and informational social influence.
        
        Stanford Prison Experiment
        
        What?
        
        It was conducted by Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. It demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.
        
        A social roles is a pattern of behaviour that is expected of a person in a given group or setting.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Volunteers
        
        An advert was placed in a local newspaper asking for male volunteers to participant in a study about the psychological effects of prison life.
        
        1 more item...
        
        A mock prison
        
        2 more items...
        
        Types of conformity
        
        Researchers have identified three types of conformity: internalisation, identification and compliance.
        
        Internalisation
        
        When an individual changes their behaviour to fit in with a group publicly while also agreeing with them privately.
        
        This is the strongest form of conformity as the group beliefs become part of the individual's belief system.
        
        Compliance
        
        Compliance is going along with a request or demand in public whilst disagreeing with the group's viewpoint or behaviour in private.
        
        This change in people's expressed views is temporary.
        
        Identification
        
        When someone conforms to the demands of a social role in society.
      - What?
        
        Asch conducted an experiment looking at normative social influence. He wanted to see if people would conform to a group's wrong answer even if the answer was unambiguous. The Asch effect is the influence of the group's majority view on a individual's judgement.
        
        The line judgement task
        
        A group of participants were shown a series of printed line segments of different length: a, b, and c, and then a fourth line segment: x.
        
        They were then asked to identify which line segment from the first group most closely resembled the length of line segment x.
        
        Confederates
        
        Each group of participants had only one true, naïve subject. The remaining member of the group were confederates of the researcher.
        
        A confederate is a person who is aware of the experiment and works for the researcher. They are used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design.
        
        True naïve participants believe that the confederates are uninformed participants like them.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Participants choice
        
        After hearing the confederates choose an incorrect line segment, the naïve participant then had to identify aloud the line segment that best matched the target lien segment.
        
        Asch found that 75% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by choosing the incorrect line cause of the group's view.
        
        Asch found four key factors that influence conformity
        
        The size of the majority
        
        1 more item...
        
        The presence of another dissenter/non-conformist
        
        1 more item...
        
        The public or private nature of the responses
        
        1 more item...
        
        Task difficultly
        
        1 more item...
        
        Evaluation
        
        3 more items...
- - - - People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if they do not comply.
    - - Method
        
        Milgram recruited 40 male volunteers who were led to believe that they were participating in a study to improve learning and memory.
        
        The participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered electric shocks of different intensities to the learners.
        
        The participants were told to shock the learners if they gave a wrong answer to a test item - that the shock would help them to learn.
        
        Shocks were increased in 15-volt increments up to 450 volts.
        
        The participants did not know that the learners were confederates and that the confederates did not actually receive shocks.
        
        Results
        
        In response to a strong of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently and repeatedly shocked them.
        
        The confederate learners cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and even complained of heart trouble.
        
        Yet, when the researcher told the participant-teachers to continue the shock, 65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive.
        
        Variations
        
        Several variations of the original experiment were conducted to test the boundaries of obedience and when certain features of the situation were changed, participants were less likely to continue to deliver shocks.
        
        When the settings of the experiment was moved to an office building, the highest shock rate dropped to 48%.
        
        When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, the highest shock rate dropped to 40%.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Relationship with humanity and authority
        
        These variations showed that when the humanity of the person being shocked was increased, obedience decreased.
        
        Similarly, when the authority of the experimenter decreased, so did the obedience.
        
        Pros
        
        Strict control of variables - variables could be controlled because the experiment was done in a laboratory. We should be able to establish cause and effect.
        
        Cons
        
        4 more items...
      - Argentic state and legitimate authority
        
        What
        
        Milgram suggested that people can enter an 'agentic state' in which they pass responsibility for their actions onto those giving the orders. The more legitimate an authority figure is, the more likely they are to be obeyed.
        
        Agentic state
        
        An agentic state is a state in which an individual behaves as the agent of another person.
        
        This allows them to deny responsibility for their action and distance themselves from the consequences of those actions.
        
        Milgram suggested that a person can be in two states:
        
        2 more items...
        
        Research evidence
        
        In Milgram's famous study on obedience, he noted that during debrief, participants admitted to feeling under 'moral strain', but still continued to obey. This is consistent with an agentic state.
        
        He also found that when the researchers were not in the same room as the teachers and gave instructions via a telephone, obedience fells from 62.5% to 20.4%. This is consistent with an autonomous state.
        
        Legitimacy of authority
        
        People who are obedient accept the power and status of legitimate authority figures to give orders.
        
        Individuals are more likely to carry out instructions given by such figures.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Agentic shift
        
        Agentic shift is when individuals shift from the autonomous to agentic state.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Staying in the agentic state
        
        1 more item...
        
        Variables of obedience
        
        Situational factors
        
        Situational factors refer to external explanation of obedience behaviour.
        
        There are three main things about the environment that can make obedience likely: proximity, location and the power of uniforms.
        
        Proximity
        
        1 more item...
        
        Location
        
        1 more item...
        
        Uniforms
        
        1 more item...
        
        Dispositional variables
        
        What?
        
        While situations factors involve the environment, dispositional factors refer to aspects of the individual that might make them more likely to obey. These factors might include our personality.
        
        Resistant to social influence
        
        What?
        
        Not all individuals are likely to conform to social influence. Resistance to social influence involves both disobedience and non-conformity. Non-conformity has two forms: independence and anti-conformity.
        
        Non-conformity
        
        Key features
        
        3 more items...
- - - - Adorno designed a test called the F--scale, where F stood for fascist, that could measure level of authoritarian personality.
- - - - The F-scale questionnaire is easily manipulated. This means participants might have been able to second guess the questions.
        
        The F-scale also correlates with education levels. This provides a possible alternative explanation.