Who is Jim Jones?
- Established Peoples Temple on principles of communism, Christianity, and equality.
- Members were normal people who hoped for a Utopian life with family and community.
- After finding out his people assassinated a US congress member, Jones gathered members and told them of time for ‘revolutionary suicide’.
- With little resistance, people drank cyanide laced punch.
- 914 people died, including 276 children.
What is social influence?
- Social influence refers to the many ways that people impact one another.
What are the 3 major types of social influence?
- Conformity
- Compliance
- Obedience (Jim Jones example)
What is Conformity?
A type of social influence.
- Tendency to change one’s perceptions, beliefs, or behaviour in response to real or imagined pressure from others.
- Sometimes pressure to conform to group norms is explicit (obvious pressure/influence) and other times implicit (subtle influence)
What did Sherif’s Conformity Research show?
Showed that peoples judgments are influenced by other people’s judgement
- Sherif used autokinetic illusion (flashing a light then re flashing it and asking participants if it moved - when it really didn’t move)
- First, participants completed task first individually then with group (individual judgement varied)
- However individual judgments became group norm and influenced perception. (when done it groups people narrowed down to one answer)
- And even a year later, similar estimates were revealed when tested individually (people responded with a similar answer to their group answer)
What did Asch’s Conformity Research show?
- Asch (1951; 1956) examined conformity when people know majority is incorrect.
- Asch used line judgment task (match a line with 3 comparison lines)
- Participants called out judgments one at a time.
- First, all called correct answers, but then all others (confederates/actors) made incorrect answers on total of 12 trials.
- 76% of participants conformed on at least 1 of 12 incorrect trials.
- Participants conformed to incorrect responses 37% of the time.
It was hypothesised that to avoid disapproval of the group, many conformed even when they knew the answer was incorrect.
- this was shown as when participants did not have to publicly state their answer to the others they DID NOT confirm and chose the correct answer instead.
What are the two different influences leading to conformity?
- Informational influence: Influence producing conformity when a person believes others are correct in their judgment.
- Normative Influence: Influence that produces conformity when a person fears the negative consequences of appearing deviant.
What are the two different types of conformity?
- Private Conformity: Change in beliefs when a person truly accepts the position taken by others. (Demonstrated by Sherif’s experiment)
- Public Conformity: Superficial change in behaviour produced by real or imagined group pressure without change in opinion. (Demonstrated by Asch’s experiment)
==> Participants in Sherif studies show similar responses a year later, while participants in Asch studies don’t conform even privately
Factors Affecting Conformity
- Group size
- Group Unanimity
- Culture
- Gender
- Individual differences
- Age differences
How does Age differences affect conformity?
- Conformity especially high among teenagers (ages 14-15).
- Among adults 18-85 years of age, conformity tends to slightly decrease with age.
How does Group Size affect conformity?
- Size of the group matters with larger groups exerting more influence. However, levels off quickly (10 vs 15 people has little difference in amount of influence compared to 1 vs 5)
- Important to see the group’s opinion as independent. (individual opinions that are the same are more influential)
How does Group Unanimity affect conformity?
- Even one other dissenter reduces conformity by almost 80% (in small groups of 5-8)
- Conformity decreases even when other dissenter does not share same opinion (e.g. does not share your opinion or the members of the group => just having someone else with a different opinion) or does not appear too competent.
How does Culture affect conformity?
- People in collectivistic societies tend to conform more than those in individualistic societies.
- Review of 133 studies worldwide shows conformity rates vary considerably (from 18% to 60%) across culture.
- Only slight decline in conformity over time.
How does Gender affect conformity?
- Weak gender differences in conformity, but even this tendency only in public conformity.
- Effects moderated by content of the judgment issue such that and men conform more in non-stereotypical domains.
Men tend to conform more in feminine domains
Women tend to conform more in masculine domains
How does Individual differences affect conformity?
- People with strong sense of self, motivation to achieve, leadership ability, and minimal concern about others’ judgments conform less.
- However, not a large effect.
What is Compliance?
Changes in behaviour elicited by direct requests from others.
What are 5 strategies used for increased compliance?
- Free Gift Technique
- Door in the Face Technique
- Foot in the Door Technique
- Low Balling Technique
- That’s Not All Technique
What is the Free Gift Technique?
Giving small gift to someone or doing a small favour increases likelihood to complying with subsequent request
What is the Norm of reciprocity?
This is the principle the Free Gift Technique is based off of.
- has been observed across different species (e.g. monkeys)
- Norm of reciprocity: Norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who benefit them
e.g. * Ps bought twice as many raffle tickets from confederate after free drink.
Why may compliance work for the Free Gift Technique?
- Situations in which receiving a gift from different person may lead to compliance because of positive mood
- E.g., 70% complied with request to relay message immediately after receiving gift (from a different person), but only 45% after 10 minutes of receiving gift and 10% more than 20 minutes after receiving gift.
- suggests that good mood is temporary close to the time gift was received –> this time window is when the free gift technique is most effective
- Feeling good leads to greater compliance.
What is the Door in the Face Technique?
- Making a very large request that one will certainly refuse and then following that with a more modest request
E.g., classic study found 17% of students willing to chaperone youth offenders to zoo, but 50% complied when prefaced by request to counsel offenders for 2 hours a week over next two years.
Why may compliance work for the effectiveness of the Door in the Face Technique and when does it work best?
- The second request may be seen as a concession (compromise) on their part requiring concession on ours (reciprocal concession).
- Also, perceptual contrast between two requests might be at play. (after the large first request the second may seem more reasonable)
Technique works best when:
* First request is large, but not enough to be considered illegitimate.
* Requests made close to each other in time.
* Requests made by same person.
What is the Foot in the Door Technique?
- Compliance technique in which one makes an initial small acceptable request followed by a larger request involving the real behaviour of interest
e.g.
* Only 17% of people agreed to display a ‘Drive Safely” billboard on
lawn, but 55% complied when already agreed to have 3 inch sticker or
sign petition
Why may compliance occur for the Foot in the Door Technique?
- When people comply with a small request, they may engage in self perception process of seeing themselves as ‘helpful’ and become motivated to maintain self image
- After agreeing to an initial request, people may feel that refusing a second one would be a public inconsistency.
- People high in preference for consistency more likely to comply with subsequent request than those low on measure.
