What is social influence
The influence of others changing a person’s behaviour
What is conformity
When the behaviour of an individual or group is influenced by a larger or dominant group
3 different types of conformity
Internalisation
Compliance
Identification
What is Internalisation and what type of influence causes it
Going along with the majority, accepting and internalising them so there your own views to
Informational social influence as it may happen in an unfamiliar situation where you don’t know how to behave so you look to others
What is compliance and what type of influence causes it
Going along with the majority even if you don’t share their views
Normative social influence as you do this to appear normal and be accepted
What is identification and what causes it
Doing what’s expected of you to fulfill a role
Need to fit a role in society or imitate behaviour of role model
What did asch study look at(1951)
Effects of normative social influence
Conformaty on an unambiguous task
Asch 1951 method
Lab experiment with independent group design
In groups of 8 participants judged line lengths by saying out loud which comparison line matched the standard line.
Each group only contained one participants and 7 confederate.
The participants went last or second to last
Each participants did 18 trials and in 12 of these the confederates all gave the wrong answer
There was a control group where participants judged the line lengths in isolation
Asch 1951 results and conclusion
Participants conformed to tye majority 37% of the time
75% conformed adleast once
Control group showed the task was easy but still 37% were wrong in trials therefore they conformed to normative social influence
Asch 1951 evaluation
Laboratory setting = minimises effects of extraneous variables and makes study replicable
No natural setting = Lacks ecological validity( may have been less likely to conform if in a real life situation)
Unethical = they were deceived and could be embarrassed
Asch studied _____ factors
Give 3 of these he studied
Situational factors
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
Asch 1956 study into group size
Conducted same experiment with different numbers of confederates as the majority
Found:
With 2 confederates conformity = 14%
With 3 confederates conformity = 32%
There was little change after that
Asch test on unanimity
Ran experiment again but gave participant one supporter, breaking unanimity of group
Result:
Confomaty fell to 5.5%
Asch test on task difficulty
Made task more difficult by making lines more similar
Results
More likely to conform as less confident
Dispositional factors effecting conformity
Confidence
Gender
