Psychology - social influence - studies

Evaluation of normative social influence - That children who had a greater need for social acceptance were the most likely to comply to pressure exerted by a bullying group to victimise another child. By conforming they believe they would be accepted by the group and maintain their friendship regardless of how they felt in private

Informational social influence  - That intelligence was a major determining factor in conformity to informational social influence, with intelligent people being more self-confident so less likely to conform

Informational social influence - Highly intelligent students conformed less than moderately intelligent students, but students with the lowest intelligence conformed mid-way between the two

Findings of Asch's study (1951)

Evaluation of Asch's study - He eliminated face-to-face contact by placing ppts in booths and confirmed Asch's findings, with levels of conformity increasing as tasks were made more difficult

Evaluation of Asch's study - Found that conformity levels were higher in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures

Evaluation of Asch's study - Carried out a meta-analysis of 145 studies and concluded that women were more likely to conform than men

Findings of Milgram's study (1963)

Evaluation of Milgram's study - Argues that Milgram showed insufficient respect for his ppts and that there were inadequate steps taken to protect themHis procedure could have caused long-term psychological harmPpts may not trust psychologists in the future

Evaluation of Milgram's study - Claimed that participants didn't truly believe that the shocks were real and demand characteristics were shown and that the stress was an actShowed little resemblance to other settings outside lab and was too artificial

Findings of Hofling et al's study (1966)

Findings of Rank and Jacobson's study (1977)

Evaluation of gradual commitment - Supports for this explanation in his study of Nazi doctors. First they were required to steralise prisoners, but having done this they carried out more and more horrific experiments which ended with them being killed

Agency theory - Supported by WW2 soldiers saying 'I was only following orders'

How came up with the agency theory

Evaluation of agency theory - Argued it is inappropriate to draw a comparison between Milgram's study and people involved in Holocaust. Milgram's study was half an hour not several years. Agentic shift couldn't last that longFails to exlain gradual and irreversible conversion process that Lifton (1986) observed in Nazi doctors

What evidence supports 'buffers'

Authoritarian personality - Milgram

Psychopathic personality - Miale and Selzer (1975)

Prior commitment - Variation of Asch's study - ppts publically gave their judgement before the confederates and then given a chance to change their answer - most didn't change

Desire for individuation - One group of American students were led to believe that their attitudes were different from the other 10,000 students.Another group was told they were identical to 10,000 other studentsTaking part in Milgram's study showed those who were told they were identical didn't conform as an attempt to assert individuality

Locus of Contol

Locus of control - Ran a number of variations on Milgram's procedure and found no relationship between levels of obedience and scores on Rotter's Locus of control scale

Locus of control - Replicated Holland's study and found that those with an internal locus of control were more resistant to pressures to obey

Locus of control - Assessed locus of control in 60 males and 60 females. Ppts were divided into those who fit their gender sterotype and those who were androgynous (blend of male and female characteristics).Ppts took Asch's study and founf those with an external locus of control were more conformist in responses and gender roles.Those with high internal locus of control were more likely to show independent behaviour and be more androgynous

Locus of control - Meta-analysis found that yound people are becoming more external in their locus of control and less conformist.However didn't measure both factors on one individual only looked at trends

Gender differences in locus of control - Males are typically internal and females are generally external.Females may appear less independent due to the way they have been socialised. Women are taught to be supportive and agreeable

Gender differences in locus of control - No significant difference between genders. There may be gender differences for specific aspects of locus of control. E.g. men are more interal when it comes to academic achievement

Minority influence - creating attention - Deviant minorities draw attention to the issues that may otherwise ahve been ignored by the majority. They stimulate thought so that overtime people may be converted to a new way of thinking and behaving

Minority influence - creating attention - Deviant minorities draw attention to the issues that may otherwise ahve been ignored by the majority. They stimulate thought so that overtime people may be converted to a new way of thinking and behaving

Evaluation of minority influence - Argues that many acts of terrorism are intended to bring about social change through minority influence