GCSE Psychology (AQA) 2024: Social Influence

yielding to group pressure

A: to investigate group pressure in an unambiguous situation
M: -participants (123 male students) thought they were taking part in a study of visual perception
-participants were shown a standard line and three comparison lines, they were told to pick which line was the same as the standard line
-each participant was tested with a group of 6/8 confederates and the true participant was always sat at the end so they could hear everyone else’s answers first
-the first 12 trials the participants said the correct answer to gain trust
-the last 6 trials the confederates all gave the identical wrong answer
-Asch counted how many times the participant agreed with this wrong answer
R: when wrong answers were given:
-32% conformed overall
-5% always conformed
-75% conformed at least once
-25% never conformed
C:-majority of people are influenced by group pressure
- though many can resist

P- results may only be relevant to 1950s America
E- 1950s America was a particularly conformist as politicians ensured that people followed the rules so people were afraid to behave differently
L- his research isn’t consistent over time and may only be apparent in certain conditions

P- task and situation was artificial
E- judging the length of a line with strangers isn’t an everyday task
L- results may not reflect everyday situations (especially when the consequences of conformity are more important)

P- Asch’s research is more reflective of conformity in individualist cultures (UK and America)
E- research has found that conformity studies done in collectivist countries (China) produce higher conformity rates as they’re more oriented to group needs
L- suggests that Asch’s findings are probably less reflective of conformity in collectivist cultures

explanation in terms of the social world around you

• anonymity

• task difficulty

• group size

• reduces our concern (less pressure) about people disagreeing with our views

• lowers conformity as we aren’t worried about what others will think of us

P- weakness; involved strangers
E- research has shown that when participants are friends/when with a group of friends conformity increases
L- anonymity may sometimes increase rather than reduce conformity

-as the difficulty of the task increases the answer becomes less certain so people will feel less confident about their own answer and look to others for the right answer

P- weakness; may not be for everyone
E- people with greater expertise may be less affected by task difficulty
L- info can’t be generalised

• more people in a group=greater pressure to conform

• two confederates: 13.6% conformity

• three confederates: 31.8% conformity

• more than three made little difference

P- weakness; depends on task
E- when there’s no obvious answer (eg.musical preference) people don’t conform until the group size gets to 8/10 people
L- group size is sometimes important

explanation in terms of the individual’s personal characteristics

• personality

- expertise

Locus of control:

-personality dimension (on continuum)

-extent to which people believe they're in control in their lives

Internal Locus:

-in control of what happens to them

-personal responsibility

-more likely to resist social influence

External Locus:

-feel they can't control situations

-don't feel in control of their actions (fate, luck)

-likely to conform/obey

P- weakness; can’t explain why we conform differently in familiar situations
E- research has found that in unfamiliar situations people rely on their LOC to find out how to behave but in familiar situations we look to how we have behaved in the past
L- suggests that control is less important in familiar situations

• increases your confidence in your opinions

• more knowledgeable=conform less

• research found that math experts were less likely to conform to other’s answers on math problems

• older people consider themselves more knowledgeable=less likely to conform

P- weakness; focusing on only one factor to explain conformity is too simplistic
E- in some situations people may still conform in order to be liked
L- shows that all factors work in different ways to affect conformity levels

response to a direct order from an authority figure

A: to investigate whether in certain circumstances a normal person would give somebody a potentially lethal electric shock if told to do so by an authority figure
M: -40 paid male volunteers (thought it was for a study on memory)
-a confederate was the “learner” while the participant always ended up being the “teacher”
-an “experimenter” (other confederate) directed the study
-experimented instructed the teacher to give the (fake) electric shock (15 increasing to 450 volts) to the learner every time he answered incorrectly on a memory task
-learner began to pound on wall and stop giving responses at 300 volts
-teacher was asked to continue when asked for guidance
R: -no participant stopped below 300 volts
-65% shocked to 450 volts
-caused participants extreme tension
C: ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure even to the extent of killing someone

P- participants may have not believed that the shocks were real
E- participants often raised their suspicions and may have felt it was unlikely such lethal shocks were being delivered (knew shocks were fake) and went along to not spoil it
L- lacks realism

P- was done in lab conditions
E- may not represent how we obey in everyday life
L- lacks ecological validity

P- participants experienced considerable stress
E- caused psychological damage to participants (3 seizures were reported) as they thought they were causing paint to the learner
L- brings psychology into disrepute

Agency:
act as an agent (for someone else) because they assume that the person giving orders is taking responsibility
Agentic State:
act on behalf of someone else and would follow their orders blindly (person feels no responsibility for their actions
Autonomous State (free):
where they behave according to their own principles and feel responsible for their own actions
Agentic Shift:
moving from making own free choices to following orders (occurs when someone is in authority)
Culture (social hierarchy)
-some people have more authority than others because of their position in the social hierarchy
-depends on society and socialisation
Proximity:
-proximity increases the "moral strain" that a person feels which leads to an increased sense of personal responsibility
-Milgram: less obedient if the learner was in the same room as them

P- research support
E- Blass and Shmitt showed students a film of Milgram's study, they blamed the experimenter rather than the participants
L- students recognised legitimate authority as a cause of obedience

P- doesn't explain why there isn't 100% obedience
E- 35% of participants didn't obey fully
L- social factors can't fully explain obedience

P- it "excuses" people who blindly follow destructive orders
E- offensive to the holocaust survivors as it suggests that the Nazis just obeyed orders and ignores roles that racism and prejudice played
L- dangerous, as it allows people to think they aren't always personally responsible

The Authoritarian Personality:
-exaggerated respect for authority
-more likely to obey orders
-very aware of their own and other's social status
-look down on people of inferior social status
-very respectful to people of higher status
Cognitive Style:
-"black and white"
-belief in rigid stereotypes
Originates in Childhood:
-develops when a child experiences strict parenting/discipline
-child only receives love when they behave correctly
-the child internalises these values and expects all people to behave the same
-child also feels hostility towards parents but can't express these feelings directly as they fear reprisals
Scapegoating:
-hostility felt towards parents for being critical is put onto people who are socially inferior

P- lack of support due to the flawed questionnaire
E- the F scale used has a response bias
L- challenges validity as it's based on poor evidence

P- data is correlational
E- can't claim that authoritarian personality causes greater obedience as it may also be caused by a lower level of education
L-suggests that other factors may explain apparent link between obedience and the authoritarian personality

P- its both social and dispositional
E- Germans were obedient but didn't all have the same upbringing (otherwise we'd expect all Germans to be authoritarian)
L- shows that a dispositional factor alone can't explain high levels of obedience

behaviour that is beneficial to other people and may not necessarily benefit the helper

A: to investigate if characteristics of a victim affect help given in an emergency
M: -103 trials -4 researchers
-"victim" (male student) staged a collapse on the subway and remained on the floor until help was coming
-38 trials: victim smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle of alcohol wrapped in a brown bag (drunk condition)
-65 trials: victim appeared sober and carried a black cane (disabled condition)
-victim dressed and behaved the same in both conditions
R: -disabled condition: helped at some point on 95% of the trials and 87% of the of the victims were helped in the first 70 seconds after they collapsed
-drunk condition: helped at some point on 50% of the trials and 17% of the of the victims were helped in the first 70 seconds after they collapsed
C: -characteristics of victim affects help given
-number of onlookers doesn't affect help in natural setting

P- high realism
E- participants weren't aware that their behaviour was being studied so they responded how they would normally (natural)
L- results have high validity

P- people studied were likely to be mainly people who lived in the city
E- they might have been accustomed to seeing beggars and may have become more used to ignoring someone in need
L- observed behaviour may not be typical of all people (info can't be generalised)

P- qualitative data was recorded
E- observers noted remarks from passengers which gives a deeper insight into why people didn't help
L- has the value of both qualitative and quantitative data

• presence of others

| - cost of helping

• the more people present=less likely someone will help

• Darley and Latane found that 85% of people reported a seizure when they believed they were alone but only 31% when they believed they were in a group of 4

P- weakness; other research has found that helping rates aren't always lower when others are present (depends on the situation)
E- everyday story, Westley Autry jumped onto train tracks to save a young man having an epileptic fit who fell on the tracks
L- when immediate action is required and the emergency is very serious the presence of others doesn't always have a negative effect

• cost of helping: possible danger to yourself, effort, time taken and possible embarrassment

• cost of not helping: feeling guilty, blame of others and leaving someone in need of help

• cognitive conflict between these 2 costs and possible rewards (feeling good, praise and social recognition)

P- costs of helping isn't the only factor
E- if someone doesn't judge/interpret a situation to be an emergency where someone needs help they won't help. research by Shotland and Straw found that 19% of people intervened when a married couple were arguing whereas 85% intervened when the attacker appeared to be a stranger
L- shows that cost of helping alone can't explain why someone will or will not help

• similarity to the victim

| - expertise

• if you identify with the victim you are more likely to help

• research by Levine et al. found that people were more likely to help a victim if they believed them to support the same football team

P-weakness; similarity alone can't explain why bystanders help in emergency situations
E- in many bystander studies there was no similarity but the victim still received help, similarity may increase the likelihood of help but if the situation is too ambiguous or if there are high costs help isn't guaranteed
L- factors other than similarity affect bystander behaviour

• people with specialist skills are more likely to help in emergency situations

• Cramer et al. found that when a workman fell off a ladder registered nurses (high expertise) were more like to help than non medical students (low expertise)

P- expertise may not always matter
E- red cross trained people were no more likely to give help than untrained people when faced with someone bleeding a lot (both intervened)
L-decision to help was unaffected by expertise but it definitely affects the quality of help given

large but temporary gathering of people with a common focus

behaviour that is harmful to others

| -behaving aggressively and doing things that may distress others

• Le bon predicted that anonymity would lead to antisocial behaviour in a harmful way

• normally behaviour is ruled by social norms (behaving correctly)

• when we can't be identified (anonymity) we lose our normal restraints and normal sense of responsibility for our actions as punishment is harder to issue

• we cease to behave rationally and instead act impulsively

behaviour that emerges when a group of people join together

• the group may behave in a way that's different from the way the individuals might have behaved on their own

• the group creates their own identity

-psychological state in which an individual loses their personal identity and takes on the group identity of the people around them

A: to study the effects of loss of individual identity (in an adaptation of Milgram's obedience study)
M: -groups of 4 female participants were required to deliver fake electric shocks to another student to "aid learning"
-individuated group: wore normal clothes, given name tags, introduced to each other and could see each other
-deindividuated group: wore large coat and hood that concealed identity and weren't referred to by name
R: deindividuated group was more likely to shock the person and held the shock button twice as long
C: -supports the view that anonymity and deindividuation increases the likelihood that people will act antisocially
-being anonymous increases aggression

P- deindividuation doesn't always result in antisocial behaviour
E- in a similar study deindividuated participants wearing nurse gowns (prosocial group norms) gave fewer shocks and at lower levels (less antisocial behaviour) than a deindividuated group wearing KKK type gowns (antisocial group norms)
L- shows that deindividuation doesn't automatically lead to antisocial behaviour

P- can be used to help manage crowds
E- making people feel more self aware and less deindividuated by using video cameras so people can see themselves (crowd control)
L- understanding deindividuation can reduce antisocial behaviour in situations using crowds so it has real life application

P- antisocial behaviour may be due to crowding rather than collective behaviour
E- research has shown that being in crowded situations can make people feel stressed and behave antisocially (creates aggression)
L- suggests that crowd behaviour can be explained in terms of overcrowding as well as deindividuation

A: to investigate crowd behaviour to see if it was ruly or unruly
M: -analysed reports of the riot from the police, newspapers, Tv and radio stations
-interviewed 20 people after the riot
-6 people were interviewed in depth
R: -riot was triggered by police raiding cafe which the community felt was unjust, crowd of 300 to 3000 gathered and attacked which then intensified and spread
-crowd threw bricks and burnt police cars but calmed down when police left
C: shows damage was rule driven and targeted at police (reflecting the social attitude of that area)

P- other research has come to similar conclusions about crowd behaviour
E- shows that crowd behaviour isn't without direction analysis: football hooligans' violence doesn't escalate beyond a certain point
L-supports the view that crowd behaviour isn't unruly but is governed by the social norms of the group and is rule driven

P- data was subjective
E- study is based on eye witness testimony so the data may be biased
L- data may lack validity

P- provides ideas about how to police such riots
E- Reicher's study suggests that increasing police presence doesn't always lead to a decrease in violence so it may be better to let local communities "police" themselves
L- research has real value and can have positive real life application

• deindividuation

• social loafing

• culture

group norms determine crowd behaviour
-may result in freeing the individual of personal norms and them becoming less aware of their responsibility for their actions

P-weakness; antisocial behaviour may be due to crowding rather than collective behaviour
E- being tightly packed together is unpleasant (Freedman: creates aggression)
L- may explain antisocial behaviour

when working in a group, people put in less effort as you can't identify individual effort
-Latane et al. found that when participants were asked to scream as loudly as they could, when they were in a larger group they individually made less noise than when they were on their own

P- weakness; negative effects of group work don't apply to all kinds of tasks
E- creative tasks (brainstorming) benefit from a group of people working together
L- shows that in some tasks the output from a group is often greater than the sum of individuals in the group

individualists (US): focused on individual result
collectivists (Chinese): decisions are made with reference to the needs of the group, social loafing is likely to be lower
-Earley found that Chinese people put in the same amount of effort in a group task where individual effort can't be identified as the group task where individual effort could be identified whereas the Americans put in less effort on the group task where individual effort couldn't be identified

P- weakness; overgeneralised
E- people vary considerably within a country as there is more than one culture and religion so people will hold different values
L- too simplistic to talk about national cultures and make predictions about behaviour

• personality

| - morality

internal locus of control enables individuals to be less influenced by crowd behaviour as they're more likely to follow their personal norms than the social norms created by others around

P- weakness; not all research has shown that personality matters
E- participants were tested to see if they would report researchers for conducting an unethical study (whistleblowing) participants who were willing to speak had similar scores on a personality test to those who didn't speak out
L- may not be a useful explanation for crowd and collective behaviour

• "morals" are our ideas of right and wrong

• people with a strong sense of right and wrong helps resist pressure from group norms

• in Milgram's study a professor of religion was able to resist the pressure of "what everyone else was doing" due to his strong sense of moral responsibility

P- strength; supported by historical evidence of individuals who stood up to crowd behaviour
E- in Nazi Germany, Sophia Scholl was found guilty of circulating anti Nazi literature, she resisted to group pressure and stood up for what she believed in
L- shows that some people are willing to sacrifice their life for a principle and good of others