PSYC20009 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Disposition, Ingroups And Outgroups, Dime (United States Coin)
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 5 - Monday 21 August 2017
PSYC20009 - PERSONALITY & SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 5
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
EXAMPLE EXPERIMENTS
MILGRAM (1963, 1974)
•(1) The electric shock for learners experiment. They had a naive estimate that 1-3% of
participants would give the learners the full strength shock, it turned out to be around 65%
actually did it. Shows that the majority of people will do things other people tell them to.
SHERIF (1936)
•(2) The autokinetic effect
•Individual
•Group
•Iterations
•Convergence
•Up to one year later, norms still exert an effect
•People see a light in a room and state how far away it is. They do this individually and then do it
inside a group. In the group version, people end up converging on the same estimate.
ASCH (1952)
•(3) Same as above whereby people lie in groups. It’s the one about the lengths of the lines.
•Ostensible perceptual discrimination experiment
•18 trials
•12 out of 18 – confederates unanimously agreed on an incorrect answer
•75% con formed on at least 1 trial
•50% on 6 or more
THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE
•(4) Why do people behave the way they do? Why do they think what they do?
•Pressing questions post WWII
•Assumption of dispositionalism
•But, much of what we think and do is a function of what others think or do or what they ask
us to think or do:
•Milgram: people are capable of doing nasty things when asked (pressured) to
•Sherif: social norms emerge during interaction and have a lasting effect on belief
•Asch: social norms influence behaviour even for objective judgments
TODAY
•(5) Definitions and initial distinctions
•A working model of social influence
•Filling out the model
•Functions of social influence
•Influence processes and phenomena under influence
•As a function of source x process x phenomenon
•Moderators of influence (factors that amplify or attenuate)
DEFINITIONS
•(6) Social influence: the impact of others on our thoughts, feelings and actions
•Obedience and compliance: acquiescence to requests *(difference is whether the person is in an
authoritative position or not)
•Conformity: convergence of an individual’s thoughts and behaviour towards a group norm
Lecture 5 - Monday 21 August 2017
PSYC20009 - PERSONALITY & SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
•(Public conformity - surface) vs. (private conformity - deep)
•Persuasion: process of changing attitudes by communication
A BASIC MODEL OF INFLUENCE
•(7) In the presence of an influence source, a target’s behavior and/or mental states (beliefs,
desires, intentions, attitudes, emotions) are different to what they would be in the absence of the
influence source. If we cans ay this, a social influence has occurred.
•Source → (channel) → target attribute
AN ELABORATED MODEL OF INFLUENCE
•(8) Influence can come from different sources.
•Can be a group (either real or imagined)
•Influence can be verbal or non verbal
•And the phenomena under influence can be one or many of behaviour, attitudes, beliefs,
emotions, desires.
FUNCTIONS OF INFLUENCE
•(9) What is influence good for? (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955)
•Useful, functional, adaptive
• Normative influence: going along to fit in/connect/belong (often only public/surface). Often
this doesn’t necessarily change your beliefs or anything.
•Informational influence: going along to be accurate (often private/deep)
→ Cialdini & Goldstein (2004)
•Accuracy (info.)
•Affiliation (norm.)
•Positive self-concept: going along to feel good about yourself.
NORMATIVE AND INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE MODERATORS
•(10)
•Normative influence:
•Group cohesion increases conformity
•Group size (but with a plateau of about 30-35% conformity at n = 3)
•Social support for deviant position: less likely to go along with group if you didn’t have the
support.
•Informational influence:
•Self-confidence: more confident that you know what’s going on, less likely to be swayed.
•Task difficulty: increased difficulty = increased conformity
•Stereotypes...
→ Pendry & Carrick (2001)
•(11) Beep estimation task
•Solo vs. group
•Actually 100 beeps, but
confederates: 120-125
•What would the participant guess?
•But before this, they were primed with photos of either accountants (probably seen as
conformists) or punks (non conformists).
•Found that in the solo condition, people are accurate. In the no prime condition (group without
thinking about accountants or punks), they made judgements closer to matching confederates’ for
conformity. When people are exposed to the accountant one they conform even more, but when
exposed to the punk they had the same results as if they were alone.
Document Summary
Milgram (1963, 1974: (1) the electric shock for learners experiment. They had a naive estimate that 1-3% of participants would give the learners the full strength shock, it turned out to be around 65% actually did it. Shows that the majority of people will do things other people tell them to. Sherif (1936: (2) the autokinetic effect, individual, group, iterations, convergence, up to one year later, norms still exert an effect, people see a light in a room and state how far away it is. They do this individually and then do it inside a group. In the group version, people end up converging on the same estimate. Asch (1952: (3) same as above whereby people lie in groups. It"s the one about the lengths of the lines: ostensible perceptual discrimination experiment, 18 trials, 12 out of 18 confederates unanimously agreed on an incorrect answer, 75% con formed on at least 1 trial, 50% on 6 or more.
