Psychology GCSE: Social Influence

Aim: to discover the effect on judgement of listening to other people
Method: he asked participants to estimate how far the spot of light moved when they were sitting in an otherwise dark room. The light didn’t actually move at all but an optical illusion called the autokinetic effect made it appear as if it did
Results: individually the participants gave a variety of estimates, which differed quite widely from each other’s. Participants then completed the same task in groups of three and their estimate became more similar until finally they were close
Conclusion: the participants used other people’s opinions to help them form a judgement in an ambitious situation

The need to be right (especially in an ambiguous situation) and the need to be liked

Aim: Asch wanted to know whether people could be influenced by other people’s opinions to give an answer they knew to be wrong. In this way it would be possible to see if people were conforming
Method: participants were shown sets of four lines. For each set, the participant had to say whether line A, B or C was the same length as the test line. When tested alone, the participants rarely made a mistake but when tested in a group, the rest of the group was instructed to give incorrect answers for some of the tests
Results: on 32% of the trials where the rest of the group gave the wrong answer, the participants gave the same wrong answer. 74% of the participants gave at least one wrong answer
Conclusion: those who gave incorrect answers told Asch they knew the answers were wrong but didn’t want to go against the group which clearly demonstrates normative social influence

Shown that it’s hard for individuals to act differently from the rest of a group
The implications of this could be quite serious in the decision making process of a jury. It’s highly likely that if 11 people in the jury believe the defendant to be guilty, the final juror will agree with them even if privately they believe otherwise. This is because of the difficulty of having to disagree with the majority

Aim: Milgram’s wanted to see how far people would obey an unreasonable order
Method: 40 male participants volunteered to take part in an experiment they believed to be about memory and learning where they would administer electric shocks to the learner every time they got an answer wrong. The learner was an actor and the shocks were fake but the participant didn’t know this. The participant was seated in front of a shock generator with 30 switches from 15 volts up to 450 volts. The learner had to remember word pairs and the participant had to administer a shock that would increase in severity with each mistake made. As the shocks increased, the participant heard the learner groan in pain and protest and yell to be released but this was just a recording that eventually went silent. This made the participant stop so the experimenter would provide verbal prods such as ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
Results: it was predicted that no more than 1% of participants would deliver the 450 volts however despite the participants distress, all participants gave 300 volts and 65% went to 450 volts
Conclusion: people are prepared to obey quite extraordinary orders if they think the person giving them is in a position of authority

Been able to provide an explanation for why the space shuttle Challenger was allowed to explode when it could have been prevented. It has been well documented that some engineers anticipated the breakage of the part that caused the explosion before the launch, but they were persuaded to say nothing by the authority figures within the organisation. Through this research, Milgram showed that it is easy to do as you are told and quite hard to disobey in such a situation

Aim: to see if people would follow an unreasonable order in their normal work environment
Method: Hofling contacted 22 nurses individually by phone claiming to be a doctor. He instructed them to give a patient twice the maximum dosage of a drug called Astofen
Results: 21 out of 22 nurses were prepared to follow his orders, despite the maximum dosage being clearly marked on the bottle
Conclusion: nurses are likely to obey the instructions of a doctor even when there may be consequences for a patient

Aim: he wanted to know if people would be more likely to obey and order if it came from someone in a uniform
Method: he had actors dress as either a security guard or just in a casual jacket. They each asked people sitting in a park to pick up some litter
Results: he found that 80% of people obeyed the guard compared with 40% when the actor wasn’t wearing a uniform
Conclusion: wearing a uniform will increase the sense that a person is a legitimate authority figure

Socialisation

Legitimate authority

Gradual commitment

Buffers

Not feeling responsible

Aim: to see if people in a big city behave in a more antisocial way than people in a small town
Method: he parked a car in each place with its bonnet up, as if it had broken down, and observed what people did as they passed by
Results: immediately people began stealing parts off the car in New York, and within two weeks there was very little left. In Palo Alto, the only time the car was touched was when someone lowered the bonnet to stop the engine getting wet when it was raining
Conclusion: the deindividuation caused by living in a big city leads to an increase in antisocial behaviour

Aim: to see the effect of hiding the identity of participants on the size of the electric shock they were prepared to give someone
Method: female university students were put into one or two groups when playing the role of the teacher. The first group had to wear lab coats with hoods to hide their faces and they weren’t introduced to each other. The second group wore their own clothes and name badges
Results: the shocks given by the first group were twice as great as the shocks given by the second group
Conclusion: being able to hide their identity leads to people to behave in crueller ways than they otherwise would because the person on the receiving end does not know who they are. This means there are less likely to be any consequences for what they do

By people losing their sense of individuality

In a crowd - we become anonymous

Being able to hide ones identity
Wearing a uniform
Being part of a gang or a clearly identifiable group

Can be used to prevent situations in which people can remain anonymous. CCTV cameras are being used increasingly to monitor people’s behaviour in shopping centre and car parks. If people know they can be identified in a crowd, they’re less likely to engage in antisocial behaviour

When people are wearing uniforms in the workplace, they do not behave like individuals, but as members of the business. People are made to wear uniforms so that they are easily identifiable and are less likely to try to be different from others in the company. This is one reason why school uniform is required as it makes it harder for the children to act independently and so are easier to control by a set of rules that apply to everyone

Aim: to see whether being in a group would have an effect on how much effort participants put into a task
Method: researchers asked 84 participants to shout and clap as loudly as they could while they were alone or in groups of up to 6. Each participant wore headphones so they couldn’t hear the others
Results: the larger the group size, the less noise the participants made
Conclusion: people put in less effort into doing something when they know others are contributing effort to the same task

Aim: to see if culture makes a difference on social loafing
Method: participants from the U.S and China had to complete tasks alone and in groups. The level of social loafing was measured by how much effort was put into the task in each condition by the participants
Results: the American participants reduced the amount of effort they put into the task when they were put into groups but the Chinese did not
Conclusion: social loafing does not exist in all cultures. In some cultures, people are prepared to work just as hard for the good of the whole group even when they do not need to

The size of the group you are with
The nature of the task you are performing
The culture to which you belong

Shows us that when people belong to a group they reduce the amount of effort they put into a task because it’s not possible to identify an individual’s performance so some people may work harder than others but no one would know who they are. E.g. In team sports and group activities in school

Latane and Darley
Aim: to see if people are less likely to react in an emergency when there are others present
Method: participants sat in a room either alone or in threes while completing a questionnaire. While the participants were doing this, smoke began pouring into the room
Results: 75% of this sitting alone went to tell someone within 6 minutes, whereas only 38% of people in groups of threes did
Conclusion: if there are other people around you, it will make it less likely that you will react in an emergency

Piliavin
Aim: to see if the appearance of the victim would influence helping behaviour
Method: an actor pretended to collapse in a train carriage and his appearance was altered several times and the amount of help received was recorded by an observer
Results: when the victim was carrying a walking stick, he received help within 70 seconds 90% of the time. When he had an ugly facial scar, this dropped to 60%. When he appeared to be drunk, it dropped to 20%
Conclusion: the appearance of the person needing help will affect whether and how quickly they get help

Bateson et al
Aim: to discover if the similarity of a victim to the bystander will affect whether or not they receive help
Method: participants watched a woman they thought was receiving electric shocks and was made to think the woman was either like themselves or not. They were then given the opportunity to take the woman’s place in order stop her suffering
Results: more participants were prepared to take the woman’s place when they thought she was similar to them in comparison to dissimilar
Conclusion: people are more likely to offer help to someone they feel is similar to themselves in some way than to someone they cannot relate to because w feel greater empathy for people like ourselves

Schroeder et al
Aim: to explore the different reasons for bystanders not helping
Method: the findings and conclusions from many previous pieces of research looking into bystander behaviour were studied
Results: they were able to provide an alternative explanation for why bystander did nothing to help when others were present
Conclusion: bystanders are distressed and concerned about victims but, when other people are present, they believe that someone else might be more capable of helping, or can help mor easily than themselves

1993, two year old James Bulger was abducted and murdered. This research shows us that people who witnessed a small boy being abducted are unlikely to intervene. Latane and Darley showed that, when lots of people are around, it reduces the chance of someone helping and so it's hard to realise there is an emergency when other people are doing nothing