Social Psychology
Lecture 3: Social Influence
(Chapter 7; Hogg & Vaughan)
At the end of the lecture . . .
• General Question: Ways that ideas of social influence are conceptualised
within Social Psychology’
•
•
•
•
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Types of social influence
Obedience to authority
Conformity
Conformity Processes
Minority Influences
There are many different sources of power that people can access to
persuade others
Figure 7.1
Source: Based on Raven (1965)
Types of social influence
• Social influence takes different forms.
• Compliance refers to a situation in which you do what
someone asks you to do, or you go along publicly with
a request, but you do not necessarily change your
underlying attitudes and feelings.
• Obedience is one form of compliance: You do what
someone tells you because he or she is in a position
of power over you. (This person has the power to
reward and punish you.)
• Membership groups — groups you are in by some
external designation only — produce compliance.
• In contrast to compliance is conformity. You
internalize a group norm as being relevant to who
you are. Influence creates genuine, internalized
attitude change.
• Reference groups (groups you feel you belong to)
produce conformity.
Obedience to authority
Blind obedience to authority can cause people to do terrible
things they would never do on their own. Obedience to
authority is often the mitigating plea made by people charged
with crimes against humanity.
In his classic obedience study, Stanley Milgram found that very
ordinary people would ostensibly administer a massive and
deadly electric shock to a stranger who merely got word pairs
wrong, simply because the experimenter ordered them to do
so. A major surprise was that this willingness to shock far
exceeded expectations.
Milgram's research stirred up a fierce debate in psychology
concerning the ethics of doing research and has led to the
development of very stringent guidelines for psychological
research.
Predicted versus actual levels of shock given to a victim in Milgram’s
obedience-to-authority experiment
Figure 7.3
Source: Based on data from Milgram (1974)
Conformity
• Conformity is a process of internalized cognitive
change as the consequence of influence, largely
by group norms.
• Group norms obey the metacontrast principle:
They capture similarities with a group and
differences between groups. Norms arise to
regulate behaviour; we use people’s relevant
behaviour as a frame of reference to determine
the norm.
• Experiments in which a single person would take
part surrounded by a group of confederates of the
experiment
• Sherif showed this in a series of studies where
people estimated the movement of a light source
in a dark room (autokinesis); over time the
estimates converged on the average of the group,
and this norm persisted to influence new members
of the group.
Figure 7.4
Experimental induction of a group norm
Source: Based on data from Sherif (1936)
Conformity
• Norms are powerful. Asch showed that people find it
extraordinarily difficult to resist being influenced by an
incorrect majority if that majority is consistent and
unanimous - even one dissenter can dramatically
reduce the majority's power over the individual.
• Experiments in which a single person would take part
surrounded by a group of confederates of the
experiment
Conformity
• Situational factors account for considerable
variance in the tendency to conform.
• Conformity to group pressure is much higher
when the majority is unanimous. It is also higher
when the size of the group increases, though its
at full strength when you have a three to five
majority (Stang, 1976).
• Group size may have a different effect depending
on what type of judgement is being made and the
motivation of the person. E.g. if you are
concerned about being correct then you may be
swayed with less people (Campbell & Fairey,
1989).
• Support also a situational factor
Conformity as a function of presence or absence of support, and of
competence of supporter
Figure 7.8
Source: Based on data from Allen & Levine (1971)
Conformity Processes
• Conformity occurs via three possible
processes
• informational influence
• normative influence
– dual-process dependency model
• referent informational influence
– Challenge to the dual-process dependency model
Conformity Processes
• informational influence: Accept information
from others as evidence about reality.
• People need to feel confident that the
perception, beliefs and feeling are correct.
Informational influence comes into being
when people are uncertain, because either
the stimuli is ambiguous or there is social
disagreement.
• Linked to Sherif’s findings
Conformity Processes
• normative influence: You may conform to
gain approval and avoid censure from others
• People have a need for social approval and
acceptance, therefore this explains why
people go along with the group.
• normative influence becomes important
when the group is perceived to have power,
by being able to provide rewards, or
punishment (via social disapproval).
• Link to Asch’s findings.
Conformity Processes
• normative influence: Accept information
from others as evidence about reality
• informational influence: conform to gain
approval and avoid censure from others
• together these processes represent a dualprocess dependency model of influence.
Conformity processes
• The third process, based on the social
identity approach, is referent
informational influence: You conform
because norms defines the membership
in a group that is an important aspect of
your self-concept.
• Dual Process model focuses on
interpersonal dependency, while this
emphasises the social groups that you
belong to and group norms.
• Therefore you don’t conform to others
you conform to what is expected from
your group norm.
Conformity processes
• Dual Process model example
• If you were in a meeting with a lot of university
students and they were discussing something
that disadvantaged students in psychology, you
wouldn’t necessarily conform to that discussion,
you probably would conform to what the group
norm is for psychology students and object.
• Equally if you were in a discussion with
psychology students regarding the same
aspects but this time the intended action
disadvantaged economic students you may not
object to this
Minority influence
• Social Change suggests minority influence
• Suffragettes of the 1920’s changed public
opinion that women got the public vote
• Nelson Mandela in South Africa
• Greenpeace has slowly helped changed our
attitudes to the environment
• Moscovici and Faucheux (1972) have pondered
whether Asch and Sherif observed in their classic
experiments evidence of majority influence but
the extent of minority influence
• Moscovici has argued that there are three social
influence modalities in the occurrence of social
conflict
• Conformity: majority influence
• Normalisation: Mutual compromise leading to
convergence
• Innovation: minority creates and accentuates conflict to
accept minority viewpoint
Minority influence
• Moscovici developed the genetic model
of minority influence
• Whether a minority can win over a majority
depends on how the minority goes about
its task (its behavioural style)
• The single most important behavioural
style is consistency – all the members
repeat the same message
• This leads to
• Disrupts the majority norm and provides uncertainty
• Draws attention to itself as an entity
• Conveys the existence of a alternative and coherent
point of view
• Demonstrate certainty in, and unshakable commitment
to, its point of view
• It shows that the only solution to the conflict that has
arisen is the adoption of the minority viewpoint
Revision Hints
• When reading about studies each is
quite different in the method it uses.
It might be wise not to get bogged
down in the methods, but look for
common ground in terms of the
arguments being put forward
• Lot of material in this topic, and you
won’t be able to cover every topic.
Therefore be selective and
concentrate on the main ideas.
At the end of the lecture . . .
• General Question: Ways that ideas of
social influence are conceptualised
within Social Psychology’
•
•
•
•
•
Types of social influence
Obedience to authority
Conformity
Conformity Processes
Minority Influences