Explain social influence on individual behaviour

What this dot point is asking

Conformity

Conformity is changing behaviour or beliefs to match a group. Solomon Asch (1951) showed participants lines and asked which matched a standard line. When confederates gave obviously wrong answers, about 37 percent of responses conformed, and 75 percent conformed at least once. Conformity rose with group size up to about three or four people and fell when one ally also disagreed.

Two explanations are normative influence (conforming to be liked or accepted) and informational influence (conforming because we believe others are right, especially in ambiguous situations).

Obedience

Obedience is following the direct orders of an authority figure. Stanley Milgram (1963) asked participants to give what they believed were increasing electric shocks to a "learner" when ordered by an experimenter. About 65 percent continued to the maximum 450 volts despite distress. Obedience increased with a legitimate authority and a prestigious setting, and decreased when the experimenter was distant or the victim was close.

The Stanford prison experiment (Zimbardo, 1971) assigned students to be guards or prisoners. Guards quickly became abusive and prisoners passive, and the study was stopped early. Zimbardo argued the situation and assigned social roles, not personality, drove the behaviour. The study is now strongly criticised on ethical and methodological grounds, including demand characteristics.

Group behaviour

Groups change individual behaviour in several ways:

• Social facilitation: performance improves on easy tasks when others are present (Triplett, 1898, cyclists rode faster against others).
• Social loafing: individuals exert less effort in a group because responsibility is shared.
• Deindividuation: loss of personal identity in a crowd reduces self-restraint.
• Groupthink: the desire for group harmony leads to poor decisions.
• Bystander effect: people are less likely to help when others are present, due to diffusion of responsibility (linked to Darley and Latane, 1968).

Attribution

Attribution theory explains how we interpret the causes of behaviour. We make internal (dispositional) attributions, blaming the person, or external (situational) attributions, blaming the circumstances. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to over-emphasise personality and under-emphasise the situation when judging others, while excusing our own behaviour with the situation (self-serving bias).

Attitudes and prejudice

Attitudes have three components: cognitive (beliefs), affective (feelings) and behavioural. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a group, and discrimination is acting on it. Tajfel's social identity theory shows that simply dividing people into groups creates in-group favouritism and out-group bias.

These processes explain everyday behaviour from peer pressure to crowd violence and connect to wellbeing and developmental topics.