AQA A-Level Psychology Social
Influence Essay Plans
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KAREEY MUMBI
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Summary AQA A-Level Psychology Biopsychology Essay Plans
2022
Social Influence Essay Plans
Describe a nd Evaluate Asc h’s Research in to Conformity
AO1:
- Confor mity ~ a change i n a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagine pressure from other people.
- Asch (1951) 123 male American students, tested in a gr oup between 6 and 8 confederates. Participants identified the
length of a standard line, on the first few trials confederates gave correct answers but then all selected the s ame
wrong answers. Each participant competed 18 trials with 12 ‘critic al trials’ with the confederates giving the wrong
answer.
- Naïve participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time. ftowever, there were individual differences and 25% of
participants nev er gave a wrong answer. Conformed to av oid rejection and continued to privately trust their own
opinions.
- Asch (1955) conducted the same experience but with variables. Group size (between 1 and 15) ~ with 2 confederates
13.6% conformity, 3 31.8% and adding more made little differenc e), unanimity (presence of a dissenting confederate)
reduc ed c onformity whether they were giving the c orrect ans wers or not, task difficulty (lines more similar in l ength) ~
conformity increas ed when the task was more difficult.
Artificial task Asch’s study was an artificial situation and task, it is a trivial task with no meaning so is not
generalisable to ev eryday situations. Also, the participants were aware that they were taking part in a
study and s o the res ults may be subj ect to demand characteristics and this lowers the external
validity.
Control group Asch used a control group to test that the participants were actually conforming and not just giving
answers that they actually believed to be true. In the c ontrol group only 3 out of 720 were mistak es,
this increases the v alidity of the research.
Cultural differenc es in There are cultural differenc es in conformity. Smith & Bond (1998) s uggest that the conformity in
conformity China would be higher than i n the USA. T his is because USA is an individualist culture and people are
more independent however collectivis t countries such as China have higher conformity rates bec ause
they rely on others more. T his is a limitation of the research as it ignores cultural differences.
Also, Asch’s study only had male participants, Neto (1995) suggests that women may be more
conformist than men, because they are more conscious about fitting in and taking other people’s
advice.
Supporting Research Crutchfield (1955) did a similar study in cubicles; each participant was told he was the last to guess
and the other participants answers were visible on a screen. 50% of the time participants were given
incorrect answers, they found similar levels of conformity to Asch (30%) . This gives Asch’s study more
reliable.
Situational variables Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems and were giv en fak e
answers from 3 other ‘students. They found that participants conformed more often when the
problems were harder, although this did depend on a situational variable. They found that participants
with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low
confidence. This is a limitation of Asch’s research, and shows that task difficulty only seems to have
an effect when peopl e are not c onfident in their abiliti es.
Outlin e and Evaluate Research in to Ex planatio ns of Con formity
AO1:
- Confor mity ~ a change i n a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagine pressure from other people.
- Informational Social Influence – motivated by a desire to be correct, most likely to happen if the situation is new or
ambiguous
- Normative Social Influence – motivated by a desire to be accepted, an emotional pr ocess, most likely to occur with
strangers where you are concerned about rejection.
Research support for Lucas et al (2006) found that more participants conformed to incorrect answers when the maths
ISI probl ems were difficult. This was most true for students who rated their maths ability as poor. This
supports informational social influence as they conformed with others who they thought were smarter
than them bec aus e of their desire to be c orrect.
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