Topic 5: Social influence
Process whereby attitudes and behaviours are influenced by the real or implied
Social influence is…
Compliance is…
Obedience is…
Conformity is…
Raven’s (1965, 1993) six
sources of power are…
Purpose and details of study
procedure
Main findings
presence of other people.
Compliance: superficial, public, and transitory change in behaviour and expressed
attitudes in response to requests, coercion, or group pressure (associated with
power).
Obedience: a change in behaviour that is ordered by another person or group; it is
affected by the proximity and legitimacy of authority, by the proximity of the victim
and the degree of social support for obedience or disobedience.
Conformity: is based not on power but rather on the subjective validity of social
norms; the norm becomes an internalised standard of behaviour, and thus
surveillance is unnecessary. It can be reduced if the task is unambiguous and we are
not under surveillance, although even under these circumstances there is often
residual conformity. Lack of unanimity among the majority is particularly effective
in reducing conformity.
1. Reward power: the ability to give or promise rewards for compliance.
2. Coercive power: the ability to give or threaten punishment for non-
compliance.
3. Informational power: the target's belief that the influencer has more
information than oneself.
4. Expert power: the target's belief that the influencer has generally greater
expertise and knowledge than oneself.
5. Legitimate power: the target's belief that the influencer is authorised by a
recognised power structure to command and make decisions.
6. Referent power: identification with, attraction to or respect for the source
of influence.
The original French and Raven (1959) model included five bases of power –
reward, coercion, legitimate, expert, and referent – however, informational
power was added by Raven in 1965, bringing the total to six.
Purpose: Our main purpose is to identify the major types of power and to define
them systematically so that we may compare them according to the changes which
they produce and the other effects which accompany the use of power.
Social influence is defined as a change in the belief, attitude, or behaviour of a
person -- the target of influence, which results from the action, or presence, of
another person or group of persons -- the influencing agent. Social power is defined
as the potential for such influence. The typology contains six bases of power,
resources that an influencing agent (Person A) can utilize in changing the beliefs,
attitudes, or behaviours of a target (Person B).
Power to reinforce or punish people influence behaviour.
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Possible explanations for Obedience: means to comply with the demands of someone you see as an authority
figure.
obedience effects
The agentic shift
- When orders come from a figure of authority, we can easily deny personal
responsibility because it is assumed that they will take ultimate
responsibility.
- When this happens, we become ‘agents’ of an external authority
- Milgram claims obedience occurs due to 2 opposing sets of demands:
1. The external authority: Authority of the authority figure
2. The internal authority: Authority of our own conscience

- The agentic shift: is when the fully obedient person undergoes a

psychological adjustment or ‘shift’, and they see themselves as an agent of
external authority.
The presence of an authority figure
- An important factor in obedience is legitimate authority:
- This refers to the amount of social power held by the authority figure
- Most human (and indeed animal) societies are ordered in a hierarchical
way, where some members of the group have legitimate social power above
those beneath them in the hierarchy.
- We are taught early by socialisation in the family and at school that we will
be accepted if we obey those who have authority over us. Two reasons we
may obey people with legitimate authority are because we trust them or
because they have the power to punish us.

Agentic state
- Milgram's interest in obedience originally was ignited by the trial of Adolf
Eichmann in 1961, who was being trailed for War Crimes
- He had been in charge of the Nazi Death camps and Eichmann's defence
was that he was obeying orders.
- This led Milgram to look at Agentic State as an explanation of obedience;
where an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure, acting as
their agent.
- The shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is referred to as the ‘agentic shift' and
this allows the individual to take no personal responsibility for the actions.
- An autonomous state is the opposite of an agentic state and means the
person has autonomy over their actions and can act according to their own
principles.
- Binding Factors: during Milgram's experiment, he observed that many
participants said they wanted to stop but seemed powerless to do so
Milgram said this was due to them staying in an agentic state through
binding factors.
- Binding factors are when aspects of the situation mean the individual is
able to take away their own 'moral strain' and ignore their damaging
behaviour.

Legitimacy of authority
- The Hierarchy of most societies means that there are people who are in
certain positions that hold legitimate authority in their positions, such as
police officers, teachers, doctors etc.
- It is legitimate as it has been agreed by society that these positions carry
power and most people accept this
- Authority figures need to be allowed to exercise power over others as this
allows society to continue to function in an orderly fashion.

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 - In Milgram's experiment, the experimenter displayed destructive authority
when they were prodding and encouraging the teacher, making the
participants go against their own moral judgement. potentially kill another
human being.
Evaluation
- The agentic shift cannot explain why some participants in Milgram’s study
did not obey, as, in theory, they should all have been in an agentic state
- Therefore, this cannot explain all obedience or obedience over long periods
of time (such as in Nazi Germany)
- Blass and Schmitt (2001) asked observers to explain who they thought was
responsible for the harm caused to the learner in Milgram’s study. Most
thought the experimenter was responsible, so supporting the agentic state
explanation.
Milgram’s (1974) follow-up Milgram (1974) conducted 18 experiments, varying different parameters to
investigate factors influencing obedience. In all but one, the participants were
studies:
between 20–50-year-old males. In one study, women were the participants, the
Additional manipulations and exactly same level of obedience was obtained as with male participants.
Burger (2009) conducted a partial replication (bc of ethics) of the original Milgram
findings
studies. Results: only slightly lower levels of obedience than the original one.

Critique: Ethical concerns and The ethical issues revolve around 3 questions concerning the ethics of subjecting
experimental participants to short-term stress:
how they have been addressed in
1. Is the research important? If not, then such stress is unjustifiable.
replication studies However, it can be difficult to assess the ‘importance’ of research
objectively.
2. Is the participant free to terminate the experiment at any time?
How free were Milgram’s participants? In one sense, they were free to
do whatever they wanted, but it was never made explicit to them that
they could terminate whenever they wished – in fact, the very purpose
of the study was to persuade them to remain!
3. Does the participant freely consent to being in the experiment in
the first place? In Milgram’s experiments the participants did not give
fully informed consent: they volunteered to take part, but the true nature
of the experiment was not fully explained to them.
This raises the issue of deception in social psychology research. Kelman
(1967) distinguishes 2 reasons for deceiving people:
1. To induce them to take part in an otherwise unpleasant
experiment. This is, ethically, a highly dubious practice.
2. In order to study the automatic operation of psychological
processes, participants need to be naive regarding the hypotheses,
and this often involves some deception concerning the true purpose of
the study and the procedures used.
The fallout from this debate has been a code of ethics to guide psychologists in
conducting research. The principal components of the code are:
1. Participation must be based on fully informed consent;
2. Participants must be explicitly informed that they can withdraw,
without penalty, at any stage of the study;
3. Participants must be fully and honestly debriefed at the end of the
study.

Complete range of subjectively conceivable positions on some attitudinal or

Frame of reference is…
behavioural dimension, which relevant people can occupy in a particular context.

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Normative influence is…
Informational influence is…
Details of study procedure and
purpose
Morton Deutsch and Harold
Gerard (1955)
Main findings
Critique: Ethical concerns in
conformity studies and how they
have been addressed in
replication studies
Normative influence refers to the fact that people sometimes change their
behaviour, thoughts, or values to be liked and accepted by others.
This results in conformity, in the form of individuals altering their utterances or
demeanour to be more like what they perceive to be the norm.
At the individual level, pivotal factors leading to normative influence are the desire
to form a good impression and the fear of embarrassment.
Normative influence is strongest when someone cares about the group exerting the
influence and when behaviour is performed in front of members of that group.
It is one of social psychology’s paradigmatic phenomena because it epitomizes
the impact of the social world on an individual’s thoughts and actions.
Informational influence refers to new information or arguments provided in a
group discussion that change a group member’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviour.
Informational influence is likely to be stronger when a person is uncertain about
the correct interpretation of reality and/or the correct behaviour in a given context
and therefore looks to other group members for guidance.
The concept of informational influence was originally proposed by Morton
Deutsch and Harold B. Gerard, who were trying to understand why group
members holding a minority view tended to adopt the group majority’s view.
Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955) wondered whether they
could entirely eradicate pressure to conform if: (a) the task was unambiguous, (b)
the participant was anonymous and responded privately; or (c) the participant was
not under any sort of surveillance by the group.
To test this idea, Deutsch and Gerard confronted a naive participant face-
to-face with 3 confederates who made unanimously incorrect
judgements of lines on focal trials. In another condition, the naive
participant was anonymous, isolated in a cubicle and allowed to respond
privately – no group pressure existed. There was a third condition in
which participants responded face-to-face, but with an explicit group goal
to be as accurate as possible – group pressure was maximised.
Results: the results showed that decreasing uncertainty and decreasing group
pressure (i.e. the motivation and ability of the group to censure lack of
conformity) reduced conformity. People still conformed at a rate of
about 23% even when uncertainty was low(stimulus present) and responses
were private and anonymous. This discovery, made it now possible to research
conformity in a much more streamlined and resource-intense way.
- The ethical issue which has arisen in studies of conformity is use of
deception. This is where the participants are misled as to the task they are
involved in or not fully informed of the situation.
- Asch's research is ethically questionable. He broke several ethical
guidelines, including: deception and protection from harm. Asch
deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a
vision test and not an experiment on conformity.
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The importance of consistency
(Moscovici et al. 1969)
Moscovici, Lage & Naffrechoux
(1969) blue-green studies:
Study procedure and purpose
Main findings
Conversion theory (Moscovici,
1980) is a more cognitive
account of…
Majority exerts influence
through a process of:
In contrast, a minority exerts
influence through a process of:
Moscovici (1969) stated that the most important aspect of behavioural style is the
consistency with which people hold their position. Being consistent and unchanging
in a view is more likely to influence the majority than if a minority is inconsistent
and chops and changes their mind.
Aim: To investigate the effects of a consistent minority on a majority. Moscovici
(1969) conducted a re-run of Asch’s experiment, but in reverse.
Instead of one subject amongst a majority of confederates, he placed two
confederates together with four genuine participants. The participants were first
given eye tests to ensure they were not color-blind.
Procedure: They were then placed in a group consisting of four participants and
two confederates. They were shown 36 slides which were clearly different shades of
blue and asked to state the color of each slide out loud.
In the first part of the experiment the two confederates answered green for each of
the 36 slides. They were totally consistent in their responses. In the second part of
the experiment they answered green 24 times and blue 12 times.
In this case they were inconsistent in their answers. Would the responses of the two
confederates influence those of the four participants? In other words, would there be
minority influence?
Results: In condition one it was found that the consistent minority had an affect on
the majority (8.42%) compared to an inconsistent minority (only 1.25% said green).
A third (32%) of all participants judged the slide to be green at least once.
Conclusion: Minorities can influence a majority, but not all the time and only when
they behave in certain ways (e.g. consistent behavior style).
Conversion theory is Moscovici’s conceptual analysis of the cognitive and
interpersonal processes that mediate the direct and indirect impact of a consistent
minority on the majority.
This theory remains the dominant explanation of minority influence.
Moscovici argued that majorities and minorities exert influence through different
processes.
1. Majority influence produces direct public compliance for the reasons of
normative or informational dependence.
2. Minority influence produces indirect, often latent, private change in
opinion due to the cognitive conflict and restructuring that deviant ideas
produce. Minorities produce a conversion effect as a consequence of active
consideration of the minority point of view.