Chapter 7

Social influence - Process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real or implied
presence of other people.

Norms - Attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate
between groups.

Turner (1991) has called ‘normative social similarities and differences between people’

Compliance, obedience, conformity

Compliance - Superficial, public and transitory change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in
response to requests, coercion or group pressure.

Public compliance – an outward change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in response to a request
from another person, or as a consequence of persuasion or coercion. As compliance does not reflect
internal change, it usually persists only while behaviour is under surveillance. For example, children
may obey parental directives to keep their room tidy, but only if they know that their parents are
watching! An important prerequisite for coercive compulsion and compliance is that the source of
social influence is perceived by the target of influence to have power; power is the basis of
compliance.

There is subjective acceptance and conversion, which produces true internal change that persists in
the absence of surveillance. Conformity is based not on power but rather on the subjective validity of
social norms: that is, a feeling of confidence and certainty that the beliefs and actions described by the
norm are correct, appropriate, valid and socially desirable. Under these circumstances, the norm
becomes an internalised standard for behaviour, and thus surveillance is unnecessary.

Reference groups are groups that are psychologically significant for people’s attitudes and
behaviour, either in the positive sense that we seek to behave in accordance with their norms, or in the
negative sense that we seek to behave in opposition to their norms.

Membership groups are groups to which we belong (which we are in) by some objective criterion,
external designation or social consensus.

A positive reference group is a source of conformity (which will be socially validated if that group
also happens to be our membership group), while a negative reference group that is also our
membership group has enormous coercive power to produce compliance.

The general distinction between coercive compliance and persuasive influence is a theme that surfaces
repeatedly in different guises in social influence research.

Dual-process dependency model - General model of social influence in which two separate
processes operate – dependency on others for social approval (normative influence) and for
information about reality(informational influence).

Compliance tends to be associated with power relations, whereas conformity is not. Compliance is
affected not only by the persuasive tactics that people use to make requests but also by how much
power the source of influence is perceived to have. Power can be interpreted as the capacity or ability
to exert influence; and influence is power in action.

1 Reward power - The ability to give or threaten punishment for non-compliance

2 Coercive power - The ability to give or promise rewards for compliance

3 Informational power - The target’s belief that the influencer has more information than oneself.
participants more readily accepted information that people did not need much sleep when the
information was attributed to a Nobel Prize-winning physiologist than to a less prestigious source.
The information lost the power to influence only when it became intrinsically implausible – stating
that almost no sleep was needed

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. Rests on authority and is probably best illustrated by a
consideration of obedience

6 Referent power - Identification with, attraction to or respect for the source of influence. Referent
power may operate through a range of processes, including consensual validation, social approval and
group identification.

People who believe they have legitimate power are more likely to take action to pursue goals – they
feel empowered, and that people who do not feel their power is legitimate or associated with status
can be extremely destructive.

Leadership is a process of influence that enlists and mobilises others in the attainment of collective
goals; it imbues people with the group’s attitudes and goals and inspires them to work towards
achieving them. Leadership is not a process that requires people to exercise power over others in order
to gain compliance or, more extremely, in order to coerce or force people. Leadership may actually be
more closely associated with conformity processes than power processes, and power may be social
construct rather than a cause of effective leadership.

Obedience to authority
Solomon Asch published the results of a now-classic experiment on conformity, in which student
participants conformed to incorrect judgements of line lengths made by a numerical majority. Non-
ambiguous

Milgram decided to have experimental confederates apparently administer electric shocks to another
person to see whether the true participant, who was not a confederate, would conform.

Agentic state - A frame of mind thought by Milgram to characterise unquestioning obedience, in

which people as agents transfer personal responsibility to the person giving orders.

Factors influencing obedience

In one study in which women were the participants, exactly the same level of obedience was obtained
as with male participants.

One reason why people continue to administer electric shocks may be that the experiment starts very
innocuously with quite trivial shocks. Once people have committed themselves to a course of action
(i.e. to give shocks), it can be difficult subsequently to change their minds. The process, which
reflects the psychology of sunk costs in which once committed to a course of action people will
continue their commitment even if the costs increase dramatically, may be similar to that involved in
the foot-in-the-door technique of persuasion.

A significant factor in obedience is immediacy of the victim – how close or obvious the victim is to
the participant. Milgram varied the level of immediacy across a number of experiments.
 We have seen above that 65 per cent of people ‘shocked to the limit’ of 450 V when the
victim was unseen and unheard except for pounding on the wall.
 In an even less immediate condition in which the victim was neither seen nor heard at all, 100
per cent of people went to the end.
 The baseline condition (the one described in detail earlier) yielded 62.5 per cent obedience.
 As immediacy increased from this baseline, obedience decreased: when the victim was visible
in the same room, 40 per cent obeyed to the limit; and when the teacher actually had to hold
the victim’s hand down on to the electrode to receive the shock, obedience dropped to a still
frighteningly high 30 per cent.
 Immediacy may prevent dehumanisation of the victim

Another significant factor is immediacy of the authority figure.

 Obedience was reduced to 20.5 per cent when the experimenter was absent from the room and
relayed directions by telephone.
 When the experimenter gave no orders at all, and the participant was entirely free to choose
when to stop, 2.5 per cent still persisted to the end.
 Perhaps the most dramatic influence on obedience is group pressure. The presence of two
disobedient peers (i.e. others who appeared to revolt and refused to continue after giving
shocks in the 150–210 V range) reduced complete obedience to 10 per cent,
 while two obedient peers raised complete obedience to 92.5 per cent.

Another important factor is the legitimacy of the authority figure, which allows people to abdicate
personal responsibility for their actions.

Group pressure probably has its effects because the actions of others help to confirm that it is either
legitimate or illegitimate to continue administering the shocks. Another important factor is the
legitimacy of the authority figure, which allows people to abdicate personal responsibility for their
actions.

Milgram’s research addresses one of humanity’s great failings – the tendency for people to obey
orders without first thinking about (1) what they are being asked to do and (2) the consequences of
their obedience for other living beings.

Conformity
Conformity – Deep-seated, private and enduring change in behaviour and attitudes due to group
pressure.
Floyd Allport observed that people in groups gave less extreme and more conservative judgements of
odours and weights than when they were alone. It seemed as if, in the absence of direct pressure, the
group could cause members to converge and thus become more similar to one another.

Muzafer Sherif (1936) explicitly linked this convergence effect to the development of group norms.
Proceeding from the premise that people need to be certain and confident that what they are doing,
thinking or feeling is correct and appropriate, Sherif argued that people use the behaviour of others to
establish the range of possible behaviour: we can call this the frame of reference, or relevant social
comparative context. Average, central or middle positions in such frames of reference are typically
perceived to be more correct than fringe positions; thus, people tend to adopt them. Sherif believed
that this explained the origins of social norms and the associated convergence that accentuates
consensus within groups.

Frame of reference - Complete range of subjectively conceivable positions on some attitudinal or

behavioural dimension, which relevant people can occupy in a particular context.

Autokinesis - Optical illusion in which a pinpoint of light shining in complete darkness appears to
move about.

Normative pressure is one of the most effective ways to change people’s behaviour

Who conforms? Individual and group characteristics

Those who conform tend to have low self-esteem, a high need for social support or approval, a need
for self-control, low IQ, high anxiety, feelings of self-blame and insecurity in the group, feelings of
inferiority, feelings of relatively low status in the group and a generally authoritarian personality.
However, contradictory findings, and evidence that people who conform in one situation do not
conform in another, suggest that situational factors may be more important than personality in
conformity.

Women have been shown to conform slightly more than men in some conformity studies. This can be
explained in terms of the tasks used in some of these studies – tasks with which women had less
familiarity and expertise. Women were therefore more uncertain and thus more influenced than men

Women do, however, tend to conform a little more than men in public interactive settings like that
involved in the Asch paradigm. One explanation is that it reflects women’s greater concern with
maintaining group harmony. However, a later study put the emphasis on men’s behaviour; women
conformed equally in public and private contexts.

Conformity in collectivist or interdependent cultures tends to be greater because conformity is viewed

favourably, as a form of social glue. What is perhaps more surprising is that although conformity is
lower in individualist Western societies, it is still remarkably high; even when conformity has
negative overtones, people find it difficult to resist conforming to a group norm.

Processes of conformity

Informational influence is a process where people accept information from another as

evidence about reality. We need to feel confident that our perceptions, beliefs and feelings are
correct. Informational influence comes into play when we are uncertain, either because
stimuli are intrinsically ambiguous or because there is social disagreement. When this
happens, we initially make objective tests against reality; otherwise, we make social
comparisons. Effective informational influence causes true cognitive change.

Informational influence rules in moments of doubt, not times of certainty.

Normative influence is a process where people conform to the positive expectations of others. People
have a need for social approval and acceptance, which causes them to ‘go along with’ the group for
instrumental reasons – to cultivate approval and acceptance, to avoid censure or disapproval or to
achieve specific goals.
There is considerable evidence that people often conform to a majority in public but do not
necessarily internalise this as it does not carry over to private settings or endure over time.

Social identity theory - Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-
categorization, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-
defining properties.

referent informational influence - Pressure to conform to a group norm that defines oneself as a
group member.

Meta-contrast principle - The prototype of a group is that position within the group that has the
largest ratio of ‘differences to ingroup positions’ to ‘differences to outgroup positions’.

Minority influence - Social influence processes whereby numerical or power minorities change the
attitudes of the majority.

Conformity bias
Tendency for social psychology to treat group influence as a one-way process in which individuals or
minorities always conform to majorities.

Presentation