Social Influence

Introduction

Social influence is the process by which an individual’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours are changed by the presence or actions of other people. This topic covers conformity (changing behaviour to fit in with a group), obedience (following direct orders from an authority figure), resistance to influence, minority influence, and how these processes contribute to social change.

Key Concepts

Types of Conformity

Herbert Kelman (1958) identified three types of conformity:

1. Compliance: Publicly agreeing with the group while privately maintaining one’s own beliefs. This is shallow and temporary, driven by the desire to be liked or accepted (normative social influence).
2. Identification: Adopting the beliefs and behaviours of a group because one values membership in that group. The change may persist only while group membership is valued.
3. Internalisation: Genuinely accepting and believing the group’s norms. The change is deep, permanent, and persists even outside the group. This is driven by informational social influence.

Explanations of Conformity

• Normative Social Influence (NSI): Conforming to be liked and accepted by the group. This leads to compliance. It is driven by the fear of rejection and the desire for social approval.
• Informational Social Influence (ISI): Conforming because one believes the group is correct. This leads to internalisation. It occurs in ambiguous situations where the correct response is unclear.

Asch’s Line Conformity Experiment (1951, 1955)

Aim: To investigate the extent to which individuals conform to a demonstrably wrong majority.

Procedure: 123 male American university students were shown a standard line and three comparison lines. They had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard. In the critical trials, 6–8 confederates deliberately gave the wrong answer before the real participant responded.

Findings:

• Participants conformed on approximately 37% of critical trials.
• 75% of participants conformed at least once.
• 25% of participants never conformed.

Variables affecting conformity:

• Group size: Conformity increased as group size increased, but only up to a point (3 confederates were sufficient for maximum effect).
• Unanimity: The presence of a dissenter (even one giving a different wrong answer) dramatically reduced conformity.
• Task difficulty: When lines were more similar (harder task), conformity increased, suggesting ISI plays a greater role when the task is ambiguous.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1973)

Aim: To investigate whether situational or dispositional factors cause abusive behaviour in prisons.

Procedure: 24 male college students were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison. The study was planned for two weeks.

Findings: Guards became increasingly abusive and authoritarian. Prisoners became submissive and distressed. The study was terminated after six days due to the extreme behaviour observed.

Evaluation: Demonstrated the power of situational factors and social roles on behaviour. However, ethical concerns include lack of fully informed consent, psychological harm, and Zimbardo’s dual role as researcher and prison superintendent (investigator effects).

Obedience

Milgram’s Shock Experiments (1963)

Aim: To investigate how far ordinary people would go in obeying an authority figure who instructed them to harm another person.

Procedure: 40 male volunteers aged 20–50 were told they were participating in a memory study. They were instructed by an experimenter (authority figure in a grey lab coat) to administer electric shocks to a “learner” (confederate) for incorrect answers. Shocks increased in 15-volt increments from 15V to 450V. No real shocks were delivered.

Findings:

• All participants went to at least 300V.
• 65% (26/40) went to the maximum 450V.
• Participants showed signs of extreme distress (sweating, trembling, seizures) but continued to obey.

Situational variables:

• Proximity: When the teacher and learner were in the same room, obedience dropped to 40%. When the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate, obedience dropped to 30%.
• Location: When the study was moved from Yale University to a run-down office, obedience dropped to 48%.
• Uniform: When the experimenter wore everyday clothes instead of a lab coat, obedience dropped to 20%.

Agentic state theory (Milgram, 1974): People operate in one of two states. In the autonomous state, individuals take responsibility for their actions. In the agentic state, individuals believe they are acting on behalf of an authority figure and therefore do not take personal responsibility. The shift from autonomous to agentic state is called the agentic shift.

Legitimacy of authority: People are more likely to obey those they perceive as having legitimate authority. This legitimacy is often conferred by uniform, institutional setting, or perceived expertise. In some cultures, legitimacy of authority is more strongly established (e.g., in hierarchical societies).

Resistance to Social Influence

• Social support: The presence of an ally who dissents from the majority reduces conformity (Asch) and obedience (Milgram, variation with another confederate who refused to continue — obedience dropped to 10%).
• Locus of control (Rotter, 1966): Individuals with an internal locus of control believe they control their own behaviour and outcomes. They are more resistant to social influence. Individuals with an external locus of control believe external forces control their behaviour. They are more likely to conform and obey.
• Oliner and Oliner (1988): Studied non-Jewish people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Rescuers scored higher on internal locus of control and social responsibility than non-rescuers.

Minority Influence

Moscovici et al. (1969):

Aim: To investigate whether a consistent minority could influence the majority.

Procedure: 172 female participants were shown 36 blue-green slides. In the consistent condition, two confederates called the slides “green” on every trial. In the inconsistent condition, they called the slides “green” on 24 of 36 trials.

Findings: In the consistent condition, participants agreed on 8.42% of trials. In the inconsistent condition, agreement was only 1.25%.

Three key processes for minority influence:

1. Consistency: The minority must be consistent over time and within the group (synchronic and diachronic consistency). This suggests confidence and makes the majority reconsider.
2. Commitment: The minority must demonstrate dedication, sometimes through personal sacrifice. This is known as the augmentation principle — the majority takes the minority’s view more seriously when they see them willing to suffer for it.
3. Flexibility: The minority must not be seen as dogmatic or rigid. A willingness to compromise makes the minority position more reasonable and persuasive.

Conversion theory: Minority influence leads to internalisation — a genuine, deep change in beliefs. Unlike majority influence (which often produces only surface-level compliance), minority influence causes people to privately reconsider their position through a process of cognitive conflict and validation.

Social Change

Social change occurs when a minority influence challenges the majority view and, over time, the new perspective becomes the majority position. Key examples include the civil rights movement, LGBTQ+ rights, and environmental campaigns.

Process:

1. Drawing attention to an issue through consistency, commitment, and flexibility.
2. Cognitive conflict created in the majority.
3. The augmentation principle (willingness to suffer strengthens the message).
4. The snowball effect — gradually more people convert to the minority view until it reaches a tipping point and becomes the majority.
5. Social crypto-amnesia — people forget the original source of the change but accept the new norm.

Role of majority influence in social change: Conformity research shows that people often privately disagree with norms but comply publicly. When social norms shift (e.g., through legislation or campaigns), people follow the new majority position.

Key Studies

Study	Researcher(s)	Year	Method	Key Findings	Evaluation
Line conformity	Asch	1951	Lab experiment	37% conformity rate; group size, unanimity, and task difficulty affected conformity	High control; artificial task; all male, American — cultural and gender bias
Obedience to authority	Milgram	1963	Lab experiment	65% obeyed to 450V; proximity, location, and uniform affected obedience	Deception justified; ethical concerns; high internal validity; low ecological validity
Stanford Prison	Zimbardo	1973	Field experiment	Guards became abusive; prisoners submissive; terminated early	Dramatic demonstration; ethical concerns; researcher bias; small sample
Blue-green slides	Moscovici	1969	Lab experiment	Consistent minority influenced 8.42% of responses	Supports minority influence; artificial task; only female participants
Six Degrees of Milgram	Milgram	1967	Field experiment (lost letter)	Demonstrated the small-world phenomenon in social networks	Innovative method; limited follow-up; ethical issues with deception
Nurses and obedience	Hofling et al.	1966	Field experiment	21/22 nurses obeyed an unknown doctor’s order to administer an excessive dose	High ecological validity; single brief encounter; ethical concerns
Authoritarian personality	Adorno et al.	1950	Correlational	High F-scale scores correlated with authoritarian attitudes and obedience	Revealed dispositional factors; F-scale criticized for acquiescence bias

Key Terminology

Term	Definition
Conformity	Changing one’s behaviour or beliefs to match those of a group, as a result of group pressure
Compliance	Publicly conforming to group behaviour while privately disagreeing
Internalisation	Genuinely accepting group norms and making them part of one’s own belief system
Identification	Conforming to the norms of a group because one values membership
Obedience	Following direct orders from an authority figure
Agentic state	A state in which an individual feels they are acting on behalf of authority, not taking personal responsibility
Autonomous state	A state in which an individual takes personal responsibility for their actions
Locus of control	The extent to which individuals believe they control their own lives (internal) vs. external forces (external)
Minority influence	A form of social influence where a small group changes the attitudes and beliefs of the majority
Social crypto-amnesia	Forgetting the source of a changed social attitude while retaining the attitude
Snowball effect	The gradual process by which minority influence spreads through a population
Internal validity	The extent to which a study establishes a genuine cause-and-effect relationship
Social roles	The set of behaviours expected of someone in a particular social position
Dispositional explanation	Behaviour explained by internal characteristics (personality, traits)
Situational explanation	Behaviour explained by external factors (environment, context)

Evaluation Points

Strengths

• Asch’s paradigm is highly controlled, producing reliable and replicable results. The use of standardised procedures allows researchers to systematically vary factors (group size, unanimity, task difficulty) and measure their effects.
• Milgram’s research has been replicated across cultures with consistent results (e.g., Meeus and Raaijmakers in the Netherlands, 1986), suggesting obedience to authority is a robust, cross-cultural phenomenon.
• Social influence research has practical applications in understanding real-world phenomena such as jury decision-making, cult behaviour, and social change movements.
• Agentic state theory provides a compelling explanation for atrocities (e.g., the Holocaust) that is more nuanced than simplistic “evil personality” explanations.

Limitations

• Cultural bias: Many classic studies used American participants. Research shows conformity and obedience rates vary across cultures (Bond and Smith, 1996, meta-analysis found higher conformity in collectivist cultures).
• Gender bias: Asch used only male participants. Eagly and Carli (1981) found that women conform slightly more than men, possibly due to socialisation rather than inherent differences.
• Ecological validity: Asch’s line task and Milgram’s shock procedure are artificial. Real conformity and obedience involve complex social factors not captured in lab settings.
• Ethical issues: Milgram’s deception and the psychological distress caused to participants remain controversial. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment has been criticised for failing to protect participants adequately.
• Historical bias: Milgram’s research was conducted in the aftermath of World War II, reflecting the specific cultural context of post-war America. The findings may not generalise to contemporary Western societies with different attitudes toward authority.

Methodology

Experimental Methods in Social Influence Research

Most social influence studies use laboratory experiments, which provide high control over extraneous variables but may lack ecological validity. Field experiments (e.g., Hofling et al.) offer greater realism but less control.

Ethical considerations: Social influence research frequently involves deception, psychological harm, and issues with informed consent. Modern replications must obtain ethical approval and use less distressing procedures.

Cross-cultural research: Comparing conformity and obedience rates across cultures helps establish the universality of social influence processes and identifies cultural moderators.

Common Pitfalls

1. Confusing conformity and obedience: Conformity is yielding to group pressure (implicit, no direct order). Obedience is following a direct command from an authority figure. They involve different processes and different social dynamics.
2. Confusing NSI and ISI: NSI is about social approval (emotional motivation), while ISI is about being correct (cognitive motivation). They operate in different situations and produce different types of conformity (compliance vs. internalisation).
3. Overstating dispositional explanations: The authoritarian personality explains some obedience, but situational factors (proximity, uniform, location) are far more powerful. Milgram’s variations demonstrated this convincingly. Do not reduce complex social behaviour to personality traits alone.

Worked Examples

Example 1: 16-Mark Essay

Question: Discuss research into conformity. Refer to Asch’s research in your answer. [16 marks]

Model Answer:

Conformity is a form of social influence in which an individual changes their behaviour or beliefs to align with those of a group. Kelman (1958) identified three types: compliance (public agreement without private acceptance), identification (adopting group norms to gain acceptance), and internalisation (genuine belief change). Two key explanations underpin conformity — normative social influence (NSI), the desire to be liked and accepted, and informational social influence (ISI), the desire to be correct.

Asch (1951) conducted a landmark laboratory experiment to investigate conformity. One hundred and twenty-three male American students were placed in groups of 7–9, of which all but one were confederates. Participants were shown a standard line and three comparison lines, and asked to state aloud which comparison matched the standard. On critical trials, confederates gave the same wrong answer before the real participant responded. Asch found a mean conformity rate of 37% across critical trials, with 75% of participants conforming at least once. However, 25% never conformed, demonstrating individual differences in resistance to conformity.

Asch systematically varied factors to explore what influenced conformity. Group size mattered — conformity increased up to three confederates, after which further increases had little effect. Unanimity was crucial; the presence of even one dissenter (a confederate giving a different answer, whether correct or incorrect) reduced conformity to approximately 5.5%. Task difficulty also played a role — when lines were made more similar, conformity increased, supporting the role of ISI in ambiguous situations.

A key strength of Asch’s research is its high level of control. The standardised procedure, with identical line stimuli and scripted confederate responses, minimised extraneous variables, increasing internal validity. This allowed Asch to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship between group pressure and conformity. Furthermore, the paradigm has been replicated many times, demonstrating good reliability.

However, Asch’s study suffers from significant limitations. The task — judging line lengths — is trivial and artificial, bearing little resemblance to the real-life situations in which conformity occurs. This low mundane realism limits ecological validity. Moreover, Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated the study with engineering students in the UK and found virtually no conformity, suggesting that the original findings may have been a product of the 1950s American cultural context — McCarthyism and the pressure to conform were particularly strong at that time.

The sample is also problematic. Asch used only male American university students, which severely limits generalisability to women, other age groups, and other cultures. Bond and Smith’s (1996) meta-analysis of 133 Asch-type studies across 17 countries found higher conformity rates in collectivist cultures, confirming that culture moderates conformity. Additionally, ethical concerns include the use of deception — participants were not told about the confederates or the true aim, although this was arguably justified by the scientific value of the findings.

In conclusion, Asch’s research provides a foundational understanding of conformity and the factors that influence it, particularly the power of unanimity and group size. However, its artificiality, cultural and temporal specificity, and limited sample mean that findings should not be overgeneralised. Modern research should prioritise more ecologically valid methods and diverse samples.

Example 2: 16-Mark Essay

Question: Evaluate the agentic state explanation of obedience. Refer to Milgram’s research in your answer. [16 marks]

Model Answer:

The agentic state explanation, proposed by Milgram (1974), suggests that individuals obey authority because they shift from an autonomous state (where they take personal responsibility for their actions) to an agentic state (where they see themselves as agents carrying out another’s wishes). In the agentic state, people feel that the authority figure, not themselves, is responsible for the consequences of their actions. This shift is called the agentic shift.

Milgram’s baseline study (1963) supports this explanation. Sixty-five percent of participants administered the maximum 450V shock to a learner, despite showing visible signs of distress. Many participants asked to stop, but when the experimenter said “the experiment requires that you continue,” they obeyed, as though the responsibility lay with the authority figure rather than themselves. This suggests they were operating in an agentic state.

Further support comes from Milgram’s variations. When the experimenter left the room and gave instructions by telephone, obedience dropped to 20.5%. Without the physical presence of the authority figure, participants found it easier to remain in the autonomous state. When the learner was in the same room, obedience dropped to 40%, and when participants had to force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate, it dropped to 30%. Proximity to the victim made it harder to shift into the agentic state because the consequences of obedience were more immediate and visible.

The concept of legitimacy of authority strengthens the agentic explanation. People obey more readily when they perceive the authority figure as legitimate. In Milgram’s original study, the experimenter’s grey lab coat and the prestigious Yale University setting conferred legitimacy. When the study was moved to a run-down office building, obedience dropped to 48%, and when the experimenter wore everyday clothes, it fell to 20%. This demonstrates that perceived legitimacy of authority facilitates the agentic shift.

However, the agentic state explanation has been criticised. It does not explain why some participants refused to obey at all — if the agentic shift were universal, 100% of participants would have obeyed. Individual differences, such as locus of control (Rotter, 1966), suggest that dispositional factors also play a role. People with an internal locus of control are more resistant to authority, implying that the agentic shift is not the complete explanation.

Additionally, the agentic state is a theoretical construct that is difficult to test empirically. We cannot directly observe whether someone is in an agentic or autonomous state — we can only infer it from their behaviour. This makes the explanation difficult to falsify, which is a limitation from a scientific perspective.

Mandel (1998) argued that the agentic explanation provides an overly charitable account of obedience. He suggested that some participants may have been genuinely willing to harm the learner, rather than reluctantly obeying due to an agentic shift. Analysis of Milgram’s transcripts reveals that some participants showed little distress, which is inconsistent with the reluctant agent described by the theory.

In conclusion, the agentic state explanation provides a valuable framework for understanding obedience, supported by Milgram’s experimental variations. It highlights the powerful role of situational factors in shaping behaviour. However, it is not a complete explanation — individual differences, cultural factors, and the difficulty of empirically testing the agentic state limit its explanatory power. A comprehensive understanding of obedience requires integrating situational and dispositional perspectives.

Summary

Social influence research reveals the powerful effect of others on individual behaviour:

• Conformity is driven by NSI (desire to be liked) and ISI (desire to be correct), producing compliance, identification, or internalisation.
• Asch demonstrated that people conform to a demonstrably wrong majority (37% conformity rate), influenced by group size, unanimity, and task difficulty.
• Obedience was powerfully demonstrated by Milgram (65% obeyed to 450V), influenced by proximity, location, and uniform. The agentic state explains obedience as a shift from personal responsibility to acting on behalf of authority.
• Resistance is strengthened by social support and internal locus of control.
• Minority influence requires consistency, commitment, and flexibility to create social change through internalisation and the snowball effect.