Social Influence Short Answer Exam Questions
Explain how compliance differs from internalisation (4 marks).
Compliance is where someone publicly conforms to the behaviour or views of others but privately
maintains their own views. An example of compliance is when someone hears their friends like pop
music, but they personally don’t like it, so they tell them that they do but still maintains their own
private belief, and keeps it a secret. Whereas internalisation is where someone truly changes their
private views to match those of the group, these attitudes and behaviours are part of their value
system and aren’t dependent on the presence of a group. For example, if someone persuades you to
go to an art group and you continue to go without the group present.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the agentic state (4 marks).
The agentic state is where a person sees themself as doing someone's wishes but without taking the
responsibility for their own behaviour, so they diffuse the responsibility back to the other person.
This means that the person is obedient towards the authority figure and then puts the responsibility
of their actions on the authority figure as they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. For
example, Hofling got 21 nurses to ‘administer’ a lethal dosage to a patient, but they saw the ‘Doctor’
as being responsible as they told them to do it.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of group size as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
There was little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. However,
when the group size increased, more pressure was felt by the participant as the group gained more
power, and thus more participants are likely to conform. The group size will eventually reach an
optimum and will lose power. Evidence shows that the best group size to use is between 8 and 12.
Therefore the size of the group will affect whether people are more likely or less likely to comply.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of unanimity as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
When a participant is all alone they feel lots of pressure from the majority group, as they want to fit
in with the group and not look silly. This is due to the group having power through group pressure,
which makes the participants feel uncomfortable and therefore are more likely to conform to the
group. Also, when the participant had a partner they felt more comfortable as conformity levels
dropped from 33% to 5.5%. as the majority group was smaller it had less power from group
pressure, and therefore the player was under less pressure to conform.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of task difficulty as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
When Asch made the differences between the line lengths less obvious the levels of conformity
increased. This is because it is less obvious to the participant, so they are more likely to conform as it
is harder to trust their own judgement or eyesight. This means they are more likely to comply with
the majority group as they are unsure of which two are the same length, and they don’t look silly or
incapable of answering questions correctly.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain how compliance differs from internalisation (4 marks).
Compliance is where someone publicly conforms to the behaviour or views of others but privately
maintains their own views. An example of compliance is when someone hears their friends like pop
music, but they personally don’t like it, so they tell them that they do but still maintains their own
private belief, and keeps it a secret. Whereas internalisation is where someone truly changes their
private views to match those of the group, these attitudes and behaviours are part of their value
system and aren’t dependent on the presence of a group. For example, if someone persuades you to
go to an art group and you continue to go without the group present.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the agentic state (4 marks).
The agentic state is where a person sees themself as doing someone's wishes but without taking the
responsibility for their own behaviour, so they diffuse the responsibility back to the other person.
This means that the person is obedient towards the authority figure and then puts the responsibility
of their actions on the authority figure as they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. For
example, Hofling got 21 nurses to ‘administer’ a lethal dosage to a patient, but they saw the ‘Doctor’
as being responsible as they told them to do it.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of group size as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
There was little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. However,
when the group size increased, more pressure was felt by the participant as the group gained more
power, and thus more participants are likely to conform. The group size will eventually reach an
optimum and will lose power. Evidence shows that the best group size to use is between 8 and 12.
Therefore the size of the group will affect whether people are more likely or less likely to comply.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of unanimity as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
When a participant is all alone they feel lots of pressure from the majority group, as they want to fit
in with the group and not look silly. This is due to the group having power through group pressure,
which makes the participants feel uncomfortable and therefore are more likely to conform to the
group. Also, when the participant had a partner they felt more comfortable as conformity levels
dropped from 33% to 5.5%. as the majority group was smaller it had less power from group
pressure, and therefore the player was under less pressure to conform.
This achieved 4 marks
Explain the role of task difficulty as a variable affecting conformity (4 marks).
When Asch made the differences between the line lengths less obvious the levels of conformity
increased. This is because it is less obvious to the participant, so they are more likely to conform as it
is harder to trust their own judgement or eyesight. This means they are more likely to comply with
the majority group as they are unsure of which two are the same length, and they don’t look silly or
incapable of answering questions correctly.
This achieved 4 marks
