Social influence — AQA GCSE Psychology

Conformity is a change in a person's behaviour or opinion in response to real or imagined pressure from a majority. Learners must both identify conformity and explain how five factors shift its likelihood. Social factors: group size (conformity rises as the majority grows, but the increase levels off beyond about three or four confederates); anonymity (when responses are public, conformity is higher than when answers are private, because public answers expose the person to judgement); task difficulty (harder judgements, where the correct answer is ambiguous, raise conformity because the person doubts their own view). Dispositional factors: personality (people with low self-esteem or a strong need for social approval tend to conform more) and expertise (people who know the topic well, or feel confident in the task, conform less).

Asch investigated whether people conform to a majority even when the correct answer is obvious. In his line-judgement procedure, participants compared a standard line with three comparison lines and stated which matched. Confederates gave deliberately wrong answers on critical trials. Asch found that many participants conformed at least once, and overall a substantial minority of responses were incorrect, showing that majority pressure can override clear perceptual evidence. Conformity was reduced when the majority was smaller, when answers were given privately, and when the task was unambiguous. Learners should know the aim, procedure, findings and conclusion, and be able to evaluate the study, for example noting its artificial task and its use of male student samples.

Agency theory explains obedience as a shift in how a person sees responsibility. In the agentic state, a person treats themselves as an agent carrying out another person's wishes and passes responsibility to that authority; in the autonomous state, they see themselves as responsible for their own actions. Milgram's social factors shape whether this shift happens. Authority matters because a legitimate, visible figure with perceived right to give orders can trigger the agentic state. Culture matters because upbringing and society can teach obedience to authority as normal. Proximity matters because closeness to the authority, the victim or the setting changes the pressure felt. A learner should be able to identify each factor, explain how it increases or reduces obedience, and apply it to a scenario rather than just name it.

Dispositional explanations locate the cause of obedience inside the person rather than the situation. Adorno's theory of the Authoritarian Personality proposes that some people develop a personality type that makes them more likely to obey authority and to be hostile to those seen as inferior. Adorno argued this develops from harsh, strict parenting that produces rigid thinking, conventional values, respect for authority and hostility towards out-groups. Such people are seen as more likely to obey without questioning. A learner should be able to explain the origin of the personality, describe its characteristics, and link it to increased obedience, distinguishing it from situational explanations such as agency theory.

Bystander intervention means a person actually steps in to help someone in need. You must identify two social factors and two dispositional factors, then explain how each changes the chance of helping. Social factors sit in the situation: the presence of others can produce diffusion of responsibility, so a lone witness feels more personally responsible than one in a crowd, and the cost of helping covers danger, time, embarrassment or effort, so a high cost makes intervention less likely. Dispositional factors sit in the person: similarity to the victim, such as shared age or interests, increases helping because we empathise more, and expertise, such as first-aid training, increases helping because the person feels competent. For each factor, name it, then give the mechanism linking it to the decision to intervene.

Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin studied helping behaviour on the New York subway. A researcher posing as a victim staged a collapse in a moving carriage, sometimes appearing to be ill and sometimes appearing drunk, while observers recorded how quickly and how often passengers helped. The key findings were that help came faster and more often for the 'ill' victim than the 'drunk' victim, and that larger groups did not simply reduce helping as diffusion of responsibility might predict. This supports the idea that the cost of helping and the perceived characteristics of the victim shape bystander intervention. Learn the method, the two victim conditions, the main results and the conclusion, and be ready to identify which option correctly describes them.

Collective behaviour is what people do as members of a crowd, and it can be prosocial (helping, cooperating, orderly queuing) or antisocial (aggression, looting, vandalism). Social factors come from the situation and the group: social loafing is reduced individual effort when responsibility is shared and contribution cannot be identified, so a crowd member may stand back during a rescue; deindividuation is loss of personal identity and accountability in a crowd, which can release antisocial acts but can also fuel prosocial action such as mass fundraising; culture supplies shared norms, so the same crowd behaviour may be judged helping in one culture and disorderly in another. Dispositional factors come from the individual: personality, such as a tendency toward empathy or aggression, and morality, the person's own standards of right and wrong, which can resist or override crowd pressure.