Social Influence — AQA GCSE Psychology Revision Notes

What you'll learn

• What conformity is and the two quite different reasons people conform
• The factors that raise and lower conformity, and why an ally matters so much
• Milgram's obedience research, what it found and why it could not be run today
• Situational and dispositional explanations of obedience, and how to tell them apart
• Why bystanders often fail to help, and what makes intervention more likely
• Collective behaviour: deindividuation, social loafing, and why crowds are not always destructive
• How to evaluate classic studies whose findings are robust but whose methods were not

Key terms and definitions

Conformity — changing behaviour or opinions to match those of a group.

Normative social influence — conforming in order to be liked or accepted, without private agreement.

Informational social influence — conforming because you believe others know better than you do.

Obedience — following a direct order from a figure of authority.

Legitimate authority — someone perceived as having the right to give orders, often signalled by uniform or setting.

Proximity — how physically close the authority figure is to the person receiving the order.

Dispositional explanation — accounting for behaviour by a person's own personality or internal characteristics.

Situational explanation — accounting for behaviour by the circumstances a person is in.

Authoritarian personality — a personality type marked by rigid beliefs, deference to authority and hostility towards those seen as inferior.

Bystander effect — the tendency for an individual to be less likely to help when other people are present.

Diffusion of responsibility — the sense that the duty to act is shared, so no individual feels personally obliged.

Cost of helping — the physical, emotional or social risk a potential helper weighs before intervening.

Deindividuation — loss of a sense of personal identity and responsibility, often within a large group.

Social loafing — reducing individual effort when working as part of a group.

Collective behaviour — the behaviour of people acting together, often in a crowd.

Core concepts

Conformity and its two causes

Asch's experiments asked participants to judge which of several lines matched a standard. The task was easy and the answer obvious, but confederates gave the same wrong answer aloud first. A substantial proportion of participants went along with them.

Two quite separate motives produce this, and distinguishing them is frequently the whole of a question.

Normative social influence is conforming to fit in. The person privately knows the group is wrong but does not want to stand out. Because the private belief is unchanged, the conformity disappears when answers are given in secret.

Informational social influence is conforming because you think the group knows better. It operates when the task is difficult or ambiguous and you are genuinely unsure. Here the private belief may actually change.

The test to apply: if answering privately would end the conformity, it was normative. If the person has been convinced, it was informational.

Factors affecting conformity

Group size. Conformity rises as the majority grows, but levels off — beyond three or four people, adding more makes little difference.

Task difficulty. Harder or more ambiguous tasks raise conformity, because uncertainty invites informational influence.

Anonymity. Answering privately sharply reduces conformity, since the social pressure that drives normative influence depends on being seen.

An ally. One other person dissenting reduces conformity dramatically. The unanimity of the majority, not merely its size, is what generates the pressure — and a single ally breaks it.

Obedience

Milgram's research asked participants to deliver what they believed were increasingly severe electric shocks to another person on the instruction of an experimenter. No shocks were given, but participants believed they were. A striking proportion continued to the maximum level despite clear distress.

The finding was that ordinary people obey harmful orders under the right circumstances — not that unusual people do. That is what made it important and what made it disturbing.

Situational factors that change obedience levels:

• Proximity of the authority figure: obedience falls when orders are given from another room rather than face to face.
• Proximity to the victim: obedience falls as the consequences become more visible and immediate.
• Location: a prestigious institutional setting raises obedience; an ordinary one lowers it.
• Uniform: a uniform signals legitimate authority and increases compliance.

Dispositional factors locate the cause in the person instead. The authoritarian personality describes someone with rigid beliefs and strong deference to authority, who is therefore more willing to obey. It explains something the situational account cannot — why, in identical conditions, some people refuse while others comply.

Neither explanation wins outright, and the best answers say so. Obedience shifts dramatically when the situation shifts, which favours the situational account; but individual differences persist within any one situation, which favours disposition. Most psychologists treat them as interacting.

Bystander behaviour

The bystander effect is counter-intuitive: the more witnesses there are, the less likely any one of them is to help.

Diffusion of responsibility is the main mechanism. With one witness, the responsibility is entirely theirs. With twenty, it is shared, and each person's share feels small enough to leave to someone else. A second factor is that other people's inaction is read as evidence that nothing is wrong — if nobody else is reacting, perhaps this is not an emergency.

The cost of helping also matters. Piliavin's subway study staged a collapse in a train carriage and varied how the victim appeared. Help was more forthcoming when the person seemed ill than when they seemed drunk, where intervening carried more risk of unpleasantness. The judgement is a weighing of cost against benefit, not a simple measure of kindness.

This is also why help is often more likely in a village than a city centre: fewer witnesses to share the responsibility, and a greater chance of being recognised.

Collective behaviour

Deindividuation explains behaviour in crowds. Anonymity and large numbers reduce the sense of being an identifiable individual with personal responsibility, so the usual restraints weaken and people act in ways they would not alone.

Its limitation is important and often missed. The same conditions sometimes produce cooperation, rescue and generosity rather than violence. A crowd at a disaster frequently behaves better than the individuals in it might alone. This suggests crowds adopt the norms of the group they identify with rather than simply losing all standards.

Social loafing is the reduction of individual effort in a group. It increases with group size, because contributions become harder to identify and each person's effort feels less consequential. Making individual contributions visible reduces it — which has direct implications for how group work should be assessed.

Prosocial behaviour benefits others; antisocial behaviour harms them or disregards them. Both can be collective.

Conformity is not simply a weakness

It is worth stating in evaluation answers that social influence is not a flaw to be eliminated. Queuing, traffic behaviour, classroom norms and language itself all depend on people matching what others do. A society in which nobody conformed could not function. The problem is conforming to a harmful norm, or continuing to conform once the evidence shows the group is wrong. The same applies to obedience: hospitals, emergency services and aviation all depend on instructions being followed without each person re-arguing them.

Worked examples

Example 1: Identifying the type of influence

Ellie privately thinks the group's answer is wrong but gives it anyway so she does not stand out. Identify and explain the type of social influence. (3 marks)

This is normative social influence (1). Ellie is conforming in order to be accepted by the group rather than because she believes it is correct (1). Her private view is unchanged, which is why this is normative rather than informational influence (1).

Example 2: Applying a situational factor

Explain why obedience fell when Milgram's experimenter gave instructions by telephone from another room. (2 marks)

Reducing the proximity of the authority figure weakened the pressure of their presence (1), making it psychologically easier for participants to ignore or disobey the order (1).

Example 3: Explaining the bystander effect

A man collapses in a crowded station and nobody helps. Explain two reasons for this. (4 marks)

Diffusion of responsibility means each witness feels the duty to act is shared among everyone present, so no individual feels personally obliged (2). In addition, the inaction of others is interpreted as evidence that the situation is not a genuine emergency, so people hesitate rather than intervening (2).

Example 4: Evaluating a classic study

Evaluate Asch's research into conformity. (6 marks)

The task was simple and unambiguous with a clear correct answer, so conformity could be measured precisely, and the effect was large enough to be striking (2). However, judging line lengths among strangers has little in common with the social pressures of everyday life, so the study may lack ecological validity (2). The sample was narrow and drawn from one culture and historical period, and later work in other cultures found different rates, so the findings may not generalise as widely as once assumed (2).

Note the structure: strength, then weakness, then a second weakness with a consequence. Each point names the issue and says why it matters.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Mixing up normative and informational influence. Ask whether the person was convinced. Convinced means informational; going along with it means normative.

Confusing conformity with obedience. Conformity is to a group of peers with no order given. Obedience is to a direct instruction from authority.

Saying Milgram's participants "enjoyed" administering shocks. They showed genuine distress. The point is that they obeyed despite it.

Claiming the shocks were real. They were not. Saying otherwise suggests the study has not been understood.

Treating deindividuation as an explanation of all crowd behaviour. It cannot explain prosocial crowds. Include that limitation.

Describing the bystander effect without the mechanism. "People didn't help because others were there" is the observation, not the explanation. Name diffusion of responsibility.

Listing only weaknesses when asked to evaluate. Both sides are needed, plus a judgement.

Forgetting that obedience is often necessary. A one-sided answer treating all obedience as dangerous misses the evaluation marks.

Exam technique for Social Influence

Say which explanation you are using. Label it: "this is a situational explanation because…". Examiners look for the terminology.

Use the scenario's details. Application questions name a person and a situation. Use them.

For ethics questions, be specific. Do not write "it was unethical". Name the issue — deception about the purpose, difficulty exercising the right to withdraw, psychological distress — and then say what mitigated it, such as debriefing.

Balance the ethics judgement. The strongest answers note that the findings were valuable and could not easily have been obtained otherwise, and that the method would rightly be refused today. That tension is the answer, not a problem with it.

Remember the historical context. Asch and Milgram worked in a period of greater deference. Replications still find substantial effects, so the process appears robust — but treat the figures as showing what situations can produce rather than as fixed rates.

Learn one study properly rather than four vaguely. Being able to state the procedure, the finding and two evaluation points for Asch, Milgram and Piliavin covers most of what this topic asks.

Quick revision summary

• Conformity: matching a group; obedience: following an authority's order
• Normative influence is to be accepted; informational influence is because you think they know better
• Private answering removes normative conformity — the test for which type is operating
• Conformity rises with group size (levelling off) and task difficulty; one ally reduces it sharply
• Asch used line judgements; Milgram used apparent electric shocks
• Situational factors in obedience: proximity to authority, proximity to victim, location, uniform
• Dispositional factor: the authoritarian personality — explains individual differences, not whole populations
• Bystander effect: more witnesses, less help, via diffusion of responsibility and others' inaction
• Piliavin's subway study: help depended on how the victim appeared, showing cost of helping matters
• Deindividuation explains antisocial crowd behaviour but not prosocial crowds
• Social loafing grows with group size; visible individual contributions reduce it
• Conformity and obedience are necessary for social life — say so when evaluating
• Milgram's ethics: deception, distress, obstructed right to withdraw; balance against the value of the findings