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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTX42lVDwA4

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http://www.prisonexp.org/

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

"How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please read the story of what happened and what it tells us about the nature of human nature."
- Professor Philip G. Zimbardo

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. "How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDAbdMv14Is

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WYFFT: Would You Fall For That - Elevator

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Links for Asch's Variations

http://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/conformity-variations-of-asch-1951

http://www.psychteacher.co.uk/social-influence/majority-influence.html

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

http://scienceaid.co.uk/psychology/social/majority.html

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https://quizlet.com/185642951/social-influence-key-terms-flash-cards/

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Social Influence Key Terms Flashcards | Quizlet

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Start studying Social Influence Key Terms. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Tutor2u Model Answer for Explanations of Conformity

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Tutor2u Model Answer for Explanations of Conformity

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXZPAjyN8zo

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Psychology Model Answer: A Level SAM 3 Q3 Explanations for Conformity

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0&t=423s

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The Stanford Prison Experiment, a dramatic simulation study of the psychology of imprisonment and one of the best known psychology experiments ever undertaken.Dr. Zimbardo takes us through the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which healthy college students are transformed into unstable prisoners and brutal prison guards within days by the power of the situation in which they found themselves.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg

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The psychology of evil | Philip Zimbardo

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https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/explanations-for-obedience-variations-of-milgram-1963

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News Article - The Mind of the Authoritarian Personality

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https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/resistance-to-social-influence-social-support

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Asch's (1951) research demonstrates the power of social influence through conformity and his variations provide an insight into how group size, unanimity and task difficult can increase or decrease the influence of the majority. Milgram (1963) on the other hand, highlights our susceptibility to obeying orders and his variations reveal the different variables that can increase or decrease our willingness to follow orders.

Since Asch and Milgram's research, psychologists have examined explanations of resistance to social influence, our willingness to conform or obey, including social support and locus of control.

Social Support

One reason that people can resist the pressure to conform or obey is if they have an ally, someone supporting their point of view. Having an ally can build confidence and allow individuals to remain independent.

Individuals who have support for their point of view no longer fear being ridiculed, allowing them to avoid normative social influence. Furthermore, individuals who have support for their point of view are more likely to disobey orders.

Evaluation

Evidence for this explanation comes from one of Asch's (1951) variations. In one of the variations, one of the confederates was instructed to give the correct answer throughout. In this variation the rate of conformity dropped to 5%. This demonstrates that if the real participant has support for their belief (social support), then they are likely more likely to resist the pressure to conform.

Furthermore, evidence for this explanation comes from Milgram (1974). In one of Milgram's variations, the real participant was paired with two additional confederates, who also played the role of teachers. In this variation, the two additional confederates refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early. In this variation, percentage of real participants who proceeded to the full 450 volts, dropped from 65% (in the original) to 10%. This shows that if the real participant has support for their desire to disobey, then they are more likely to resist the pressure of an authority figure.

Variations from Asch and Milgram suggest that if an individual has social support then they are likely to resist the pressure to conform or obey.

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Resistance to Social Influence - Social Support | tutor2u Psychology

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Asch's (1951) research demonstrates the power of social influence through conformity and his variations provide an insight into how group size, unanimity and task difficult can increase or decrease the influence of the majority. Milgram (1963) on the other hand, highlights our susceptibility to obeying orders and his variations reveal the different variables that can increase or decrease our willingness to follow orders.

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https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/minority-influence-consistency-and-commitment

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Psychologists have identified different factors that can enhance the effectiveness of a minority, including: consistency, commitment and flexibility.

One of the most influential experiments of minority influence was conducted by Moscovici (1969). He wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer, in a colour perception task.

His sample consisted of 172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. The participants were placed in groups of six and shown 36 slides, which were all varying shades of blue. The participants had state out loud the colour of each slide.

Two of the six participants were confederates and in one condition (consistent) the two confederates said that all 36 slides were green; in the second condition (inconsistent) the confederates said that 24 of the slides were green and 12 were blue.

Moscovici found that in the consistent condition, the real participants agreed on 8.2% of the trials, whereas in the inconsistent condition, the real participants only agreed on 1.25% of the trials. This shows that a consistent minority is 6.95% more effective than an inconsistent minority and that consistency is an important factor in minority influence.
Note: It is important to note that consistency and commitment are linked. If a minority is consistent in their view then they also are showing commitment to their cause. Another way a minority can show commitment is through sacrifices, which will be examined in the next section Evaluation:
Moscovici used a bias sample of 172 female participants from America. As a result, we are unable to generalise the results to other populations, for example male participants, and we cannot conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way. Furthermore, research often suggests that females are more likely to conform and therefore further research is required to determine the effect of minority influence on male participants.

Moscovici has also been criticised for deceiving his participants, as participants were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test. This also means that Moscovici did not gain fully informed consent. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Moscovici's experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. If the participants were aware of the true aim, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently.

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Minority Influence - Consistency and Commitment | tutor2u Psychology

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Psychologists have identified different factors that can enhance the effectiveness of a minority, including: consistency, commitment and flexibility. One of the most influential experiments of minority influence was conducted by Moscovici (1969). He wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer, in a colour perception task.

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https://www.psychologistworld.com/influence/minority-influence

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Minority influence is a type of social influence which results in a change of views amongst the majority of members within a group. It involves an individual or minority of a population persuading other members to accept their argument, even if this contradicts the more popular view held by the majority.

This form of influence has been used effectively by civil rights movements throughout the 20th Century to shape public opinion.

During the 1910s, the suffragette movement challenged the status quo, which restricted the right to vote to male citizens. A minority group, led by Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, eventually persuaded the majority that this was unfair, and enfranchisement was extended to women in 1918, overturning accepted views regarding women's rights.

Whilst minority influence involves a challenge to popular opinion and group norms, it can serve the interests of the wider population in the long term. Groups in which members are obedient to accepted norms tend to engage in groupthink, whereby long-held views are upheld without question. Critical thinking is discouraged, with dissenters being ostracised by the majority.

For example, employees at a factory which uses dated practises to produce its wares may be reluctant to change their habits. They may even be suspicious of a new manager who suggests that they update their manufacturing methods. In this instance, groupthink can lead to the factory becoming uncompetitive, whilst its competitors adopt more efficient practices.

The minority influence of the manager challenges those majority-held views, and results in the questioning of dated practices. This might, over time, lead the employees to reconsider their reluctance to change, leading to the majority overcoming a groupthink mentality and gradually changing its opinion.

Minority vs majority influence

Social influence can take numerous forms. Majority influence, for instance, is a normative influence, leading to individuals complying with the norms of the majority. But whilst peer pressure leads to public compliance (e.g. embracing the attitudes of the crowd), it does not always result in conversion - a change in a person's unexpressed, private views. A person subjected to majority influence will try to gain the acceptance of a group by complying with its norms, but may retain their private views contravening those of the majority.

Minority influence affects group members differently. When a minority expresses a view that contradicts the majority, other group members will be unlikely to gain the acceptance of the wider group if they adopt this minority opinion. Therefore, the minority is unable to exert a normative influence on other members.

Instead, minority views tend to be adopted when they exert informative influence: the unusual nature or novelty of the minority's argument means that other members of a group pay close attention to it. They consider the argument based on its merits, rather than to comply with group norms. Members begin to question the validity of their existing views, and whether the minority view is in fact a more informed opinion than that held by the majority.

Over time, as members evaluate a minority view, they may internalize it - adopting it as their own opinion through a process known as conversion. This change in private opinion prompts a shift in behavior, and a member may promote his or her newly-acquired view to other members of the group. What began as a minority view becomes a majority view as more people adopt it.

Unlike compliance, where a person changes his or her outward behavior but not their private opinions, minority influence can have a lasting effect on an individual's views and behavior even when they leave the group.

Charlan Nemeth, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argues a further difference between minority and majority influence. She suggests that the result of minority influence, when compared to majority influence, is that the former nurtures divergent thinking, whereas compliance with the demands of the majority reduces differences in opinion amongst a group's members ( Nemeth, 1986).

Moscovici et al (1969)

Early research into the ability of minority influence to affect a group's attitudes and behavior was conducted by social psychologist, Serge Moscovici.

In a 1969 study, participants were presented with a number of slides, and were asked to identify the color shown in each slide in the company of other participants. In the group, confederates were instructed to misidentify the slides as being green, contrary to participants' own observations.

Moscovici found that the minority view expressed by the confederates influenced the participants' opinions, particularly when the minority was consistent in its opinion ( Moscovici et al, 1969).

Examples of minority influence

Real-life examples where minority influence affects the majority within a group include:

The suffragette movement, which sought to gain the right to vote for women in the UK in the early 20th Century. Leading figures within the movement, such as Emmeline Pankhurst, founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) to change the majority-held views on the role of women in society.

The civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 60s used minority influence to gain support for the equal rights of citizens, irrespective of race. Even though it promoted the rights of a minority of the population, the movement helped to end public segregation based on race with the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

In government, lobbyists representing a minority such as a company, charity or trade body seek to influence the views of legislators by publishing research which supports the interests of that minority.

Factors affecting minority influence

Variables which affect the efficacy of minority influence include:

Consistency

Moscovici found that members of a group are more likely to accept the opinion of a minority if the view is expressed with consistency. Inconsistency, or a difference of opinion amongst members of a minority, can result in other individuals rejecting the view.

For instance, a politician who alters his or her stance on an issue may be less effective in convincing the electorate than a candidate who expresses just one view consistently.

Confidence

The confidence of a minority can also affect its ability to influence other members.

Nemeth and Wachtler (1974) conducted an experiment in which a group of participants (including a confederate) were asked to decide the amount of compensation that ought to be awarded to a person who had been injured.

Participants were instructed to sit around a table to discuss the compensation amount, either in seats which were grouped, or in a solitary seat at the head of the table.

The researchers found that when the confederate seated themselves, without guidance, at the head seat, other participants were more likely to agree with their suggestion of an amount of compensation than if they followed the experimenter's directions.

The findings suggest that the perceived confidence of a minority to make decisions independently of the group can lead to other individuals giving more consideration to its views.

Perceived Motives

The motives of a minority, as perceived by other individuals, can also affect the influence it is able to exert on the majority.

Maass et al (1982) found that, when a minority is seen as acting in its own self-interests or an individual's attempts at persuasion are perceived as being motivated by personal gain, other members are more likely to dismiss their opinions. However, if a minority is thought to be acting selflessly and in the interests of the majority of the group, other members are more likely to consider and be influenced by the opinions it expresses.

Majority Size

Clark and Maass (1990) found that the size of the majority within a group can affect the ability of a minority to influence members. In an experiment in which participants were asked to debate issues such as abortion, they found a negative correlation between the number of members holding a majority view and the sway held by minority views. As a majority view gained the support of more members, individuals holding an opposite viewpoint were less able to influence the group.

Minority Size

The number of members within a group expressing a minority opinion also affects the level of influence that they are able to exert on the remaining members. Gordijn et al (2002) found that a minority was less influential when the number of members expressing an opinion remained constant or decreased, compared to when members perceived the minority to be increasing in numbers.

This may explain the snowball effect of minority influence, whereby individuals are attracted to a viewpoint on the basis that they believe it is becoming more acceptable, and is gaining popularity amongst other members.

Social Cryptomnesia

A final observation regarding minority influence is that, after being successfully persuaded by a minority, people tend to forget the origins of their new views. This phenomenon, known as social cryptomnesia, often occurs when a person held negative views of the minority whose views they adopted. Instead of identifying with the minority group, individuals will dissociate the minority views from the people who promoted them.

An example of this would be when a 'green' group promotes responsible behavior, such as recycling, as a way of protecting wildlife. An individual who associates the group with 'hippies' and protests may find it difficult to identify with the group at the time, but over many years, the group's views become mainstream and the person becomes more environmentally conscientious. Whilst minority influence has led to their internalisation of environmentalist ideas, they reject the notion that the group was responsible for their new recycling routine and maintain a negative view of the minority group.

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Minority Influence: How Eccentric Opinions Can Influence Entire Groups

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Minority influence is a type of social influence which results in a change of views amongst the majority of members within a group. It involves an individual or minority of a population persuading other members to accept their argument, even if this contradicts the more popular view held by the majority.

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Adorno et al. (1950) developed a questionnaire called the California F scale, to measure levels of authoritarian personality. In Milgram's original research, psychologists questioned whether the obedience occurred due to situational factors, for example, uniform and location, or dispositional factors, such as a particular personality characteristic. In order to answer this question, Milgram conducted a follow-up study, using participants from his original research.

Elms and Milgram (1966) wanted to see if the obedient participants in Milgram's research were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits, in comparison to disobedient participants. Their sample consisted of 20 obedient participants, who administered the full 450 volts and 20 disobedient participants, who refused to continue. Each participant completed several personality questionnaires, including Adorno's F scale, to measure their level of authoritarian personality. In addition, participants were also asked open-ended questions about their relationship with their parents and their relationship with the experimenter and learner, during Milgram's experiment.

Elms and Milgram found that the obedient participants scored higher on the F scale, in comparison to disobedient participants. In addition, the results also revealed that obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood [all of the participants in Milgram's original experiment were male] and admired the experimenter in Milgram's experiment, which was the opposite for disobedient participants. Elms and Milgram concluded that the obedient participants in his original research displayed higher levels of the authoritarian personality, in comparison to disobedient participants.
Evaluation
Although the results of Elms and Milgram suggest a link between authoritarian personality and obedience, these results are correctional and it is therefore difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of the obedience. In addition, there are many other situational factors that contribute to obedience, including proximity, uniform and location. Therefore, although it is likely that authoritarian personality contributes to obedience, a range of situational variables can affect the level of this contribution.

Furthermore, research by Middendorp and Meleon (1990) found that less-educated people are more likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics, than well-educated people. If these claims are correct then it is possible to conclude that it is not authoritarian personality characteristics that lead to obedience, but levels of education.

Finally, Elms and Milgram used Adorno's F scale to determine levels of authoritarian personality. It is possible that the F scale suffers from response bias or social desirability, where participants provide answers that are socially acceptable. For example, participants may appear more authoritarian because they believe that their answers are the socially 'correct' and consequently they are incorrectly classified as authoritarian when they are not.

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Dispositional Explanation for Obedience: Authoritarian personality | tutor2u Psychology

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Adorno et al. (1950) developed a questionnaire called the California F scale, to measure levels of authoritarian personality. In Milgram's original research, psychologists questioned whether the obedience occurred due to situational factors, for example, uniform and location, or dispositional factors, such as a particular personality characteristic.

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https://veganuary.com/ - veganuary
https://www.refill.org.uk/about-refill/ - water bottle refill
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/02/10/supermarkets-urged-create-plastic-free-aisle-every-store/ - plastic free isle
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42630898 - 5p plastic bags

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http://www.psychology4a.com/social-change.html

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Implications for Social Change Traditionally research into social influence has been associated with social control, particularly the research of Zimbardo, but here we look at how social change can...

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Ever worried you're a brutal dictator at heart? The F-Scale Test, put together in 1947, tests for these types of authoritarian personalities. But as the test eventually revealed, not all "authoritarian personalities" are going to take over their respective countries. Here's the problem with testing people for fascism.
The Authoritarian Personality
The authoritarian personality type was first seriously investigated over the late 1930s and early 1940s. Guess why. Authoritarian personalities aren't necessarily the sort of people to grow up to be dictators, they're just the type of people who feel most comfortable within an authoritarian system. They have, according to mid-century psychology, a few traits in common. Some traits are easy to guess; authoritarian types passively accept social norms and aggressively punish those who break social norms. Virtues like toughness and personal power are held high, in part because authoritarians tend to be both cynical and destructive. They believe the only way to make people do right is to force them.

The fact that psychologists found authoritarian types to be superstitious is surprising, until you realize that most of the fascists of the 1940s harnessed the power of myth. Dictators convinced people that they were the rightful heirs to great civilizations, often through a quasi-mystical connection. As the modern-day versions of the Romans, the Spartans, or the conquering Vikings, they were destined to prevail over other cultures. Despite this cultural nostalgia, authoritarians took a dim view of intraception - the psychological term for processing the world through emotions. Rules came first, not feelings.
The F-Scale
In 1947, Theodor Adorno, a sociologist and philosopher, came up with the F-Scale, the "F" standing for "fascist." It had questions designed to probe for authoritarian impulses. The questions are not subtle, and are rather disturbingly general. They include things like, "A person who has bad manners, habits, and breeding can hardly expect to get along with decent people." Manners and breeding are different things, and the answer to this statement would probably reveal more about the test-taker if they were put in different categories.

The F-Scale was used into the 1970s, though it was refined over the decades. There are a few studies that indicate that F-Scale scoring correlates with certain kinds of behavior. One test involved a Prisoner's Dilemma-type game that allowed two players to either act cooperatively and gain a moderate reward, or double-cross each other and either win everything or nothing. Scientists found that participants who reported that they trusted the other person to be generous were trustworthy themselves, while those who were untrusting were also untrustworthy. The participants took the F-Scale test before the game; the authoritarians, displaying their cynical attitudes and their destructiveness, tended to be untrusting and untrustworthy players.
The End of the F-Scale
By the end of the 1960s, and the beginning of the 1970s, the F-Scale was falling out of favor as researchers increasingly noticed problems with it. One problem was its inability to be consistent when it came to reverse items. When asked questions about specific subjects, like mysticism, obedience, or the importance of strong leaders, people were consistent with their answers. If a person were asked, "Should parents physically punish their children if they are disobedient?" and later asked, "Should harsh punishment be meted out to young people who don't follow the rules?" that person would strongly agree with both statements.

However, when a statement was reversed, the consistency vanished. A person who disagreed strongly with the "harsh punishments" question would not necessarily agree that, "children who disobey their parents should only be lightly disciplined." Scientists were continually trying to come up with an F-Scale that would work when its statements were reversed, but for the most part they had no luck.

Then there was the problem of whether the scale predicted behavior outside the laboratory setting. When scientists tested for a correlation in how a person filled out a test and how that person's peers saw them, they found little similarity. On paper one person could be a radical for democracy, and another could be a raving authoritarian, but the people around them saw little evidence of either in their behavior.

Perhaps what dealt the harshest blow to the F-Scale was time. Although of course there are modern fascists and modern authoritarians, World War II receded into the distance and people became less concerned about countries and more about specific radicals. You won't see the F-Scale around a lot today, but a version of the test is online, and you can take it here. After you've found out your score, you can go over the questions and discover if you're superstitious, conformist, or any other awful thing that will cause you to go out one morning and annex something.

(By the way, I scored a 2.47, or "liberal airhead," but with a high "destructiveness and cynicism" quotient. Don't mess with me. I will destroy you, but only after I pass laws that let me off easy.)

[Via The F Scale as a Measure of Breadth of Perspective, Trust, Trustworthiness, and the F-Scale, A New Balanced F-Scale, F-Scale Validity Considered Against Peer Nomination Criteria]

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Take This Test And Find Out If You're A Fascist

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Ever worried you're a brutal dictator at heart? The F-Scale Test, put together in 1947, tests for these types of authoritarian personalities. But as the test eventually revealed, not all "authoritarian personalities" are going to take over their respective countries. Here's the problem with testing people for fascism.