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Issues and debates: social and cultural issues
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Social influence research helps us understand big issues in society, and shows that behaviour can differ between cultures.
Key terms
Social issues: problems that affect many people in a society, such as crime, riots, racism, or people failing to help in emergencies.
Culture: the shared beliefs, values, norms, customs and behaviours of a group of people, passed on from one generation to the next.
Social influence and social issues
Crowd research helps explain riots and football violence, and helps police manage crowds.
Obedience research (Milgram) helps explain how ordinary people can commit harmful acts when ordered, and supports teaching people to question authority.
Prison research (Haney, Banks and Zimbardo) raised questions about how prison conditions affect behaviour.
Piliavin et al. looked at whether race affects helping, a social issue in 1960s America.
Culture and social influence
Collectivist cultures (such as many East Asian and African cultures) value group harmony and shared goals.
A review of Asch-style conformity studies in many countries (Bond and Smith, 1996) found higher conformity in collectivist cultures.
Obedience levels have also varied when Milgram's study was repeated in different countries.
Evaluation: much classic research used American participants, so findings may not apply to all cultures (cultural bias). Cultures also change over time, so older findings may be out of date.
Why might the results of Asch's conformity study be different if it were repeated in a collectivist culture?
- Collectivist cultures value group harmony and fitting in.
- So the normative pressure to agree with the group may be stronger.
- Research by Bond and Smith supports higher conformity in collectivist cultures.
Answer: Conformity would probably be higher, because collectivist cultures place more value on group harmony.
Society is a large group sharing laws and institutions; social issues are problems affecting many people; culture is shared beliefs, values and norms. Social influence research helps explain and tackle issues like bystander apathy, riots and blind obedience. Conformity tends to be higher in collectivist cultures, and much classic research may be culturally biased.
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