Resistance to Social Influence

Not everyone conforms or obeys. A key part of the AQA specification asks you to explain why some people resist social influence when others do not. Two main factors are examined: social support and locus of control. Understanding these factors is crucial for achieving top marks in evaluation (AO3), as they help explain individual differences that studies like Asch's and Milgram's variations highlight.

Key Definition: Resistance to social influence refers to the ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority.

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Social Support

Social support is the presence of other people who resist the pressure to conform or obey, making it easier for an individual to do the same. It works by breaking the unanimity of the group or providing a model for disobedience.

Social Support and Conformity

• In Asch's original study, conformity was 37% on critical trials.
• When Asch introduced a dissenting confederate who gave the correct answer, conformity dropped dramatically to 5.5%.
• Crucially, the dissenter did not need to give the correct answer — even a confederate who gave a different wrong answer reduced conformity. This suggests the key mechanism is breaking the unanimity of the majority, which frees the real participant to exercise independent judgement.
• When the dissenter left halfway through the study, conformity returned to near-original levels, showing that social support must be maintained to be effective.

Social Support and Obedience

• In Milgram's variation with two disobedient confederates (fellow "teachers" who refused to continue at 150V and 210V), obedience to 450V dropped from 65% to just 10%.
• The disobedient confederates provided a model for defiance and demonstrated that it was possible to resist the authority figure without severe consequences.
• This shows that social support works against obedience as well as conformity, by undermining the perceived power of the authority figure.

Exam Tip: When discussing social support, make sure you explain the mechanism — it is not simply that having another person present helps. The key is that social support breaks unanimity (in conformity) or provides a model for disobedience (in obedience). This distinction is important for gaining AO1 marks.

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Locus of Control (Rotter, 1966)

Julian Rotter (1966) proposed the concept of locus of control (LoC), which refers to the extent to which individuals believe they have control over events in their lives.

Key Definition: Locus of control is a personality dimension that describes the degree to which people believe they — rather than external forces — control the outcomes in their lives. It ranges on a continuum from high internal to high external.

The Continuum

graph LR
    A["High Internal LoC"] --- B["Continuum"] --- C["High External LoC"]

Internal LoC	External LoC
Believe they are responsible for what happens to them	Believe things happen because of external factors (luck, fate, powerful others)
More likely to seek out information and make independent decisions	More likely to be passive and accept the influence of others
Higher self-efficacy and self-confidence	Lower sense of personal control
More likely to resist conformity and obedience pressures	More likely to conform and obey

Research Evidence

• Holland (1967) — repeated Milgram's study and measured participants' LoC. He found that internals were more likely to resist the experimenter's authority and refuse to continue, while externals were more likely to obey to higher voltage levels.
• Oliner & Oliner (1988) — interviewed people who had sheltered Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust (rescuers) and compared them with people who had not helped. Rescuers scored significantly higher on measures of internal LoC and personal responsibility, suggesting that internals are more likely to resist unjust authority.
• Avtgis (1998) — conducted a meta-analysis and found that people with an internal LoC were less likely to conform in both NSI and ISI situations, confirming a consistent relationship across studies.

Measuring Locus of Control

Rotter developed a questionnaire to measure LoC, consisting of pairs of statements where respondents choose which they most agree with. For example:

• (a) "What happens to me is my own doing" (internal) vs. (b) "Sometimes I feel that I don't have enough control over the direction my life is taking" (external).

The total number of external choices gives the LoC score. A higher score indicates a more external LoC. It is important to remember that this is a continuum, not a dichotomy — most people are somewhere in the middle.

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Evaluation of Resistance to Social Influence (AO3)

Social Support

Strengths:

• Supported by well-controlled experimental evidence from both Asch and Milgram variations.
• Has practical applications — e.g., anti-bullying campaigns that encourage bystanders to speak up provide social support for victims to resist pressure.