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[Social Influence] [16M] Mark my Esssay?

Discuss two explanations of resistance to social influence.
TIP: As part of your discussion refer to the views expressed by Jack and Sarah in the conversation above.
Jack – confident personality – locus of control
Sarah – presence of others – dissident

The ability to resist social influence is commonly referred to as independent behaviour as they make decisions independently from a group and resist the social pressures to obey or conform. But what allows us to overcome, what can sometimes be, overwhelming social pressures?

There are two established explanations as to why people are able to resist social influence: developing a strong internal locus of control and having social support from others in the group.How much control an individual feels they have over the events and outcomes in their life and the behaviour they portray is referred to as “Locus of control”. An individual can either have an internal or external locus of control.People with an internal locus of control tend to believe they are in control over the events int heir life and as a result are more self-confident. The belief they have a great deal of control over their behaviour leads to the acceptance of responsibility should either an undesirable or desirable event occur. In the case of Jack, he believes this is the primary reason as to why people resist social influence, he may achieve a top grade in one of his subjects and put it down to the hard work he put into it.To contrast this, someone with an internal locus of control perceive their behaviour and the events that occur in their life as a result of external influences thus seldom taking responsibility. A prime example of this would be blaming a test paper for being too difficult when they achieve a low grade.Rotter at el, in 1966, devised a questionnaire that determined whether or not an individual had an internal or an external locus of control. He concluded that having an internal locus of control resulted in a more confident personality, just as Jack had said.

However, Sarah disagrees with Jack’s statement, she strongly believes resisting the pressures of social influence is mainly down to the presence of others – or – social support.Sarah is backed up several studies, namely, a variation of Ashe’s Line Study. In this variation Ashe placed a dissident, a confederate who sided with the naïve individual by not conforming. By having someone else who opposed the majority the participant had more confidence in their own decisions leading to further opposition. Milgram’s shock study also supports Sarah’s statement as there was a variation where two other confederates refused to obey the orders given to them by the experimenter – this rebellion, in turn, affected the true participant’s obedience rates. It dropped to only 10%.

Reply 1

Findlay6

I give it 10/16.

Command word is "Discuss" so it wants a lot of AO3 (you haven't used any?) you've used AO2 well and AO1 enough. Not sure what that first rhetorical paragraph is? In your exam you don't have time to waste, don't waffle, just write the answer.

Here's the mark scheme for that question. (Scroll to Q3) It's broken down into AO1, 2 and 3 and includes points you schould mention for higher marks, plus an overall band for knowledge/ability. Self-assess (it's good for you)

http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/AQA-71821-SMS.PDF

Reply 2

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