Mod 3

1. Resistance to social influence
Specification:
Explanations of resistance to social influence including
social support and locus of control.

2. Resistance to social influence
• This refers to the ability of people to withstand
the social pressure to conform to the majority
or to obey authority.
• The ability to resist social pressure is
influenced by both situational and
dispositional factors.
• The two explanations you need to know are:
Social support
Locus of control (LOC)

3. Social support – AO1
The presence of people who resist pressures to
conform or obey can help others to do the same.
These people act as models to show others that
resistance to social influence is possible
Conformity Obedience
• Conformity is reduced by
a dissenting peer.
• The effect is not long
lasting.
• Obedience is reduced by
one other dissenting
partner.
• The dissenter’s
disobedience frees the
participant to act from
their own conscience.

4. Social support – AO1
Conformity - Asch Obedience - Milgram
• Asch found that conformity
reduced to 5.5% when one of
the confederates gave a
different answer to the rest
of the group.
• This was true even when the
confederates answer was a
different wrong answer the
others in the group.
• Social support breaks the
unanimous position of the
majority.
• Obedience dropped from
65% to 10% when the real
participant was joined by a
disobedient confederate.
• Social support – people are
more confident to resist
obedience if they can find an
ally who is willing to join
them.

5. Locus of control – AO1
Locus of control: is how much individual control do we
think we have over our lives and what happens to us.
Rotter (1966) proposed the concept of locus of control
– a concept concerned with internal vs external locus
of control
Internal LOC External LOC
• Internals believe that they are
mostly responsible for what
happens to them.
• Externals believe that things
happen because of things
outside of their control.

6. Locus of control – AO1
Continuum
People differ in the way they explain their successes
and failures but this is not simply a matter of being
internal or external – there is a continuum
High
external
LOC
High
internal
LOC
Low
external
+ low
internal
LOC

7. Locus of control
Resistance to social influence
•People with an internal LOC are more likely to
be able to resist pressure to conform or obey:
If someone takes personal responsibility for
their actions and experiences (good or bad)
they are more likely to base their decisions on
their own beliefs.
People with high internal LOC are more self-
confident, more achievement-oriented, have
higher intelligence and less need for social
approval. These personality traits lead to
greater resistance to social influence.

8. Evaluation: strengths
Research support – resistance to obedience
•Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s study and measured
whether participants were internals or externals.
•37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level
(they showed independence.)
•Only 23% of externals did not continue.
•This finding backs up LOC as an explanation for resistance to
social influence.

9. Evaluation: limitations
Contradictory research
•Twenge et al (2004) analysed data from American obedience
studies over a 40-year period (1960-2002)
•The data showed that, over this time span, people have
become more resistant to obedience but more external.
•If resistance were linked to an internal LOC then we would
expect people to have become more internal.
•This challenges the link between internal LOC and resistance.
•However, the results may be due to a changing society where
many things are increasingly outside personal control .

10. Locus of control – AO3
The role of LOC may be exaggerated
•Rotter et al (1982) found LOC is only important in new
situations – it has little influence in familiar situations
where previous experiences are always more important
•This does suggests that locus of control can explain
only a limited range of situations in which people might
resist social influence.
•This means that locus of control is not as important a
factor in resistance as some have suggested.