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attitude was very different to 10,000 other students. The group who were told
their attitude was the same were more likely to resist conforming than the group
who were told they had individual attitudes. This showed that students who were
led to believe they already had a conforming attitude made extra effort to assert
themselves as individuals. This also shows how the study of Asch and Milgram
may not be valid in explaining independent behaviour due to it being culturally
biased because the experiments took part in the U.S a westernised culture- not
a collectivist culture also, as independent behaviour would be much lower in
countries who conform universally e.g. South Korea
Another area of research into independent behaviour has focused on personality.
Locus of control (LOC), created by Rotter 1966, refers to peoples perceptions of
the amount of personal control they have over events in their lives. Individuals
with who score highly on the LOC are high internals who see themselves as
highly in control of their actions meaning they are more likely to exhibit
independent behaviour whereas those with a low score (external locus) believe
that their behaviour is caused mostly by fate, luck or other external
circumstances and on a whole are more likely to conform.
The idea of a link between LOC and independent behaviour was supported by
Elms and Milgram (1974) who found that a sub-sample of the disobedient
participants in some of Milgrams experiments scored highly on the LOC scale
which proved how people who display independent behaviour are less likely to
side with the majority and they act alone in their views. Other research has
found that those with a high external LOC are more likely to be persuaded and to
conform. This suggests that differences in LOC are related to differences in
independent behaviour.