Chapter 6: Conformity & Obedience

Flashcards covering key vocabulary, experiments, and concepts from Chapter 6 on Conformity and Obedience, including types of social influence, Milgram's research, mimicry, social contagion, and resistance mechanisms.

Acceptance

Acting and believing in accord with social pressure, where both personal behavior and private attitude match the social norm.

Compliance

Publicly acting in accord with an explicit request or social norm while privately disagreeing, where outward behavior matches but inner attitude does not.

Obedience

Acting in accord with a direct order or command, where behavior matches the command but attitude does not have to.

Informational influence

A form of social influence driven by the desire to be right, which leads directly to acceptance.

Normative influence

A form of social influence driven by the desire to fit in and be liked, which leads directly to compliance.

Stanley Milgram's obedience studies (1965)

A series of social psychology experiments examining situational obedience to authority, in which $65\%$ of male participants administered what they believed to be lethal electric shocks to a learner.

The chameleon effect (subtle mimicry)

The automatic, implicit tendency to mimic the actions, language, facial expressions, and body language of those around us.

Goldstein, Cialdini, & Grisksevicius (2008)

A study demonstrating that using descriptive norm messages (e.g., stating that $75\%$ of guests in this specific room reused towels) increases conformity compared to standard environmental messages.

Maddox, Mullen, & Galinsky (2008)

A study using a paired negotiation task that found buyers who subtly mimicked sellers fostered greater reported trust and successfully negotiated acceptable deals.

Social contagion

The spontaneous spread of behaviors, emotions, or ideas—such as laughing, fear, or panic—through a group of people.

Mass hysteria

A severe form of social contagion involving suggestibility to psychological or physical problems that spread throughout a large group of people, exemplified historically by the Salem Witch Trials.

Reactance

A psychological motive to protect or restore one's sense of personal freedom when feeling pressured or restricted, which arises when people resist conformity.

Boomerang effect

An unintended outcome in which aggressive demands or restrictions cause an individual to act in direct opposition to the demand in order to reassert autonomy.