Psychology of Social Interaction - 6: Conformity, Obedience, and Compliance

PSYC 3330

conformity

real/fake group pressure → change in behavior/belief

• not always bad or good

• types: acceptance, compliance, obedience

acceptance (conformity)

social pressure but you also have the same belief → belief, behavior

• you agree nonetheless, it just also happens to be a social expectation

compliance (conformity)

request conflicts with private belief → only display public behavior because of reward/punishment

• secretly disagree but act accordingly

obedience (conformity)

direct order/command that may conflict with private belief → action

• being “forced” to do it

muzafer sherif’s norm formation

used the autokinetic phenomenon (stationary light in a pitch black room appears like its moving due to eye movement) → do multiple times asking participants how far it moved → answers start to conform (not to an average)

robert jacobs and donald campbell’s culture transmission of false beliefs

same as sherif’s experiment, but they had one person from the normed group join a new group

normed group gave consistent answers, rest of the group began to conform to their answers

repeated

solomon asch’s line study

compare line heights, very easy

• confederates gave wrong answers confidently → actual participant starts to conform

• 37% of all conformed, 75% conformed at least once

stanley milgram’s obedience to authority

authority vs conscience, wanted to see why the nazis all followed orders

• teacher gave electric shocks to confederate learner if they got it wrong, increasingly more painful/intense

• if teacher wanted to stop, milgram told them to continue anyways, they had to be very firm to actually get it to stop

• most continued despite feeling bad, 2/3 went all the way even after the learner stopped responding