Social Psych Exam #2

Conformity

• Change in behavior or belief b/c of a real or imagined group pressure

  • Subconsciously conforming everyday

  • Obedience → form of conformity

  • Diet fads, fads (hula hoops, Stanleys, etc.), dental flossing, cancer screening, eating habits

How conformity is expressed

• Acceptance

• (Public) compliance

Acceptance

• Conform outwardly and genuinely believe (behaviors + attitudes → match)

(Public) compliance

• “Playing along”; don’t actually agree on the inside

  • Myers classifies obedience as a form of compliance; however, Dr. M will treat it as a form of conformity b/c ppl who obey an authority may not privately disagree

Why do people conform?

• Informational social influence

• Normative social influence

Informational social influence

• Goal → to be accurate/correct (conforming b/c you want to do the right thing)

  • Usually leads to acceptance → stronger/stable attitudes so harder to persuade to normative

  • Usually when situation is uncertain/ambiguous, task is hard, or we care about being right

Normative social influence

• Goal → to fit in, gain social approval, or avoid rejection

  • Usually leads to (public) compliance → weaker/less stable attitudes

  • More likely when people care about social acceptance

How to tell if conformity is from informational or social influence?

• Difficult to determine

• Look at behavior change if someone is present/absent OR change over time

  • Constant behavior → usually informational social influence

Social norms

• Unwritten rules/shared expectations

• Conformity is strongly influenced by social norms

  • Dry texter/brushing teeth in-class → breaks social norms

Why do social norms matter?

1. Coordinate behavior

2. Reduce uncertainty

3. Allows societies to function better (or worse)

4. Ppl know what/when they should be doing

Sherif’s Social Norm Formation

• Social norms

• Q: How can other ppl influence how we perceive reality?

• Purpose: how social norms develop in unclear situations

  • Auto-kinetic Effect

• People’s estimates of light movement became similar when judgments made together

• Informational social influence (people want to be right) → acceptance

Asch’s Conformity Studies

• Line judgement task → match 1 of 3 lines to a standard line

  • Judgements said out loud among 6 participants who were confederates

  • 75% conformed at least once to the wrong line; 37% of total responses conformed

• Normative social influence → public compliance

What factors predict conformity?

1. Task difficulty (if harder → conformity - look to others)

2. Incompetence increases conformity

3. Group size (5-6 people for max conformity)

4. Status of others → power/high status = more conformity

5. Unanimity; power of conformity → Asch’s study didn’t want to dissent

6. Cohesiveness (groups)

7. Public commitment (value consistency in Western cultures)

Milgram Field Experiment

• The % of people who imitated a group looking up into the sky as group size increased to 5 people

People that conform more:

• High agreeableness

• High conscientious (rule following)

People that conform less:

• Higher openness to experience

• Greater self-confidence

• High in novelty seeking (loves to explore new/unfamiliar experiences)

Personality influences conformity, but ___ ___ are generally stronger for behavior than ___

• Situational factors

• Personality

Conformity in collectivist cultures

• Greater conformity → value harmony and fitting in

Conformity in individualistic cultures

• Less conformity → value independence and uniqueness

Social roles

• Require learning new social norms

Milgram’s Shock Study

• Before study, talked to psychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults (N=110)

  • People in all 3 groups said participants would disobey by ~135 volts; said none expected to go beyond 300 volts

  • Psychiatrists → only the most sadistic (<1%) would go to 450 volts

• Findings → 65% went to 450 volts which was max (26/40)

  • Even when the learner’s protests (person getting harmed) became more intense and convincing, many participants continued obeying

  • Similar/no statistically significant difference between men and women

Ethical concerns of Milgram:

• Deception, psychological distress, right to withdraw (“absolutely essential that you continue”)

• Milgram’s response → people were overreacting, said 84% of people were glad to participate - interviewed participants 1 yr later → “no lasting harm”; however, cognitive dissonance could’ve happened

Milgram’s explanation for shock experiment

• Agency theory: 2 states of behavior in social situations

  • Autonomous state: direct own actions + take responsibility

  • Agentic state: other ppl direct your actions + you don’t take responsibility, they do

    • To enter agentic state, Milgram argued:

      • 1. Belief in a qualified/legitimate authority

      • 2. Belief that authority figure accepts responsibility/consequences of their actions

Milgram’s variations in his experiments:

• 4 factors that affected obedience:

  • 1) Emotional distance: people are more likely to obey when they feel less personally responsible

    • 40% obedience (dec.) → learner in the same room: participants could see the person they were shocking, making them less willing to shock

    • 30% obedience (dec.) → physically forcing the learner’s hand onto the shock plate: participants had to physically harm the learner, making them even less likely

    • 93% obedience (inc.) → peer administers shocks: participants didn’t have to personally administer the shocks, making it easier to obey

  • 2) Closeness and legitimacy of authority: people are more likely to obey when someone has recognized authority and is physically present

    • 20% obedience (dec.) → experimenter replaced an ordinary person

    • 21% obedience (dec.) → experimenter gave orders via the phone

  • 3) Institutional authority and prestige: people are more likely to obey when institution is credible

    • 48% obedience (dec.) → study moved from Yale to a modest, run-down building in CT

  • 4) Modeling (social support/disobedient peers): people are less likely to obey authority when they see others resisting it

    • 2 confederate teachers accompany and refuse to obey experimenter 1 at a time

      • 10% obedience (dec.) only

Burger replication

• Looked at personality measures

  • Stopped at 150 volts

  • People still highly obedient (70% willing to obey)

4 reasons why Milgram’s set-up was effective (according to Burger):

• Slippery-slope of obedience

• Social norm → to shock

• Opportunity to deny responsibility

• Limited time to reflect on decision

Hofling Hospital Experiment (1966)

• Exams whether nurses would obey doctor’s orders when orders would violate rules/harm patient

  • Dr. Smith → 22 nurses in real hospitals; administer 20 mg when supposed to administer 10 mg

  • 21/22 administered the drug; those scoring higher on authoritarianism more likely

    • Still situational factors are better predictors of conformity

Generalizability of Milgram’s findings

• Age + gender → no difference

• Culture → majority replications in Western cultures

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

• Looked at situational influences

• College students → guards and prisoners; supposed to be 2 weeks but ended after 6 days

• OG interpretation was strong powerful situations can transform ppl into cruelty

  • Later, Q’s arose → did personality matter more?

• Issues w/ experiment: strong demand characteristics influenced guard’s behavior + misleading importance of personality

Re-evaluating SPE (replication by Reicher & Haslam 2006)

• No demand characteristics

• Demand characteristics: subtle cues or features in a research study (especially in psychology) that hint at the experiment's true purpose or what the researcher expects to find; some guards may have behaved as they believed researchers expected (archived tape)

  • Guards may have been coached to act tougher so experiment would work + examples of what they could do to prisoners 

• Selection effects: volunteers for a prison study may have differed form those volunteering for a neutral study

  • 1 ad → prison study; other ad → general psych study

    • Prison-study volunteers scored higher on aggression, dominance, narcissism, social dominance orientation (prefer group hierarchy), Machiavellianism (exploiting others for personal gain)

What do psychologists conclude today about SPE?

• OG SPE’s conclusion were overstated

• There were variations in guard’s behaviors → some were kind/compassionate and resisted to conforming to other guard’s behaviors

  • We still underestimate the power of social situations

  • Situations powerful → draws in certain personalities → personality causes variations in situations

Resisting social pressures to conform

• We sometimes act in ways that preserve our individuality, esp. in Western cultures (individualistic)

  • Asserting uniqueness → we don’t want to stick out too much, but also want to be ourselves

  • In groups, we’re most conscious of how we differ from others

  • McGuire study → when kids asked to describe themselves, they mention what makes them different/unique from others (e.g. red hair, thin, overweight, glasses)

Psychological reactance

• Motive to protect/restore one’s sense of freedom/autonomy when freedom/autonomy is threatened

  • E.g. Dr. M’s brother buying Twinkies when they announced they wouldn’t be produced anymore

  • E.g. when people tell you you can’t do smth, you’re more inclined to do it (e.g. underage drinking/smoking)

    • Forbidden fruit effect

Forbidden fruit effect

• Smth becomes more desirable simply b/c it’s forbidden/restricted

Bushman and Stack (1996): warning labels and psychological reactance

• Study looked at how warning labels on violent TV programs make people even more interested in watching them

• What did researchers find?

  • Warning labels increased interest compared to neutral/no labels → Label X Individual Reactance Interaction

  • Authoritative sources increased interest → warnings from authoritative sources (e.g. US Surgeon General) increased interest in violent TV shows b/c they triggered stronger psychological reactance

Another example of psychological reactance → new Coke formula in 1985

• Consumers were angry/outraged, feeling like their freedom of choice had been taken away

  • Psychological resistance → consumers resisted the change b/c they felt like their freedom to choose was threatened (left negative reviews)

Conformity takeaways

1. Conformity can take on many forms

2. Ppl conform for different reasons

3. Situations exert powerful influences on when/how people conform and obey, but individual differences still matter

Persuasion

• Process by which a message induces changes in attitudes or behaviors

  • Ads are 1 of the most common ways we see persuasion

  • Gender plays a role in persuasion

Hurdle of persuasion

1. Pay attention to message (YES)

2. Comprehend it (YES)

3. Believe it (YES)

4. Remember it (YES)

5. Believe accordingly (YES)

6. Action (YES)

• To elicit action, a persuasive message must clear several hurdles; difficult b/c many steps + we’re cognitively busy

Early persuasion research

• Hovland et al. The Yale Attitude Approach

  • Studying features of persuasion; who said what to whom how? (credibility, attractiveness, perceived credibility)

  • Results → messy/mixed (e.g. attractiveness sometimes influenced persuasion)

  • Led to Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

• Dual process

  • Central route: interested people focus on the arguments and respond w/ critical thoughts → cognitive elaboration

    • Thought deeply about the message

  • Peripheral route: mot focused on message itself; instead, influenced by ‘incidental’ or ‘peripheral’ cues → not thinking deeply about message

Central route to persuasion example

• Buying laptop (compare prices, battery life, performance, etc.)

Peripheral route to persuasion examples

• Celebrity endorsements

• Attractive spokesperson

• Expert endorsement

• Choosing a restaurant b/c you saw it on TikTok

What determines which route is taken?

• Motivation + ability

  • Message → high motivation + ability to think → deep processing, focused on quality of the message’s arguments → lasting change that resists fading/counterattacks

  • Message → low motivation and/or ability to think → superficial processing (heuristics) → focused on surface features → temporary change that’s susceptible to fading and counterattacks

Peripheral route IRL → rely on simple cues and mental shortcuts (heuristics)

• Shopping:

  • Eye-level merchandise: more likely to grab

  • End of aisle merchandise: on sale, more likely to buy

  • Pricing that ends in .95 or .99: more likely to be purchased than round up

• How you vote → voting-in-school = more likely to support school funding

  • VIDEO

Elements of persuasion

1. Communicator (who)

2. Message (says what)

3. How the message is communicated/delivered

4. Audience (to whom)

Who → the communicator

• Credibility, attractiveness/liking

Credibility

• Perceived trustworthiness

  • More credibility → more persuasive

  • More willing to listen to a communicator we trust

    • E.g. Facebook users more likely to believe a story shared by a friend rather than a stranger

Credibility (perceived motives)

• Perceived motives affects how trustworthy we perceive something/someone

• Arguing in own self-interest = lower perceived trust (more skeptical) 

  • E.g. paid expert testifying for a defense team

• No perceived gain = higher perceived trust (info weighted more heavily)

  • E.g. a non-profit that reviews products (consumer reports)

• If someone/something goes against own self-interest, info gets weighted more heavily → even more credible and persuasive

• Negative reviews often carry more weight

  • If you’re giving a negative review, you’re not getting anything out of it; research supports negative info → more powerful b/c seen as harm/threat

Credibility (way we speak/gender)

• Rapid speakers (more credible than slow)

• Powerful linguistic style → more credible than hesitant/unaware

• Male profs are generally viewed as more credible than females

  • Female profs usually have a more hesitant style of speaking

    • POC + young women profs → seen as least credible

    • Older white men → seen as most credible

• Caveat: speaking/not listening to others → not credible; confidence does not equal accuracy

Sleeper effect

• Delayed persuasion

• Message becomes more persuasive over time b/c we remember the message but forget why we initially didn’t trust it; an initially discounted msg becomes effective as we remember the msg but not the reasons for discounting it

Attractiveness/liking

• Liking isn’t just about physical attractiveness, but it can be about other things (perceived similarity, brief positive interaction)

• Good looking politicians win more votes regardless of gender

• Generally, better looking people → better life outcomes

Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign

• Similarity can be persuasive

  • Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign worked - Dove made more sales

  • Dr. M’s experiment/pilot study → thought ppl who were exposed to regular-sized models would feel better abt yourselves → found the opposite

    • Why? Ppl in the study could’ve been bigger than women in Real Beauty Campaign

What: message characteristics

• Message quality

• Role of emotions

• 1-sided vs. 2-sided appeals

• Order/timing of message

Message quality

• Central route: strong arguments matter; not strong = not persuasive

  • E.g. Dr. Mercurio looking at consumer reports for a new dishwasher and evaluating strong reviews

• Peripheral route: superficial cues > argument quality

Role of emotions

• Emotional vs. reasoned appeals

  • Which is more persuasive? → depends on motivation + ability to think

    • How the audience typically processes information

      • Central route → logic

      • Peripheral route → emotion

    • If attitude was formed w/ emotion, persuade w/ emotion (e.g. ASCPA’s sad dogs in cages commercial)

    • If attitude was formed w/ logic, persuade w/ logic (e.g. an appeal that includes ‘reason’ → Visite Cat Food has 2x the meat of any other leading brand)

Effect of good feelings

• Research suggests that messages become more persuasive when they become associated with good feelings

  • E.g. hearing a message along w/ pleasant music or good food

    • When we’re in a bad mood, we process things more centrally (in order to persuade → argument quality needs to be high) 

    • When we’re in a good mood, we don’t think as deeply; instead, more peripherally (in order to persuade → argument quality doesn’t need to be as high)

Effect of arousing fear

• Persuasive attempts to emphasize negative consequences of not adapting behavior (e.g. anti-smoking campaigns and “just say no”)

  • Just say no by Nancy Reagan; “this is your brain on drugs” → frying brain on pan; OG commercial didn’t have intended effect

  • 1997: 2nd commercial featured Rachel Leigh Cook

    • Focused on things outside like fam/friends → more impactful; however, research doesn’t suggest that it was necessarily impactful

How to design effective fear appeals

• Research suggests that fear appeals are most effective when:

  • The threat is perceived as serious

  • People feel personally vulnerable

  • It includes recommended action that’s perceived as effective

    • If you scare people but don’t give solutions on how to fix issue, it won’t be effective

  • People believe that they can carry out the action (self-efficacy)

    • Research shows that in persuasion, self-efficacy matters

  • It clearly communicates the threat (e.g. vivid or graphic images can increase perceived severity and attention) 

    • E.g. cigarette warning label: Australia’s plain packaging law (2012): removed branding from cigarette packages and required large graphic health warnings

      • Goal: reduce appeal of smoking, increase the impact of health warnings

      • Results: smoking rated fell by 5% (HUGE impact)

1-sided vs. 2-sided appeals/messages

• One-sided message: presents only arguments supporting a position

• Two-sided message: presents supporting arguments while acknowledging and addressing opposing viewpoints

• Which is more persuasive? 

  • It depends:

    • 1) How educated the audience is → if the audience is well educated and understands both sides of the issue, use two-sided appeal

    • 2) We don’t know if the group initially agrees w/ you → use two-sided appeal

    • 3) If you know the audience supports your initial position → use one-sided appeal

Order/timing of message

*Delay time varies → 15-20 mins vs. weeks

How: message delivery

• The way a persuasive message is delivered, including the communication channel and format + characteristics of the message delivery

• Message repetition

Message repetition

• Can increase liking

  • Mere exposure effect: repeated exposure increases familiarity, which often leads to greater liking

  • Repetition can increase perceived truth:

    • Repeated statements become familiar, making them easier to process

    • Familiar statements more likely to be judged as true, even if statements are false

    • Adults and children are more likely to believe a statement heard twice vs. once

Does repetition always work?

• Repetition can increase persuasion, but its effects may depend on the audience and the amount of repetition

  • Negative attitudes before → repetition will increase dislike

  • Data: if you repeat too much, people will become annoyed, decreasing persuasion

    • Certain threshold where repetition won’t be effective

    • Repeating 3+ or more in a close period of time → people might feel negatively

    • E.g. seeing the same commercial over and over or a repetitive commercial

      • HEAD ON: apply directly to forehead 3x in a row → causes annoyance 

Message repetition IRL (politicians)

• Politicians use repetition to win votes, discredit opponents, etc.

  • E.g. Donald Trump saying the murder rate in the U.S. is the highest it’s been in 45 years

To whom: the audience

• Age

• Thoughtfulness

• Motivation + ability to think

Age

• Adolescence and early adulthood are important periods for attitude formation

  • Younger people’s attitudes tend to be more malleable

  • Many attitudes become relatively stable during adulthood 

  • Younger audiences often easier to persuade than older adults

Thoughtfulness

• If the audience is thinking deeply (central route), the appeal will need to have strong arguments

What factors influence whether people use central processing?

• Motivation + ability to think

Motivation to think

• Motivation to think (situational factors and individual differences)

  • What increases the motivation to think deeply about a message?

    • Situational factors that increase the motivation to think:

      • Personal relevance (E.g. voting issues on abortion → some people care more b/c it “personally affects them”)

      • Topic importance

      • Decision accountability 

        • If you feel like the decisions that are being made will come back to you

Individual differences that increase the motivation to think

• Need for cognition → some people are higher in this than others

  • Higher need for cognition → persuasion via central route

  • Lower need for cognition → persuaded via peripheral route 

Ability to think

• Even motivated people cannot process centrally if they lack the ability

  • What decreases the ability to think?

    • Distraction

    • Time pressure

    • Complex messages

    • Limited knowledge 

Message features that encourage thought/elaboration

• Asking rhetorical questions

• Presenting multiple speakers

• Increasing personal responsibility

• Repeating important arguments

• Reducing distractions

Common persuasion tactics

• Many persuasion tactics rely on a small # of psychological principles (Cialdini, 1984):

  • Reciprocity

  • Commitment and consistency

  • Social proof

  • Scarcity

Reciprocity

• We feel obligated to repay favors

• What strengthens reciprocity?

  • Unexpected

  • Voluntary and genuine (compared to coerced)

  • Perceived as effortful or involved

• Regan (1971): 

  • Evaluating art (cover story)

  • Confederate gets on the phone:

    • 2 IVs (4 different conditions):

      • Likeability of confederate (polite v. rude on the phone)

      • Reciprocity (bring extra soda v. nothing)

    • DV: how many raffle tickets were sold

  • After the phone, the confederate asked if the listener wanted to buy raffle tickets

  • Result? Soda condition: bought 2x as many raffle tickets (likability didn’t matter much - even if they were rude)

    • Reciprocity > likability 

Commitment & consistency

• People are more likely to comply with a request when it is consistent w/ a prior commitment, belief, or behavior they have previously expressed 

  • E.g. e-vite for baby shower → didn’t want to go but the fact that you publicly said yes on the invitation made you feel like you had to go E.g. loyalty programs for coffee shops → commitment and consistency so you keep on going + loyalty 

What makes a commitment more powerful?

• Commitments are more powerful when:

  • Public → others know about the commitment

  • Active → you actively participate rather than passively agree

    • E.g. saying you’re volunteering out loud vs.  not

  • Effortful → you invest meaningful time, energy, or resources (effort justification)

  • Freely chosen → you make the commitment voluntarily

• Ex: Dr. Mercurio volunteering at Last Hope K-9 Rescue

  • 100% volunteer run organization

  • Long application process + effort

  • Volunteers respond to ‘public’ posts on Facebook when dogs need a foster and other requests (e.g. vacation coverage, transport help, event help, etc.)

    • These commitments are public to the rest of the group and require effort/engagement

    • Dr. Mercucio couldn’t volunteer anymore for an event she signed up for → felt bad b/c she was publicly committed and agreed to it

Social proof

• People are more likely to comply when they see that others have done the same thing

  • one the same thing

    • We often to look at others to determine what is appropriate or correct

    • The more similar others are to us, the more influential their behavior tends to be

    • Especially influential in situations of uncertainty

    • E.g. 5-star reviews, long lines outside a restaurant, tip jars, streaming platforms showing what’s trending

Scarcity principle

• Opportunities seem more valuable to us when they’re less available

  • Creates a sense of urgency

  • Can take many forms → limited time, numbers, edition, information, opportunities

    • E.g. limited time to buy something (7 days left!), Starbucks seasonal menu, Amazon (Only 5 left in stock - order soon.)

  • What drives the effectiveness of the scarcity principle?

    • Psychological reactance

    • Heuristics → if something is scarce, it must be valuable