Week 8 - Social Influence — Key Concepts (Last-Minute Review)

Sherif: Norms and the Autokinetic Effect

• Believed social norms emerge to guide behavior in uncertain situations; people use others’ behavior to establish the range of possible behaviors.
• Autokinetic effect: in a dark room, a fixed point of light appears to move due to eye movements; used to study norm formation.
• Procedure: participants estimated light movement on numerous $2$-second trials; over time their estimates converged to a personal norm.
• Group convergence: after initially working alone, participants formed groups of $2-3$, shared estimates, and quickly converged on a group norm.
• Internalization: the group norm, once formed, can guide behavior even when individuals later work alone.
• Key finding: even in ambiguity, people form a stable internal frame of reference but may adopt a group-developed frame; the group norm persists after dispersal.
• Jacobs & Campbell (1961): established that the norm persisted when confederates were replaced with naïve participants, showing durability of the group-developed norm.

Asch: Conformity in Unambiguous Judgments

• Conformity arises from constructing norms based on others’ behavior to determine one’s own behavior; study addressed whether disagreement affects behavior when judgment is unambiguous.
• Task: compare three lines to a standard line; groups of $7-9$; $18$ trials; one naïve participant with confederates who gave incorrect answers on many trials.
• Findings: conformity was robust despite unambiguous stimuli.

Asch: Typical Findings and Interpretations

• Results: individual differences were large:
  • about $5\%$ conformed on all $12$ critical trials
  • $50\%$ conformed on $≥ 6$ trials
  • $25\%$ remained independent
• Reasons for conformity: fear of disapproval, perceived group accuracy, or just going along with the group.
• Independent participants were confident in their own judgments.

Deutsch & Gerrard (1955): Other Factors Affecting Conformity

• Findings: conformity decreased with
  • greater certainty about the task (stimuli remain visible)
  • reduced group pressure (lower motivation/ability of the group to criticize mistakes)
• Even with higher certainty and anonymous/private responses, conformity persisted at $≈23\%$.
• Implication: some conformity effects reproduce well under private responses, reducing reliance on public pressure.

Conditions of Conformity (Private vs Public)

• Three conditions examined:
  • Group pressure: face-to-face with confederates
  • No group pressure: isolated, private response
  • Variations: respond while stimuli are present vs after removal
• Outcome: pressure and visibility influence conformity; private responses generally reduce conformity.

How Conformity Works: Information vs Normative Influence

• People rely on others as sources of information when uncertain; preference for communicated information over sensed information.
• Informational Influence: accept others’ information as evidence of reality (especially when uncertain).
• Normative Influence: desire to fit in and avoid rejection (ostracism is a powerful driver).

Factors Affecting Conformity

• Conformity increases with:
  • demonstrated competence of group members
  • difficult or ambiguous tasks
• Conformity decreases with:
  • self-confidence and perception of self as competent
  • size of majority: around $3-5$ is optimal for many tasks
  • presence of an independent dissenter; unanimity of the majority is important (any break reduces conformity; a dissenter can lower conformity even if seen as incompetent)

Group Size and Unanimity Effects

• Group size: conformity rises with size up to about $5$ members, then plateaus.
• Unanimity: a single dissenter strongly reduces conformity, even if the dissenter’s answers are wrong.

Minority Influence (Moscovici, Lage, & Naffrechoux, 1969)

• Minority can influence the majority, not via power but via consistent behavior; consistency is key.
• Blue-green studies: judging color hues with two confederates consistently saying the color was green when slides were blue.
• Experiment 1: groups of $6$; overall conformity to the minority was $8.42\%$; $32\%$ conformed at some stage.
• Experiment 2: added an isolation task to check for private belief change; private belief change was not always observed.
• Experiment 3: confederates were inconsistent (some green on some trials); minority influence dropped to $1.25\%$, suggesting consistency is crucial.
• Post-experimental data: participants in groups with influence reported more nuanced perception of colors; minority can prompt deeper processing.

Compliance vs Conformity

• Compliance: changes in behavior due to direct requests from others; can involve various tactics.
• Techniques to gain compliance (based on two principles):
  • Ingratiation: make someone like you
  • Reciprocity: feel obligated to return a favor
• Common compliance techniques:
  • Foot-in-the-door
  • Door-in-the-face
  • Low-ball

Mindlessness and Compliance

• How a request is phrased can affect compliance independent of content; mindless responding occurs when people do not fully process the information.
• According to Langer, simple cues in phrasing can increase or decrease compliance; mindlessness can increase susceptibility to compliance, but not deterministically.

Obedience: Milgram’s Authority Paradigm

• Milgram studied obedience to authority in response to Nazi war crimes questions: are people simply following orders from legitimate authority?
• Core claim: a substantial proportion of people comply with orders that conflict with their conscience when an authority figure commands it.
• Public understanding framed as: obedience to legitimate authority can lead to harmful actions.

Milgram’s Procedure (Overview)

• Public advertisement framed the study as memory and learning research at Yale; participants paid to participate.
• Setup: teacher (participant) and learner; the experimenter instructs shocks for incorrect answers.
• Shock levels escalated from mild to severe, labeled at each step (e.g., slight to extreme danger). The shock generator displays volt levels and corresponding labels.
• Levels included a progression from low to high intensities, with corresponding labels such as: $15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 135, 150, 165, 180, 195, 210, 225, 240, 255, 270, 285, 300, 315, 330, 345, 360, 375, 390, 405, 420, 435, 450$ volts and qualitative labels (e.g., slight, moderate, strong, very strong, extreme, danger).
• The study emphasizes the power of perceived legitimate authority over moral action.

Key Takeaways

• Social influence operates via informational and normative pathways.
• Norm formation can be robust but is susceptible to persistent minority and majority pressures.
• Conformity is influenced by task ambiguity, group size, unanimity, and the presence of dissenters.
• Minority influence requires consistency to produce change in the majority.
• Compliance techniques leverage social heuristics (mindlessness, reciprocity, consistency) to shape behavior.
• Obedience to authority is a powerful influence, capable of driving people to act contrary to their personal conscience under legitimate command.