PYB202: Wk 6 - Conformity, Compliance & Obedience
Social Influence
Introduction
This week's topic: Social influence, covering conformity, compliance, and obedience.
Order: Compliance, obedience, and then conformity.
Focus on the slides for exam preparation, with the textbook sections providing additional context.
Email the instructor with questions, especially concerning exam preparation.
Review of Attitudes
Attitudes: Examined how attitudes form and are measured.
Attitude Formation: Whether attitudes are innate or learned through environment and reinforcement.
Measuring Attitudes: Direct (asking) vs. indirect measures (skin response).
Direct measures suffer from social desirability bias.
Indirect measures indicate intensity but not direction.
Predicting Behavior: Models like the theory of planned behavior consider attitudes, norms, and perceived control.
Example: Attending a climate change rally depends on intention and control perceptions (e.g., transportation).
Attitude Change and Persuasion: Political parties try to change attitudes, especially before elections.
Two routes to persuasion: central (critical assessment) and peripheral (cues like attractiveness).
Yale studies by Carl Hovland examined source and communicator variables (e.g., credibility, attractiveness).
Influencers are used to encourage or discourage behaviors (e.g., vaping).
Fear can be effective if coupled with self-efficacy (protection motivation theory).
Audience effects: Intelligence and need for cognition influence persuasion.
Attitude Following Behavior: Cognitive dissonance theory suggests behavior can change attitudes.
Example: Participants paid less to lie about a boring task later report enjoying it more.
Resisting Persuasion: Reactance, forewarning, and inoculation can help resist persuasion.
Inoculation involves exposure to weak versions of arguments to strengthen defenses.
Social Influence Defined
Social influence: The process by which attitudes and behaviors are influenced by the real or implied presence of other people.
Influence can occur even without physical presence, just by considering others' expectations.
Video Example: Social Influence in Action
Wedding video prank illustrating social influence.
Witnesses unknowingly participated in a mock wedding ceremony.
The authority figure (registrar) influenced their actions, even when mistakes were apparent.
The power of the social environment and the desire to conform were highlighted.
Compliance
Definition: Changes in behavior elicited by direct requests.
Characteristics:
Superficial and transient.
Based on power (legitimate, informational).
Power vs. Influence: Moscovici suggests power negates the need for influence, and vice versa.
Strategies to gain compliance:
Offering a trade.
Appealing to empathy.
Ingratiation (compliments).
Norm of reciprocity.
Sequential requests (foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, lowballing, that’s-not-all).
Compliance Strategies Explained:
Foot-in-the-door: Start with a small request to gain agreement, then follow with a larger request.
Door-in-the-face: Start with an unreasonably large request (which is rejected), then follow with a more reasonable request.
Lowballing: Offer something attractive, then remove benefits after agreement.
That's-not-all: Offer a discount or bonus to encourage compliance.
Obedience
Definition: Behavior change produced by the commands of authority.
Positive aspects:
Following instructions during fire evacuations and other emergencies.
Adhering to strict procedures (e.g., airline evacuations).
Blind obedience in the military.
Negative aspects: Blind obedience can lead to harmful actions.
Milgram's Obedience Studies
Theoretical basis: Response to Ash’s conformity study and post-World War II behavior.
Motivation: Understanding why people obeyed authority during the Holocaust.
Nuremberg Trials: Adolf Eichmann's defense of "just following orders."
Recruitment: Males aged 20-50 recruited via newspaper ads.
Deception: Advertised as a study on punishment in learning, not obedience.
Roles: Teacher (participant) and learner (confederate).
Procedure:
Participants were paid to administer increasing electric shocks to the learner for wrong answers.
The learner divulged having a heart condition.
Shocks ranged from 15 volts (slight) to 450 volts (XXX).
The learner reacted with pain and eventually silence.
The experimenter insisted the teacher continue.
Key element: Obedience to authority.
Ethical Question: How far would participants go before refusing to obey?
Results
Experts predicted most people would stop at slight or moderate shock levels.
Actual results: Most participants obeyed, even to the highest shock levels.
65% of participants administered shocks up to 450 volts, even when the learner was silent.
Implications: Challenges the assumption that Nazi Germany was an anomaly and raises questions about the propensity to obey authority.
Additional Details:
Ethical issues: deception, right to withdraw, psychological harm.
Experiment involved telling recruits they were administering increasingly severe electric shocks when this was not actually the case (simulated shock experience).
Debriefing given to those who participated.
After the experiment, there was a review to determine if real harm came to the recruits.
The study was designed to test the recruit's ability to follow directions, even seemingly unethical directions.
Milgram's study revealed that participants had the ability to act in inhumane ways when given directions from authority figures.
Important factors in the experiment related to: authority, ethical behavior, and direction.
Ethical Considerations
Deception: Participants were deceived about the true nature of the study.
Weighed against potential benefits of knowledge gained.
Debriefing and option to withdraw data are essential.
Right to withdraw: Participants were pressured to continue.
Confidentiality: Footage raised concerns about privacy.
Psychological harm: Distress and potential long-term effects.
Follow-up: Determining appropriate level of follow-up care.
Ethical Guidelines in Australia
National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research.
Four pillars:
Research merit and integrity.
Justice.
Beneficence (risks vs. benefits).
Respect for participants.
Factors Influencing Obedience
Gender: Original studies on males, later studies show similar obedience levels in females.
Culture: Collectivist societies tend to show more obedience.
Commitment: Foot-in-the-door effect.
Proximity: Obedience reduces if the victim is nearby or the authority figure is distant.
Group pressure: Obedience increases if others obey.
Legitimacy: Obedience reduced when the study was conducted in an office building (48%) vs. Yale (65%).
Alternative explanations: Reinterpretation of Milgram's data suggests participants were motivated to help science.
Conformity
Definition:
Changing perceptions, opinions, or behaviors to be consistent with group norms.
Deep-seated, private change, and enduring.
Sharif's Autokinetic Experiment
Based on Allport’s convergence effect (conservative estimates in groups).
Procedure:
Participants in a dark room estimated movement of a stationary dot of light (autokinetic effect).
Estimates were made alone and in groups.
Findings:
Group norms developed.
Participants used others as a frame of reference due to uncertainty.
Average positions were favored over fringe positions.
Follow-up:
Had recruits estimate certain data in two scenarios: alone and in a group.
When alone: Recruits more likely to provide far-fetched responses.
When in Groups: Recruits would tailor their answers to agree with other members.
Norm Persistence
Recruits who tailored estimates to be consistent with the group were more likely to use said data even when alone.
Recruits had an understanding that following what the majority believed was more correct than fringe theories.
Asch's Conformity Study
Critique to Sharif: What about conformity when the answer is obvious?
Procedure:
Participants judged which of three lines matched a standard line.
One real participant, others were confederates giving wrong answers.
Findings:
25% held their ground.
50% conformed on six or more trials.
5% conformed all the time.
The average rate of conformity was 33%.
Reasons for conformity:
Perceptual inaccuracies.
Desire to fit in.
Distortion of reality.
Ethical Issues
Deception and distress, requiring careful debriefing and follow-up.
Factors Influencing Conformity
Privacy: Private responses reduce conformity.
Gender: Variability depends on the task.
Culture: Collectivist societies show more conformity.
Group size: Effect plateaus after about five people.
Dissenters: Any dissent reduces conformity.
Competency: Dissenter competency also influences conformity.
Social Influence Processes
Normative and Informational Influence (Deutsch and Gerard).
Informational: Using others as a reality check.
Normative: Conforming for social approval, even when knowing it's wrong.
Referent informational influence: Group norms based on identified groups.
Social influence Process Differences:
Sherif's Research: Autokinetic effect of optical illusion led to internal acceptance.
Asch's Research: Simple line judgments and more focus on normative influence and social approval.
Both were social influence situations, and can be expressed and understood in unique ways.
Minority Influence
Definition: The process by which dissenters produce change within a group.
Muscovici reinterpreted Ash’s study as minority influence.
Effective Style: Key to effective minority influence is their behavioral style and if recruits are consistent.
Minorities will not be effective and create dissolution and instability if there becomes infighting.
Minorities still influenced smaller crowds (around 10 percent).
Idiosyncrasy Credit
People that hold minority positions must get buy in from others.
Effective people must have minority positions when they've built up credit with people.
Other Notes
Freely chosen beliefs leads to more internal buy in.
Research more geared into the impacts of learned attitudes than those that are inherited.
Consistency key - a lot easier to follow a majority than it is a minority.