Conformity and Obedience: Influencing Behavior
Chapter 8: Conformity and Obedience - Influencing Behavior
Chapter Outline and Learning Objectives
LO 8.1: Define conformity, and explain why it occurs.
LO 8.2: Explain how informational social influence motivates people to conform.
LO 8.3: Explain how normative social influence motivates people to conform.
LO 8.4: Describe how people can use their knowledge of social influence to influence others.
LO 8.5: Summarize studies that have demonstrated people’s willingness to obey authority figures.
Conformity: When and Why
American culture often stresses non-conformity, celebrating rugged individualism.
Conformity: Changing one’s behavior due to real or imagined influence of others.
Examples of conformity:
The Ice Bucket Challenge.
Fashion trends.
Civil rights activists adhering to nonviolent responses.
Military atrocities like the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib abuses.
Teen suicide clusters.
Informational Social Influence: The Need to Know What's "Right"
Informational Social Influence: Relying on others as a source of information to guide our behavior, leading to conformity because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is correct.
Ambiguous situations often lead people to observe others' behavior to define the situation.
Muzafer Sherif's (1936) autokinetic effect study:
Participants in a dark room estimated the movement of a stationary point of light.
Initially, individual estimates varied.
In a group setting, estimates converged, showing people used each other as a source of information.
Private Acceptance: Conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or saying is right.
Public Compliance: Conforming to other people’s behavior publicly without necessarily believing in what the other people are doing or saying.
Examples of informational social influence:
Energy conservation: Residents conserved more energy when told their neighbors did so.
Hotel towel reuse: Guests reused towels more when informed that most guests in the same room had done so.
The Importance of Being Accurate
The more important it is to be accurate, the more people conform to informational social influence.
Study by Baron, Vandello, & Brunsman (1996):
Participants were given ambiguous eyewitness identification task.
In the high-importance condition (real test with a bonus), conformity increased compared to the low-importance condition (basic research study).
Relying on other people carries the risk of conforming to inaccurate information.
Eyewitness studies show that discussion between eyewitnesses can lead to mistaken recollections based on what their partner reported.
When Informational Conformity Backfires
Informational social influence can backfire during crises, where behavior of others is very informative.
Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" broadcast (1938):
Listeners mistook the realistic radio play for a real news report of an alien invasion.
People turned to each other for verification, and seeing concern in others' faces amplified their panic.
Fake news and misinformation on social media are modern examples.
When Will People Conform to Informational Social Influence?
Most likely when:
The situation is ambiguous.
The situation is a crisis.
Other people are experts.
Normative Social Influence: The Need to Be Accepted
Normative Social Influence: Going along with what other people do to be liked and accepted by them, which leads to public conformity with the group’s beliefs and behaviors but not always private acceptance of them.
Social Norms: The implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members.
People conform to gain acceptance and avoid rejection.
Examples of normative social Influence:
Polar Plunges Dares.
Teenagers challenges
Ice bucket challenge
Conformity Gone Viral
Acceptance by others is crucial to our well-being as social beings.
Rejection can be psychologically painful.
Deviant group members are often punished or rejected.
This pressure leads to public compliance but not necessarily private acceptance.
Conformity and Social Approval: The Asch Line-Judgment Studies
Asch (1951, 1956) explored the power of normative social influence with unambiguous stimuli.
Participants judged which of three lines matched a standard line in length.
Confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 of 18 trials.
Results: 76% of participants conformed on at least one trial, giving an obviously incorrect response.
Conformity occurred even in front of strangers due to fear of being the lone dissenter.
In a variation where participants wrote down answers, conformity dropped dramatically.
Neural Evidence of Normative Conformity
Research by Gregory Berns et al. used fMRI to study brain activity during normative conformity.
Participants performed mental rotation tasks.
When disagreeing with the group, the amygdala (associated with negative emotions and social behavior modulation) showed increased activity.
Suggests that resisting normative influence is unpleasant and uncomfortable.
The Importance of Being Accurate, Revisited
Even when accuracy is important, normative pressures can still lead to conformity.
Baron et al. (1996) replicated the eyewitness identification task with easier stimuli.
High-importance participants conformed on 16% of the trials, showing that even with incentives to be accurate, some people still cave to social pressure.
Underestimating Normative Influence
People often deny being influenced by normative considerations.
Energy conservation study: participants underestimated the effect of being told their neighbors were conserving energy.
Normative influence is still exerted through various means like hiring professional laughers or abnormally enthusiastic fans.
The Consequences of Resisting Normative Social Influence
If a person refuses to conform and violates group norms, they may face:
Annoyance
Anger
Rejection from the group.
Schachter (1951) demonstrated how groups respond to nonconformists.
When Will People Conform to Normative Social Influence?
Social Impact Theory (Latané, 1981):
Strength: The more important a group is to us, the more likely we are to conform.
Immediacy: Conformity increases the closer group members are to us physically.
Number: As group size increases, so does normative pressure, but each additional person has less influence.
Having no allies in the group makes resistance difficult.
Collectivistic cultures value conformity more than individualistic cultures.
Idiosyncrasy Credits: The tolerance a person earns, over time, by conforming to group norms; if enough credits are earned, the person can, on occasion, deviate from the group without retribution.
Social Norms and Bigotry: Failure to condemn bias reinforces social norms in which biases are seen as more acceptable.
Minority Influence: When the Few Influence the Many
Minorities can influence the majority through consistency.
Minorities primarily exert influence through informational social influence.
Majorities often obtain public compliance, whereas minorities are more likely to achieve private acceptance.
Conformity Tactics: Using Social Influence to Influence Others
We can capitalize on the tendency to conform to change behavior for the common good
The facebook voting experiment:
Informational messages had little impact.
Social messages showing how many friends voted significantly increased the likelihood of voting.
The Role of Injunctive and Descriptive Norms
Injunctive Norms: People’s perceptions of what behaviors are approved or disapproved of by others.
Descriptive Norms: People’s perceptions of how people actually behave in given situations, regardless of whether the behavior is approved or disapproved of by others.
Injunctive norms are more powerful than descriptive norms in producing desirable behavior.
Example: Cialdini and colleagues' littering study.
Using Norms to Change Behavior: Beware the "Boomerang Effect"
Efforts to change behavior by using norms have a downside.
"Boomerang effect": When public service messages meant to decrease a behavior can actually have the effect of increasing it.
One way to avoid the boomerang effect is by using injunctive norm feedback and descriptive norm information.
For example smiley and sad faces on energy bills.
Other Tactics of Social Influence
Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Social influence strategy in which getting people to agree first to a small request makes them more likely to agree later to a second, larger request.
Door-in-the-Face Technique: Social influence strategy in which first asking people for a large request that they will probably refuse makes them more likely to agree later to a second, smaller request.
These often used by sales people.
Such influence can be used for propaganda examples: Hitler's Nazi regime.
Obedience to Authority
Obedience: A change in one’s behavior due to the direct influence of an authority figure.
From a young age, we are socialized to obey authority figures whom we perceive as legitimate
Example: Fast-food restaurant phone call hoax leading to abuse of employees
The Milgram Study
Milgram (1963, 1974, 1976) studied obedience by having participants deliver electric shocks to a "learner" (actually a confederate).
Most participants administered high levels of shock due to pressure from the experimenter.
The study raised ethical concerns and ignited debates about the treatment of research participants.
The Role of Normative Social Influence in the Milgram Study
Normative pressures made it difficult to refuse, particularly when the experimenter was an authority figure.
Variations of the study showed that when other "teachers" refused to continue, participants were less likely to obey.
The Role of Informational Social Influence in the Milgram Study
When participants were in confusing circumstances, they looked to the experimenter for guidance.
When the experimenter's expertise was questioned, participants were less likely to obey.
Other Reasons Why We Obey in the Milgram Study
Adhering to the Wrong Norm: Participants difficultly switching from following expert, legitimate authority figures norm to more acceptable one.
Self-Justification: Participants’ initial agreement to administer the first shock created internal pressure on them to continue to obey.
The Loss of Personal Responsibility: Participants would become to "puppet" by offloading responsibility to the authority figure.
The Obedience Studies, Then and Now
Burger (2009) conducted a modern replication of the Milgram study with ethical safeguards. Found no significant difference in the rate if obedience.
Other psychologists have found different degrees of obedience based on whether their society is collectivist or individualistic.
These researches underscore the importance of discovering new knowledge to do no harm.