Social Psychology: Conformity and Obedience

Introduction

  • Conformity: widespread tendency to act and think like the people around us

Conformity

  • Humans may possess an inherent tendency to imitate the actions of others
  • We often mimic the gestures, body postures, language, talking speed, and many other behaviors of the people we interact with
  • Mimicking increases the connection between people and allows our interactions to flow more smoothly
  • 2 Primary Reasons for Conformity   * Normative Influence     * People go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them     * More conformity is found in collectivist countries such as Japan and China than in individualistic countries such as USA       * Compared with individualistic cultures, people who live in collectivist cultures place a higher value on the goals of the group than on individual preferences       * More motivated to maintain harmony in their interpersonal relations   * Informational Influence     * We sometimes go along with the crowd is that people are often a source of information     * Descriptive Norms       * Not clear what society expects of us       * We act the way most people like us to act
  • We sometimes rely on a flawed notion of the norm when deciding how we should behave

Obedience

  • Interested in how people react when given an order or command from someone in a position of authority
  • Good Thing:   * Obey parents, teachers, and police officers   * Important to follow instructions from judges, firefighters, and lifeguards   * Military would fail function if soldiers stopped obeyed orders from superiors
  • Dark Side   * People can violate ethical principles and break laws   * Often is at the heart of the worst of human behavior – massacres, atrocities, and even genocide

Conformity

  • A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure   * You just have to think that the pressure exists
  • Collectivistic (POSITIVE): tolerance, self-control
  • Individualistic (NEGATIVE): submission or compliance

Types of Conformity

  • Compliance: conforming without believing in what we are doing   * Reward or punishment
  • Obedience: acting in accord with a direct order or command
  • Acceptance: uniformity that involves acting and believing in accord with social pressure

Suggestibility

  • Muzafer Sherif studied norm formation   * Autokinetic Phenomenon: the suggestion that something would happen is all a person needed to see it happen     * Conformity breeds acceptance
  • Mass hysteria

Group Pressure

  • Solomon Asch   * 75% conformed at least once   * 37% conformed every time
  • No obvious pressure to conform

Authority vs Conscience

  • Stanley Milgram   * Survey of predictions   * Self-serving bias     * 65% shocked all the way     * 63% shocked with heart condition known

Factors of Obedience

  • Victim’s distance
  • Closeness and legitimacy of authority
  • Institutional authority
  • Group influence as liberation

Value of Experiments

  • Strength of social pressure
  • Compliance over moral sense
  • Sensitization to moral conflict
  • Confirm link between behavior and attitude
  • demonstrate power of the situation

Predicting Conformity

  • Group size: 3-5 ideal
  • Unanimity
  • Cohesion: how close you are to the group
  • Status: social class, racial group, political group
  • Public Response
  • Prior Commitment

Social Influence

  • Normative Influence: conformity based on our desire to gain acceptance and meet expectations

  • Informational Influence: conformity based on evidence about reality provided by others

Conformer Personality

  • Internal factors can’t predict specifics, but can predict average behavior
  • When social influences are weak, personality is more predictive
  • Temporary moods

Conformer Roles

  • Performance conformity
  • Conformity breeds acceptance
  • Role reversal can change conformity

Is Resistance Futile?

  • Reactance -> choice
  • Asserting uniqueness

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