Social Influence, Obedience, Crowd Psychology and Collective Behaviour

Conformity

Conformity is a type of social influence where individuals change their beliefs or behavior to align with a group.
Asch's (1951) line study showed people often give the wrong answer if the majority does.

Group Size: Conformity increases with the number of confederates giving incorrect answers.
Anonymity: Conformity decreases when participants can give answers privately.
Task Difficulty: Conformity increases when tasks are more difficult or answers are ambiguous.

Presence of an Ally: Having just one confederate agree with the participant significantly reduces conformity, indicating the importance of unanimity.
Personality: Individuals introduced to the concept of rebellion beforehand show less conformity, suggesting a role for personality.
Expertise: People are more likely to conform to someone considered an expert, regardless of the answer's correctness.

Aim: To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Procedure: Participants compared a 'target' line with three other lines, identifying the matching line. Only one participant was genuine; the rest were confederates instructed to give wrong answers.
Results: 75% of participants conformed at least once. Conformity decreased if even one confederate gave the correct answer.
Conclusions: People often conform to group answers, even when obviously wrong.
Strengths: The study was highly controlled which established a clear pattern of conformity.
Weaknesses: Ethical concerns due to stress experienced by participants. The lab setting may not reflect real-life behavior.

Obedience is responding as instructed to a direct order.
Milgram (1963) researched how far people would go in obeying instructions involving harm to others.
Milgram found that 65% of participants were willing to administer the highest level of electric shock (450 volts) and all participants continued to 300 volts.

Proximity: People are more likely to harm someone if they can't see them (\rightarrow Milgram's experiment found when the learner and teacher were in separate rooms, teachers were more likely to obey)
Authority: Harm is more likely to be inflicted if the instruction comes from an authority figure. In the Milgram study, the teacher was much more likely to shock the learner if the researcher wore a lab coat.
Culture: Obedience levels vary across cultures; higher in authoritarian cultures (e.g., Japan) and lower in less authoritarian cultures (e.g., Australia).

Milgram's agency theory describes two states of behavior in social situations: autonomous and agentic.
Agentic State: People feel they are acting on behalf of others, shifting responsibility to the order-giver.
Autonomous State: People act independently and take responsibility for their actions.

Authoritarian Personality: Adorno (1950) proposed that people with an authoritarian personality exhibit higher obedience to authority.
F-Scale: Adorno developed the F-scale (F for fascist) to identify those with an authoritarian personality.
Childhood Influences: Adorno claimed personality and attitudes stem from childhood influences.
Elms and Milgram (1966): replicated Milgram's original obedience studies with participants who had completed the F-scale and found a correlation between obedience and authoritarian personality type.

Presence of Others: The bystander effect is such that the more people present, the less likely anyone is to help.
Expertise and Similarity to Victim: Helping is more likely if the victim is similar to the helper or if the helper feels they have the expertise to deal with the situation.
Cost of Helping: If the cost of helping is too high (e.g., danger, time), people are less likely to help.

Piliavin et al. (1969) investigated bystander behavior on the New York subway.
Students acted as victims collapsing on a subway train (varied by race, condition).
Passengers were more likely to help if the victim appeared ill or carried a cane and less likely to help if they were drunk.

Identification: People act collectively because they identify with a group.
Deindividuation: Presence in a crowd leads to individual identity loss and following group norms, potentially increasing aggression.
Social Loafing: Individuals exert less effort in a group than when alone. E.g., students singing in assembly don't put in as much effort which they would if they were singing solo or in a duet.
Culture: Cultural norms influence collective behavior.

Leads people to follow group norms rather than individual norms.
Zimbardo (1969) replicated Milgram's electric shock study, but participants either wore a name badge or had their faces concealed with a hood. Those wearing the hoods gave more shocks than those with name badges, supporting the idea of deindividuation.

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