Social Influence: Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience - Comprehensive Notes
Social Influence: Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
Throughout this lecture, three core aspects of social influence were examined: conformity, compliance, and obedience. Conformity involves a change in one’s behavior to align with real or imagined influence from others. This imagined influence means people often behave as if someone is watching, even when no one is present. For instance, people follow traffic speed limits or adjust to group norms even without cameras or researchers around. Conformity can be direct (influence from others) or imagined (felt pressure to fit in). It is tied to the need for social acceptance and to align beliefs and behavior with a group. The speaker emphasizes questions about whether conformity is a natural human tendency, whether it is good or dangerous for society, and whether our decisions always reflect our private beliefs. A key cautions about conformity is that it can promote group cohesion but also enable extreme actions if norms are headed in a harmful direction.
A vivid example discussed is a case from the textbook where an anonymous caller posed as a police officer and instructed a McDonald’s manager to search a worker and strip her, eventually coercing others to participate in humiliating and coercive acts. The point is that authority, even when it is not physically present, can induce conformity to harmful commands, highlighting both the power and the danger of authority and conformity. This prompts reflection on whether people should question authority and when to resist.
Conformity strengthens social cohesion by aligning behavior with group norms, which helps maintain order and predictability. It also explains why people conform in group projects or classroom settings to avoid conflict and to ensure equal participation. However, conformity can be dangerous when it suppresses critical thinking or leads to unethical actions, such as coercing others or participating in unjust practices. The speaker notes that conformity is particularly pronounced during adolescence and in situations where individuals want to fit in with an in-group, often at the expense of critical evaluation of norms.
Two classic conformity experiments are highlighted: Soloman Asch’s line judgment studies and Sherif’s autokinetic effect. In Asch’s experiments, participants often aligned with the majority’s incorrect judgments when in a group, despite knowing the correct line length when alone. In Sherif’s autokinetic effect, participants (even though there was no actual movement) converged on a common estimate of movement when surrounded by others who offered differing judgments. These demonstrations illustrate normative social influence: people conform to be accepted and not look foolish when surrounded by a group, even if the group’s judgment is incorrect.
Informational social influence is introduced as a second route to conformity. This occurs when a situation is unclear or ambiguous, prompting people to look to others for guidance. In such cases, individuals may privately adopt the group’s beliefs (private acceptance) or publicly conform without believing in the group’s position (public compliance). Collectivist cultures may show stronger informational influence, as the group’s interpretation guides individual action, even if the information is wrong. The distinction between private acceptance and public compliance is central to understanding when people actually come to believe something versus merely act as if they do for social reasons.
The lecture also discusses social norms and morés. Norms are unwritten rules of acceptable behavior that are learned early in life and help maintain order and predictability. Morés are stronger moral norms, closely tied to morality. Examples include seating etiquette or rules about personal relationships in different cultures (e.g., live-in relationships in some contexts may be considered a máis). Norms and morés shape everyday actions like giving up a seat for the elderly or pregnant women on a bus. Violating norms can provoke social sanctions and conflict, whereas adhering to norms promotes harmony.
Contagion is introduced as a mechanism by which emotions and behaviors spread through crowds. In situations like stadium riots or delays at a train station, the interpretation of others’ emotions can magnify arousal and lead to misinterpretations. People often rely on others’ interpretations rather than assessing the situation themselves, which can amplify misreadings and contribute to collective emotional reactions.
The lecture also covers the concept of group pressure and majority influence within conformity. Solomon Asch’s experiments demonstrated how the presence of a majority can sway individuals to conform even when the majority’s judgment is incorrect. People often prefer to align with the group to avoid being singled out or ridiculed, even when they do not know the group well.
Compliance and its techniques
Compliance refers to changing one’s behavior in response to a direct request from others. Several techniques are described:
Foot in the door: Start with a small request to gain eventual compliance with a larger request. Example: asking for a small donation, then following with a larger one.
Door in the face: Start with a large request likely to be refused, then retreat to a smaller, more reasonable request.
Lowball: Secure a commitment and then raise the stakes or prices, with the initial commitment making it harder for the person to back out.
Ingratiation: Use flattery or positive presentation to gain compliance.
Propaganda and emotionally charged information can also be used to influence compliance, especially in the context of social media where information can be misleading yet persuasive. These techniques show how people can be swayed by strategic requests and persuasive framing even when they are not following the group’s norms directly.
Obedience to authority
Obedience is a type of social influence where people follow orders from an authority figure. The authority must be perceived as legitimate or legitimate-seeming for obedience to occur. The Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo) and Milgram’s obedience study are the most famous demonstrations of how readily people follow orders from authority, sometimes with devastating consequences. The lecture emphasizes that obedience is a social norm and is reinforced by how individuals are socialized to respect legitimate authority. However, obedience can lead to extreme harm when authority is misused or when individuals surrender personal responsibility to an agentic state, in which the person acts as an agent for the authority figure rather than as an independent agent of action.
Milgram’s 1963 experiment at Yale asked participants to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to a learner (a confederate) under the instruction of an experimenter in a white lab coat. The setup suggested legitimate authority and placed participants in a role where continuing the shocks became an accepted norm within the experimental situation. Key details include: a sample of about 40 men aged roughly 20–50 who were paid for participation; shocks starting at 45 ext{ V}, with voltages escalating up to 450 ext{ V}; the learner’s protests starting around 75 ext{ V} and escalating. Prods were provided to compel continuation: “Please continue,” “The experiment requires that you continue,” “You have no choice, you must go on.” Some participants refused to continue, but a substantial portion complied to the end. The results showed that a large proportion obeyed the authority, with many participants reaching the upper voltage levels, highlighting the power of situational factors over personal morals. In Milgram’s setup, deception was used: participants believed they were part of a memory-learning experiment with real shocks; there was no informed consent regarding the true nature of the task, and debriefing occurred after the study. The ethics of Milgram’s research are widely discussed today, and such methods would be rejected by modern ethics boards.
Burger’s 2009 replication modified Milgram’s design: participants were screened, the shocks stopped at or around 150 ext{ V}, and voluntary withdrawal was emphasized. Yet the replication still found a significant level of obedience, with about 70 ext{%} obeying at the 150 V point, suggesting the robustness of obedience to authority even under ethical safeguards. This replication shows that obedience to legitimate authority remains a persistent aspect of human behavior, though its boundaries and ethical guardrails are better understood today.
Two important concepts in obedience are relevant here: the agentic state (people perceive themselves as agents carrying out the orders of someone in authority) and the role of legitimacy of authority in shaping obedience. The lecture emphasizes that obedience can have tragic consequences, and that ethical standards have shifted since Milgram’s time. It also notes the importance of debriefing and psychological support after such experiences, and it highlights the ongoing relevance of these findings for understanding real-world events, such as wartime obedience or institutional abuses. The discussion closes with a contrast between obedience to legitimate authority and blind obedience to potentially harmful directives.
Private vs public acceptance and authenticity
A related dimension is whether people privately accept or merely publicly comply with others’ viewpoints. Private acceptance occurs when individuals genuinely believe what others are saying, whereas public acceptance occurs when individuals outwardly conform without sharing the belief. This distinction helps explain why some individuals publicly conform yet privately question or reject the ideas they are acting on. The speaker suggests that people often exhibit public compliance to avoid social sanctions or conflict, while privately they may retain different beliefs. This dichotomy is central to understanding social influence in politics, media, and everyday interactions, and it underscores why mere outward conformity does not always indicate genuine agreement or belief.
Norms, group dynamics, and everyday life
The lecture concludes by tying these concepts to everyday life and social policy. The idea of norms and mores explains why we defer to etiquette in restaurants, why seats are reserved for elders or pregnant people, and why certain behaviors are taught from a young age. As with the Kitty Genovese case alluded to as a bystander example, bystander effect demonstrates how individuals may fail to intervene in emergencies when others are present, partly because they assume that someone else will take responsibility or because they want to avoid standing out. The discussion also returns to the value and danger of conformity in driving social cohesion or sparking collective action such as revolutions when norms shift or when authority is challenged.
Connections to prior material and real-world relevance
This part of the lecture connects social influence to earlier topics in social cognition, such as schemas and heuristics, by showing how attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be shaped by social information. It also links to broader questions about how individuals balance critical thinking with the pressure to conform, and about how societies promote cooperation while protecting against unethical or harmful conformity. Real-world relevance includes understanding political persuasion, media messaging, organizational culture, and crowd behavior at public events. The material raises ethical questions about research methods in psychology and about the limits of obedience to authority in professional and civic life.
This concludes the overview of conformity, compliance, and obedience, along with their major experiments, mechanisms, and implications. The next step for study is to compare the three forms of social influence, review their practical applications, and consider how contextual factors such as culture, authority, and ambiguity modulate their strength. If you have questions, please email to discuss specific examples or to clarify any of the experiments and concepts discussed here.