Ch. 8 Conformity and Obedience

Question 1

Informational Social Influence

Answer 1

CONFORMITY – A change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people

INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE – Relying on other people as a source of information to guide our behavior, which leads to conformity because we believe that other’s interpretation of an ambiguous situation is correct.

• This effect is so strong that experiments have shown individuals in a group eventually conforming to a group estimate of the measurement despite each one of them having had a different experience from one another. This can lead to private acceptance.
• PRIVATE ACCEPTANCE – when people conform to the behavior of others because they genuinely believe that these other people are right.
  
  • In an experiment, participants were individually exposed to moving lights, in which they had to estimate the distance the light moved.
    
    • When alone, the estimates were fairly accurate.
    • Then participants who had individually seen the lights move different amounts were brought together into a group and told to determine how much the light actually moved (believing they had each seen the same light movement).
    • Eventually, all the members CONFORMED to the group estimate even if that was FAR from the actual movement they had observed when on their own. (continued below…)
  • It might seem equally plausible that people publicly conformed to the group but privately maintained a different personal belief. This person might announce his agreement with the group consensus in an effort to avoid standing out from the crowd or looking foolish, yet internally maintain his personal belief that the group is wrong. This is the case in public compliance.
• PUBLIC COMPLIANCE – Conforming to other people’s behavior publicly without necessarily believing in what the other people are doing or saying.
  
  • SEEKING APPROVAL – Other people conform because they do not wish to be ridiculed or punished for being different from everybody else. They chose to act the way the group expected so that they wouldn’t be rejected or thought less of by group members.
• Continuing the experiment from above – After the group had submitted their estimate, the individuals were again separated and shown the light moving the same distance they had seen prior to being put into the group and the answers they gave THIS time, even though they no longer had to worry about how they looked in front of other participants, they continued to give the answer the group had given earlier.
• These results suggest that people were relying on each other to define reality and came to privately accept the wisdom of the group estimate. In other words, they developed PRIVATE ACCEPTANCE rather than merely following PUBLIC COMPLIANCE.
• IMPORTANCE OF BEING ACCURATE – another variable that affects informational social influence: how important it is to be accurate at the task.
  
  • Experiment:
    
    • HALF of the participants thought their performance was very important. They were motivated to do well.
    • The OTHER HALF saw this as just a basic research study like any other – i.e. not so important.
      
      • The high-importance condition mirrors the concerns of many situations in everyday life – your judgments and decisions have consequences, and you’re motivated to “get things right.”
      • Does that make you more or less susceptible to informational social influence? The researchers found that the HIGHER the IMPORTANCE (required accuracy), the MORE SUSCEPTIBLE to CONFORMITY.
  • This is why most police procedures require that when there are multiple eyewitnesses in a case, each one is to be interviewed individually by investigators and view a lineup individually as well.
  • When one’s personal safety is involved (high importance), the NEED for information is acute – and the behavior of others is very informative.
• When Will People Conform to Informational Social Influence?
  
  • WHEN THE SITUATION IS AMBIGUOUS – Ambiguity is the most crucial variable for determining how much people use each other as a source of information.
    
    • The more uncertain you are, the more you will rely on others.
  • WHEN THE SITUATION IS A CRISIS – Crisis often occurs simultaneously with ambiguity. In a crisis situation, we usually do not have time to stop and think about exactly which course of action we should take. We need to act – immediately. If we panic and are uncertain what to do, it is only natural for us to see how other people are responding and to do likewise.
    
    • Unfortunately, the people we imitate may also panic and not be behaving rationally.
  • WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE EXPERTS – Typically, the more expertise or knowledge a person has, the more valuable he or she will be as a guide in an ambiguous situation.
    
    • Ex: Looking to Flight Attendants’ reactions on a bumpy flight.

Question 2

Normative Social Influence

Answer 2

NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE – Occurs when the influence of other people leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted. This type of conformity results in PUBLIC

COMPLIANCE with the group’s beliefs and behaviors but not necessarily in private acceptance

• People conform because they do not wish to be ridiculed or punished for being different, or rejected. We need to be liked and accepted.
• We conform to the group’s SOCIAL NORMS – implicit (and sometimes explicit) rules for acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs.
• Normative Social Influence is so powerful primarily because acceptance by others is incredibly important to us. Rejection hurts.
• HIKIKOMORI – Japanese teenagers (mostly male) who have withdrawn from all social interaction. They spend all their time alone, in their bedrooms in their parents’ homes, some for over a decade. Japanese psychologists believe that many hikikomori were the victims of severe bullying before their withdrawal.
• ASCH LINE-JUDGEMENT STUDIES – Participants judged the lengths of lines and the answers were pretty clear. However, 76% of the participants conformed and gave an obviously incorrect response on at least one trial. On average, people conformed on about one third of the trials on which the accomplices gave an incorrect answer.
  
  • The fear of being the lone dissenter was so strong that most people conformed, at least occasionally.
  • People were concerned about looking foolish even in front of complete strangers. It is not as if the participants were in danger of being ostracized by a group that was important to them.
  • In a follow up study, participants were able to write down their line measurement (instead of announcing it to the group). In this version, conformity dropped dramatically.
• IMPORTANCE OF BEING ACCURATE (REVISITED)
  
  • In another study, Half the participants were led to believe that it was very important that they give the right answers, and half were told it really didn’t matter how they did.
    
    • Those in the high-importance condition – Rather than standing up to the group across the board, they caved on at least some trials. They did conform less to the obviously wrong answers of the group; on only 16% of the critical trials did they echo the group’s blatantly wrong answer. But they still conformed sometimes!
    • Even when the group is wrong, the right answer is obvious, and there are strong incentives to be accurate, some people still find it difficult to risk social disapproval, even from strangers.
    • SPINELESS AND WEAK – NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE most closely reflects the negative stereotype of conformity: the belief that those who conform are spineless and weak.
• Real World Example of Normative Social Influence – researchers assessed the effectiveness of different arguments for reducing electricity use among Californians. The most effective persuasive message was telling consumers that their neighbors were conserving energy.

CONSEQUENCES OF RESISTING NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

VIOLATING NORMS – If you continued to disregard the friendship norms of the group by failing to conform, two things would most likely happen:

• First, the group would try to bring you “back into the fold,” chiefly through increased communication.
• if these tactics didn’t work, your friends would most likely say negative things to you and about you and start to withdraw from you – Now, in effect, you’ve been rejected.
• Treatment toward deviants: Research confirms this progression of:
  
  • Deviant became the target of the most comments and questions
  • communication with him dropped sharply
  • Group started to ignore him
  • they punished him
  • No wonder we respond as often as we do to normative pressures!

Question 3

Social Impact Theory (of Normative Social Influence)

Answer 3

When Will People Conform to Normative Social Influence?

• 75% of participants in Asch’s line-judging studies conformed during the course of the study, that means that 25% never did – these are the leaders.

SOCIAL IMPACT THEORY (Latane 1981) – The likelihood that you will respond to social influence depends on three variables regarding the group in question:

1. Strength – The more important a group is to us, the more likely we will be to conform to its normative pressures.
   
   • Because there is a large cost to losing this love and respect
   • Thus, it can be dangerous to have policy decisions made by highly cohesive groups because they care more about pleasing each other and avoiding conflict than arriving at the best, most logical decision
   • 2. Immediacy – The closer group members are to us physically, the more likely we will be to conform.
2. Number – The larger the group size, the more likely we will be to conform – but each additional person has less of an influencing effect.
   
   • IDIOSYNCRASY CREDITS – Conforming to a group over time earns you Idiosyncrasy Credits, which earns you the right to deviate occasionally without serious consequences.

• ALLIES – Having just a single dissenting ALLYin an otherwise unanimous group dramatically changed the situation, helping the participant resist normative pressures.
  
  • Observing another person resist normative social influence emboldens the individual to do the same.

Question 4

Culture and Conformity

Answer 4

COLLECTIVISTIC CULTURE – Participants from more collectivistic cultures show higher rates of conformity in general.

• HOWEVER, Americans conformed more with groups of strangers than did Japanese. In Japan, cooperation and loyalty are directed to the groups to which one belongs and with which one identifies; there is little expectation that one should conform to the behavior of strangers.
• In collectivistic cultures, conformity is seen as a valued trait, not as a somewhat negative one. Agreeing with others is viewed not as an act of submission or cowardice in collectivist cultures but as an act of tact and sensitivity.

Question 5

Minority Influence

Answer 5

MINORITY INFLUENCE – In order for the few to influence the many, they must remain CONSISTENT: People with minority views must express the same view over time, and different members of the minority must agree with one another.

• Consistency is the Key: If a person in the minority wavers between two different viewpoints or if two individuals express different minority views, the majority will dismiss them as people who have peculiar and groundless opinions. If, however, the minority expresses a consistent, unwavering view the majority is more likely to take notice and even adopt the minority view.
• The Majority creates conformity through normative influence.
  
  • Conformity through Normative Influence is associated with PUBLIC COMPLIANCE without private acceptance.
  • Majority group members may be hesitant to agree publicly with the minority; they don’t want anyone to think that they side with those unusual, strange views.
• The Minority creates conformity through Informational Social Influence
  
  • The minority can introduce new and unexpected information to the group and cause the group to examine the issues more carefully.
• SUMMARY: Majorities often obtain public compliance because of normative social influence, whereas when minorities are persuasive, it is more likely to be through private acceptance because of informational social influence.

Question 6

Online Social Influence

Answer 6

SOCIAL INFLUENCE ON FACEBOOK – An experiment to get out the vote on Facebook: social messages about voting were much more effective at getting people to comply (to vote) than informational messages were.

• INDIRECT SOCIAL INFLUENCE – Even seeing the social message (of voting) posted to a friend’s News Feed (not by one of your friends but by someone else your friend knows) was enough to have an indirect influence.

Question 7

Injunctive and Descriptive Norms (Littering Experiment)

Answer 7

SOCIAL NORMS – social norms are useful for inducing people to conform to positive, socially approved behavior. A culture’s social norms are of two types:

• INJUNCTIVE NORMS – have to do with what we think other people approve or disapprove of – what people believe they should do in a given situation.
  
  • Motivates behavior by promising rewards (or punishments) for normative (or nonnormative) behavior.
  • Injunctive norms are more powerful than descriptive norms in producing desirable behavior because injunctive norms tap into normative conformity.
  • Injunctive norms are particularly good predictors of behavior when the sense of approval/disapproval in question comes from close others (e.g., family and close friends).
• 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.
  
  • Motivates behavior by informing people about what is effective or adaptive behavior.
• LITTERING EXPERIMENT: In a clean or Littered Environment, a confederate either littered or picked up trash. What did the participant do with their trash?
  
  • In a CLEAN setting when Confederate LITTERED (Descriptive Norm Condition), the participant LESS LIKELY to litter.
    
    • In the clean parking lot, the confederate’s behavior stood out as unusual – it reminded participants that most people don’t litter in this area. Hence, we would expect the confederate’s littering behavior to remind participants of a descriptive norm against littering, and this is what the researchers found.
  • In a CLEAN setting when Confederate PICKED UP TRASH, (Injunctive Norm Condition), the participant LESS LIKELY to litter.
    
    • Seeing the confederate picking up someone else’s litter invokes the injunctive norm that littering is wrong in both the clean and the littered environments, thereby leading to the lowest amount of littering in the study
  • In a LITTERED setting when Confederate LITTERED, (Descriptive Norm Condition), the participant MORE LIKELY to litter.
    
    • In the littered lot, the confederate’s behavior reminded participants that people often litter here – the confederate served as just one salient example of the type of behavior that had led to such a mess in the first place.
  • In a LITTERED setting when Confederate PICKED UP TRASH, (Injunctive Norm Condition), the participant LESS LIKELY to litter.
    
    • Same here – seeing the confederate picking up someone else’s litter invokes the injunctive norm that littering is wrong in both the clean and the littered environments, thereby leading to the lowest amount of littering in the study
• In the descriptive norm condition, the confederate’s littering communicated two different messages, depending on the condition of the parking lot.
• In the injunctive norm condition, this kind of norm was less context dependent:
• To promote socially beneficial behavior, something in the situation needs to draw our attention to the relevant norm. Thus, anything that highlights injunctive norms can be used to create positive behavioral change.

Question 8

Boomerang Effect

Answer 8

Using Norms to Change Behavior: Beware the “Boomerang Effect”

BOOMERANG EFFECT – when highlighting INJUNCTIVE NORMS to create positive behavioral change instead creates negative change.

• Ex: To get college students to drink less alcohol (stop binge drinking), researchers released a campaign noting that the average alcohol consumption (descriptive norm) on campus was much lower. HOWEVER, for students who already drink very little (or not at all), finding out that the average student on campus drinks more than they do leads them to increase their own alcohol intake to be more like everyone else!
• Ex: To combat the BOOMERANG EFFECT on energy use, researchers added an injunctive norm condition to the descriptive norm description. Essentially, If a consumer had consumed less energy than the average household, the researcher drew a smiley face next to the information. If they had consumed more energy than the average household, the researcher drew a sad face instead.
  
  • The happy or sad face communicated the injunctive part of the message – the recipients were receiving either approval or disapproval for the amount of energy they had used. This little face convinced the high-energy users to lower their consumption. And also convinced the low-energy users to continue their low consumption.

Question 9

Techniques for Compliance

Answer 9

TECHNIQUES FOR COMPLIANCE

FOOT IN THE DOOR TECHNIQUE – getting people to agree first to a small request makes them more likely to agree later to a second, larger request.

• Why does this work? Think about what happens when you get people to agree to any request, even a small one. They start to see themselves as agreeable people. They feel committed to a helpful course of action. To say no to a follow-up request – even if it comes from a different person – could trigger uncomfortable feelings of inconsistency or dissonance

DOOR IN THE FACE TECHNIQUE – first asking people for a large request that they will probably refuse makes them more likely to agree later to a second, smaller request.

• Why does this work? The bigger request makes the second “ask” seem less daunting by comparison. Another reason has to do with feelings of reciprocity. After all, it seems like you – the requestor – have made some concessions here, coming down from your initially huge favor to a more manageable later request.

PROPAGANDA – A deliberate, systematic attempt to advance a cause by manipulating mass attitudes and behaviors, often through misleading or emotionally charged information.

• Most successful when it taps into an audience’s preexisting beliefs.
• Not all Germans agreed with the Nazis, but the price of nonconformity was very high – death.

Question 10

Obedience to Authority

Answer 10

OBEDIENCE – A change in one’s behavior due to the direct influence of an authority figure.

• One of the strongest forms of social influence.
• from a young age, we are socialized to obey authority figures whom we perceive as legitimate.
• We internalize this norm of obedience such that we usually adhere to rules and laws even when the authority figure isn’t present.

MILGRIM STUDY – The Milgrim shock experiments show the intense obedience to authority regardless of the consequence to others.

• The most famous series of studies in social psychology – ordinary people exposed to extraordinary social influence
• Found nearly identical obedience rates among men and women.
• Milgram’s participants faced all three of the characteristics that give Informational social influence the most power:
  
  • Ambiguity
  • Crisis
  • Expertise of others.
• Note that nothing the victim ever did caused all the participants to stop obeying; however, when the authorities’ definition of the situation became unclear, the participants broke out of their obedient role.

Other Reasons Why We Obey

• ADHERING TO THE WRONG NORM – When multiple conflicting norms are in play, ambiguity increases and people sometimes choose the wrong norm to follow.
  
  • Once people follow a norm, it can be difficult to switch midstream – to realize that one norm is no longer appropriate.
  • INITIAL NORM – The first norms you were following.
  • Milgram’s participants were caught in a web of conflicting norms, and it was difficult to determine which ones to follow.
    
    • They were also victims of the fast pace, leaving little time to reflect on the norm they were choosing.
• SELF-JUSTIFICATION – Every time a person makes an important or difficult decision, dissonance is produced, along with resulting pressures to reduce it. An effective way of reducing dissonance produced by a difficult decision is to decide that the decision was fully justified.
  
  • But justifying a prior action can make a person vulnerable to further escalating a now-justified activity.
  • In the Milgram Shock Experiment, After they had justified a particular shock level, it became very difficult for them to decide on a place where they should draw the line and stop.
    
    • Justifying one level of shock then laid the groundwork for the next level of shock.
    • The incremental nature of the shock task was essential to the level of obedience.
• LOSS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY – When faced with the prospect of acting in unpleasant or unseemly ways, it becomes easier to do so when you can offload personal responsibility for those actions to someone else.
  
  • Participants in the Milgram Experiment claimed their brutal behavior was “Their idea, and you were “just following orders.” – same as the nazis.
  • The loss of a sense of personal responsibility for one’s actions was a critical component explaining the results of the obedience studies.
• Executioners at prisons justify their actions as “doing their job”, “keeping these dangers to society off the streets”, or “carrying out the public’s will” – in any event, they take no personal responsibility.
• INFLICTED INSIGHT – When the Milgram study ended, some of them had learned unpleasant things about themselves that they had not agreed to beforehand.