Conformity Flashcards
(13 cards)
What is conformity?
The act of changing one’s belief, behaviours, or attitudes to match those of a group
What is compliance?
Acting but not believing in the what we are persuaded to do
What is acceptance?
Acting and believing in what we are persuaded to do
What is obedience?
compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority
What is the Chameleon Effect? (Bargh et al., 1996)
The tendency to unconsciously mimic the behaviours of others around us
What are the classic experiments of conformity?
- Sherif’s studies of norm formation (1935)
- Asch’s studies of group pressure (1955)
- Milgram’s studies of obedience (1963)
What is the key finding of Sherif experiment (1935)
People will more likely to comform and support group norm. Acceptance happen here
What is the key finding of Ash experiment (1955)
People will have normative conformity in group pressure to avoid rejection/ to be accepted
What is the key finding of Milgram experiment (1963)
People will obey to authority, likely due to diffusion of responsibility
What predict conformity?
- Difficulty of the task
- Group characteristics
a. group size
b. group unanimity
c. group identification - Public response
a. normative conformity
b. informative conformity - Prior commitment
What are the factors that resist conformity?
- Asserting uniqueness
a. Need for uniqueness theory (Snyder & Fromkin, 1980) - Reactance- freedom threatened
What predict obidence?
- Proximity
- Prestigious location
- Legitimacy of authority
- Disobedience of fellow-participants
Why do people conform?
- Denial of responsibility
- Agency Theory (Milgram, 1963)
- limited source of information (Burger, 2009)
- Theory of external commitment (Joule & Beauvois, 1998)
- Fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977)
- The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950)
