Conformity and Obedience Flashcards
The areas of social influence can be broken down into which two areas?
Conformity and obedience.
What is conformity?
A change in behaviour as a result of real or imagined group pressure.
What is informational influence?
When the situation is ambiguous, people will look to others to help them make a judgement.
What is the bystander effect?
A product of the diffusion of responsibility; the more people are around someone who needs help, the less likely an individual is to step forward and help.
What experiment did Solomon Asch conduct?
Asked people if lines were equal or different. (37% conformed to the wrong answer)
What is normative influence?
The desire to be accepted by the group.
What is private acceptance?
Looking to others to see what is acceptable and internalizing that truth.
What is public acceptance?
Just conforming when in public. The attitudes/behaviours are not internalized.
What is obedience?
The extent to which one agrees with a specific demand or request.
What were the 5 variations done on the Milgram shock experiment?
Closeness of the authority figure, closeness of the victim, legitimacy of the authority, presence of two dissenters, and indirect involvement.
What are the 4 explanations for Milgram’s findings?
Evolutionary predisposition, obedience is learned in childhood, foot-in-the-door/dissonance and self-perception, basic psychological need to fit in.
What is reactance theory?
When situations of conformity and obedience threaten our sense of personal freedom, we act in a way to restore that freedom.
What are the three types of psychological reactance?
Performing the threatened activity, increased attractiveness of the threatened freedom, and aggression aimed at threatening agent.
