Conformity, Complliance + Obedience Flashcards
(8 cards)
Conformity, compliance + obedience
= 3 forms of social influence that vary in degree of pressure exerted on individual
Conformity
Tendency to change our perceptions, opinions or behaviour in ways that are consistent with group norms
Majority influence
Minority influence
2 major influences:
> Informational influence: changes of beliefs that occurs when person privately accept position of others
-desire to be right
- more powerful- opinions likely to remain same when ppl absent
- an incorrect majority can influence minority as long as they are unanimous in their opinion
> normative influence: superficial chnages in overt behaviour, w/out corresponding change of opinion —produced by real or imagined group pressure
- fear consequence of rejection
Implications of Asch
Newly trained nurse at ward
Practice at ward goes against what you have learned at school
Likely you stay something when:
- other nurses disagree amougst each other
- when u have support from 1 nurse
Not likely when:
- other nurses have same, incorrect opinion
Minority influence:
Incorrect minority ca influence majors as long as they are unanimous + consistent in opinion
Conformity and culture
Individualistic cultures: autonomy and independence are valued
collectivist cultures: harmony and ‘fitting in’ are valued
Conformity rates higher in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures
Compliance
Chnages in behaviour that are elicited by direct requests
People often get others to comply by setting traps
Models responding to the word ‘because’
Disrupting mindless by making unusual request that triggers persons interest
- eg sold more cards when said price is “300 pennies- thats 3 dollars, bargain’ then when just asking for 3 dollars
Norm of reciprocity: treating others as they have treated us
Foot in front door: make ppl comply with small initial request- they’re more likely to comply with second, bigger request
Lowballing: first obtain agreement the raise request
- do u wish to take part in my study for credits, it takes place at 7 am > 31& agreed
- do u wish to take part in my study for credits? After they agree ‘sorry forgot to say starts at 7am’ > 56% agreed
- works through commitment and thinking of positive aspects of initial decision
Door in the face: make large initial request that will be rejected followed by reasonable request
- works through reciprocal concession
That’s-not-all echinus : start with inflated request then decrease size offering discount
Obedience
Behaviour change produced by commands of authority
Milgram, 1965:
- study about effects of shocks on memory
- advertised in newspaper
- in pairs partic;ast always teacher, confederate= learner
- learner brought to room with electric chair
- teacher experienced shock
- teacher brought to different room + could only hear learner
- task = increase shock each time learner given incorrect response
- learner face many incorrect responses so shocks should increase
Situational factors:
1) proximity of victim
- hearing - higher % gave shocks
- seeing- lower % gave shocks
2) authority of experimenter
- experimenter present in room with teacher > most high % to give shock
- experimenter spoke to teacher over phone and not involved> lower % gave shock
3) peer pressure
- disobeying (teacher had helper refuse to continue) low % gave shock
- obeying helper . High % gave shock
War in kosovo 1999
- Albanian survivor
- Serbs used to be nice neighbours
- Serbs turned on them and burnt their hoes
Social impact theory (Latane, 1981)
Social influence is function of the others:
1. Strength of source
- competent/ authoritive source has more impact
- immediacy
- closer the source is to target, stronger the impact - number of ppl
- if number of sources increase, impact increases to a point - Resist social pressure
- if target is strong + far from source and accompanied by others
