Conformity & Obedience
- Created by: Sess
- Created on: 16-05-15 11:11
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- Conformity & Obedience
- Conformity
- Definition
- A change in behaviour or belief (attitude) as a result of real or imagined group pressure
- A response to implicit social influence
- Myers 2013
- Asch (1951)
- Cultural Influences
- Milgram repeated the study
- 12% conformed in Norway
- In France, 1% conformed
- 50 male ppts took part in a lines experiment
- Each was placesd with 7 confederates
- Asked to compare one line to 3 others
- Ppt had to answer last. There were 18 trials and on 12 confeds gave a unanimous wrong answer
- ppts conformed at least once. 25% never conformed
- Cultural Influences
- Predictors
- Group Dynamics
- Size
- Unanimity
- Level of commitment
- If there is prior or public commitment, your decision doesnt change
- When jury votes publically, they are more likely to vote for someone to hang
- Kerr & MacCoun (1985)
- Difficulty of the task
- Group Dynamics
- Types
- Normative
- Subconsious
- When people wish to be liked or accepted to avoid ostracism
- One ppt vomited he was so afraid of being rejected
- Deutsch & Gerard (1955)
- Informative
- You gain new info which may lead to a change
- Members of a group turn to others to accept true info about reality
- Normative
- Not conforming
- False Uniqueness Theory
- Snyder + Fromkin
- We like to think that we are more unique than we actually are
- We believe our beliefs + attitudes are negatively correlated
- They told students that their most important attitudes were shared by 10,000 others.
- So they dissented in a conformity study
- Can be a move to protect against freedom or individuality
- Can also be to assert uniqueness
- False Uniqueness Theory
- Definition
- Obedience
- Definition
- Change in behaviour in response to explicit pressure
- Explicit pressure or threat to conform
- Myers 2013
- Milgram (1963)
- Ethics
- Milgram was put underfire for harming ppt's mental state
- Studied Nazi defense for their actions in WW2
- Conducted a famous study involving 40 ppts and a confederate. The study was billed as a memory test
- The ppts were proded a number of times if they hesitated to give shocks
- 65% gave highest (450V) shocks even tho after 300V, the 'learner' stopped answering
- No one predicted such an outcome.
- Ethics
- Factors
- Victim's distance
- The learner and teacher couldnt see each other
- When learner was in the same room, only 40% did 450V
- This dropped to 30% if they had to place learners hand on voltage
- Closeness of Authority
- By telephone, obedience dropped to 21%
- Legitimacy of Authority
- When experimentor left, and clerk took over, obedience stopped completely
- Victim's distance
- Definition
- Social Contagion Effects
- Laughing
- A laughing epidemic broke out in Tanzania
- It grew into a mass psychogenic illness
- Tanganyika (1962)
- Yawning
- 360 students were divided into 12 groups
- Provine (2005)
- Some students watched clips of yawning or featureless or smiling faces
- 55% yawned when videos of yawning were shown. 21% yawned during other categories
- Norm Formation
- Ppts were sat in a dark room and a bright light appeared
- It moved and they were asked to judge the distance it moved
- Over time, ppts were joined by more ppts
- Their estimates gradually converged
- A norm emerged, but estimates were false as it never moved
- Sherif (1935)
- Norm transmission
- Used the same technique but had confeds say it moved 16 inches when control said 4-5
- Gradually, the confeds were rotated out but 16 inches was still decided as the distance
- This was upholded for 5 generations
- Jacobs + Campbell
- Chameleon Effect
- Bargh (1999)
- People unknowingly imitate each other
- e.g. rubbing face or shaking foot
- Laughing
- Conformity
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