1. Social Influence
Conformity
Compliance
Obedience

2. Conformity
A type of social influence in which individuals change their attitudes or behavior to adhere to existing social norms.
Social norms are either explicit or unspoken rules about how we should behave.
We look to other people to know how to behave.

3. Asch’s Conformity Study

4. 75% of people conformed at least once.
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view.  On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participant never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
Asch’s Study
75% of people conformed at least once.
Overall conformity rate across trials was 37%.
25% never conformed.

5. Public conformity vs. private acceptance
Public conformity: doing what others do or say, even though you don’t necessarily agree with it.
Private acceptance: coming to feel or think as others do.

6. Why do we conform?
We want to be liked by others, and we also have a strong desire to be right about things.
Normative social influence—conforming in order to meet others’ approval or gain acceptance; you want to “fit in.” (Asch’s study)
Informational social influence—you conform because you want to be right about something and think others know more than you do.
With informational social influence, you are not as concerned with gaining others’ acceptance….you just want to know what to do. Where do I pay the check? That person is screaming…should I call the police? Fire alarm just went off…is everyone else leaving the building?

7. Factors influencing conformity
Being female
Being an adolescent
Being insecure or in an ambiguous situation
Group cohesiveness
Size of group: conformity increases up to 3 members and then levels off
Presence of a single deviant (nonconformist)

8. Compliance
When someone agrees to do something that another person requests
We often use ingratiation to get someone to comply
Ingratiation—causing another to like you by being as physically attractive as possible, being friendly, flattering the other person, and agreeing with the other.
Can backfire if you’re too obvious

9. Obedience People usually do what they’re told, beginning at age 2-3.
More likely to obey authority figures than those lacking authority
Destructive obedience is obedience that harms others.
People think that following orders absolves them of responsibility for destructive acts
Obedience
Understand compliance versus obedience.
Your mom says, “Will you please straighten your room after dinner?” and you do…that’s compliance.
Your mom says, “Straighten your room after dinner.” and you do…that’s obedience.
Interest in destructive disobedience spiked after the Holocaust. At Nuremberg Trials, people insisted that they were “just following orders”. Psychologists wanted to further understand that.

10. Milgram Obedience Study
Milgram study
Milgram Obedience Study
67% shocked to the XXX level (supposedly lethal).
Milgram set up a scenario involving a “learner” and a “teacher” (a confederate of the experimenter).
Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher had to shock him (fake shock) at increasingly higher levels. Note the use of the foot-in-the-door approach.
Although only 2% of psychiatrists predicted that the teacher would shock the learner at a lethal level, 67% administered at least a 300 volt shock (labeled “XXX”), even after the learners started screaming, begging, and finally falling silent.

11. Variations of Milgram’s original study
The closer the experimenter was (physically) to the teacher/subject, the higher the level of destructive obedience.
The closer the teacher sat to the learner, the LESS destructive obedience occurred, but 1/3 still shocked him to the XXX level.
More obedience when the authority figure was associated with a prestigious university (Yale)

12. Criticisms of Milgram’s Study
Ethical treatment of subjects (too much stress)
May not have been debriefed until 9 months later
Some of the 20+ studies that showed fewer rates of obedience were not reported.

13. Bottom Line about conformity and obedience
It is hard not to conform/obey.
BUT it only takes one person to sway the majority (minority influence)
“If evil is contagious, so is goodness.”
Pope Francis

14. Group behavior (dynamics)

15. Social Facilitation
Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks.
BUT, we perform worse on tasks that are difficult for us.
This is due to AROUSAL caused by other’s presence. This arousal strengthens your dominant response.
In one of first social psychology experiments, Triplett (1898)—found that people wound a fishing reel faster in the presence of someone doing the same thing

16. Explains home team advantage in sports.

17. Social Loafing People feel
When people are pooling their efforts toward a common goal, each individual exerts less effort than s/he normally would.
People feel
Less accountable
Dispensable
Overestimate contributions
Group projects….each person feels less responsible for the outcome than when he/she is doing the work alone.

18. Deindividuation
Psychological state in which you lose self- awareness and self- restraint in a group situation
Loss of self-awareness leads to unrestrained behavior
Adopt group norms, not your own moral code
Example: Lynch mobs, drunken behavior, church revival
Deindividuation leads to conformity when otherwise you wouldn’t have conformed. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

19. Group polarization
If a group thinks basically the same way, discussing the viewpoint strengthens opinions, and the group viewpoints become even more extreme than they were initially.
Example: Jurors who were leaning a certain way going into the juror room become even more extreme in their opinions when discussing it with like-minded jurors.

20. (he does have a family to support)
The Mark Dilemma
(he does have a family to support)
The Edward Dilemma
Mean for Individual Assessments:
7.42
Mean for Group Assessments:
8.18
Mean for Individual Assessments:
5.64
Mean for Group Assessments:
4.90
Discuss “echo chambers” and how they can solidify extreme opinions. People unfriend/unfollow those who don’t agree. Try to open yourself up to exposing yourself to a variety of opinions and try to understand other’s perspectives.
Conservative Shift
Risky Shift

21. A desire for harmony overrides truth.
Groupthink
Start video at 2:40
A desire for harmony overrides truth.

22. Avoid group think
Ask Leaders to Hold Their Opinion
Have a “Devil’s Advocate”
Do Not Criticize Others Opinions
Examine Alternatives