Chapter 6 Flashcards
What did Doug Wheeler discover about facilitated communication?
- facilitators were subtly influencing their autistic charges
- influence can be completely unintentional and imperceptible by both the influencer and the person being influenced
What is another name for mass hysteria?
Epidemic Psychogenic Illness (EPI)
What is mass hysteria?
Large numbers of people suddenly become ill and recover hours later with no apparent medical reason.
What is the supposed cause of mass hysteria?
Stress builds up without any outlet, EPI provides a focus for anxiety and dissatisfaction
What is conformity?
A change in behaviour or belief to accord with others
What predicts conformity?
- Cohesion
- Status
- Public response
- No prior commitment
Why do people conform?
• normative influence
→ “Going along with the crowd” to avoid rejection, stay in people’s good graces, or gain their approval
→ Leads to public compliance
• informational influence
→ Conforming in order to be right in ambiguous situations
→ Leads to private acceptance
When do people conform?
- group size is large enough
- unanimity
- cohesion
- people are of the same status
- overwhelming public response
- no prior commitment
What breeds obedience?
- Emotional distance of the victim
- Closeness and legitimacy of the authority
- Institutional authority
- The liberating effects of group influence
What is key to understanding Milgram’s experiment?
• Very few subjects blindly obeyed.
→ Most questioned the experimenter and protested.
- However, in the face of “The experiment requires that you continue. You have no choice.” many found their intention to discontinue difficult to translate into actual termination.
- Ineffectual and indecisive disobedience
What are some criticisms of Milgram’s experiment?
- What if there was a terminate the experiment button in front of the “teacher”?
- There was no well-defined legitimate channel to discontinue participation
- There was no stable definition of the situation, clearly the learning aspect had been abandoned
• When nothing seems to make sense, few people respond by acting decisively or by asserting independence.
→ Rather, they become indecisive, unwilling or unable to challenge authority, and highly dependent on those who calmly and confidently issue orders
What did Ross and Nisbett (1991) believe about Milgram’s research?
- Ross and Nisbett (1991) believe Milgram’s research does not provide evidence that people are disposed to obey authority figures unquestionably-even to the point of committing harm
- Rather, it shows the capacity of particular, relatively subtle situational forces to overcome people’s kinder dispositions
- When researcher was replaced by research assistant obedience dropped significantly
What was a common theme in the protests of those who refused to participate in Milgram’s study?
- One should not impose one’s will on another
- One is responsible for what one does to another
- One is always free to choose not to obey harmful demands
What are the implications of the classic confirmity/obedience studies?
• Behaviour and attitudes
→ Relationship is weak when external influences are overwhelming
• The power of the situation
→ Trying to break with social constraints shows us how powerful they are
• Avoiding committing the fundamental attribution error
→ e.g., recognising Milgram’s participants as ordinary people
What are the three pillars of Kelman’s model of social influence?
• Compliance
→ when someone accedes to influence in order to achieve favorable reaction, to gain a tangible reward, or to avoid punishment
• Identification
→ occurs when people are influenced by another person because they want to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining relationship with that person.
• Internalization
→ occurs when the individual views a message as truthful and valid. The ideas and actions are intrinsically satisfying and are integrated into the person’s value system
What types of power are the Kelman Social Influences based on?
- Compliance is based on means control
- Identification is based on attractiveness
- Internalization is based on credibility
What situational factors are the Kelman Social Influences dependent upon?
- Compliance is dependent on surveillance
- Identification is dependent on the influencing agent being salient
- Internalization will cause the behavior to be displayed regardless of the surveillance or salience of the influencing agent
What are examples of soft tactics used to influence others?
- flattering
- pleading
- being nice
What are examples of rational tactics used to influence others?
- explaining
- discussing
- compromising
What are examples of strong tactics used to influence others?
- ordering
- threatening
- getting angry
→ sense of control
→ devaluation of the person being influenced
→ exploitation
What is compliance?
conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with social pressure while privately disagreeing
What is obedience?
compliance to an explicit command
Describe Sherif’s study of norm formation.
- people guess how far a light moves
* when put together their answers eventually converge on one estimation
What is the Werther effect?
• publications of suicide tend to inspire others to copy it
What are the three classic conformity studies?
- Sherif’s autokinetic light
- Milgram’s obedience study
- Asch’s line study
What factors determined the level of obedience in Milgram’s study?
- victim’s emotional distance
- authority’s closeness and legitimacy
- whether authority was part of respected institution
- liberating effects of disobedient fellow participant
How does group size predict conformity?
- big increases in conformity between 1-5 people in a group, diminishing returns after ~10
- smaller more numerous groups are more credible than a single large group
Why does a single dissenting voice affect conformity?
- punctures group unanimity
* increases independence
How does cohesion affect conformity?
- minority opinion sways us more when coming from our ingroups
- fear rejection from people we like
What is cohesiveness?
- a “we” feeling
* extent to which members of a group are bound together, such as by attraction for one another
What do fMRI results show about when people conform or don’t conform?
• conforming to wrong answer activated perception centers
→ perceptions may genuinely be influenced
• nonconforming activated regions associated with emotion
What is reactance?
• motive to protect/restore one’s sense of freedom
→ arises when our freedom is threatened
• desire to assert one’s sense of freedom
