Conformaty Compliance And Obedience Flashcards
What is meant by compliance?
Superficial change in behaviour when put under pressure and responding to a request.
List five tactics for inducing compliance
Ingratiation, Reciprocity principle, Foot in the door, Low ball tatic and door in the face.
What is ingratiation, name some key researchers.
Being liked (attractive, nice, agreeing initially) recipient is more likely to agree with you. Gordon 1996 meta analysis = strategy can backfire if too transparent.
Seiter (2007) : tipping behaviour in restaurants more likely to tip when waiter compliment or smiled at them.
Reciprocity principle
make recipient feel like they owe you. Transgression compliance hypothesis : negative feedback of guilt pushes individuals to seek forgiveness.
Foot in the door
Greater compliance with a ‘big’ request having first got person to agree to smaller request.
Freedman and Fraser (1966) : 53% comply with ‘big’ request, control is no small request and only 22% compy
Why does Foot in the door work?
Self perception theory. Dejong (1979) small= helpful want to be consistent with self- view and the positive feedback. Want to avoid cognitive dissonance
Low ball tatic
Request seems reasonable then ‘sting’ is revealed. Cialdini (1978) study starts early only 31% agree, 56% agree when time isn’t revealed. 95% turned up once time revealed.
Door- in- the- face
Based on reciprocity, making big request first. Cialdini et al (1975) 50% agreed to volunteer in zoo once rejecting a bigger task 17% agreed without being asked to volunteer for two years first.
Which of the tactics for inducing compliance are reasoned based.
Reasoned based compliance is based on the reciprocity principle. This explains the ‘door in the face’ (coming to a compromise) and ‘ foot in the door’ (self perception theory means they now see themselves that way and want to avoid cognitive dissonance) phenomenon.
Which of the tactics for inducing compliance are emotion based
Based on reciprocity principle, transgression compliance hypothesis : negative feedback of guilt pushes individuals to seek forgiveness by complying. Positive mood and mood maintenance.
Conformity
Conforming to a group norm, no overt request
Sherif Frame of reference (1936)
Other behaviour indicates the range of acceptable behaviours. Range= Frame of reference. Extreme positions perceived as unacceptable.
Sherif (1936) Autokinesis study
Spot of light shined on wall in completely dark room, spot appears to move, illusion caused by natural eye movement due to lack of frame of reference. Alone in room, then placed in groups of three, variation of results became smaller due to group reference. Demonstrated generation of group norms.
Who followed on from the work of Sherif and why?
Asch (1952) - Sherif focused on conforming to the group due to uncertainty, but what if we are uncertain?
Asch line judgment study method (1952)
123 groups of 7 people, each group did visual discrimination task. Strooges start by giving correct answer then start making obvious errors in 1 trail all strooges make obvious mistake.
Asch line judgment (1952) results
25% make no erros, very easy task control group only 0.7% made mistake.
Why do people conform?
Informational influence : greater confidence in others answers, difficult task, internalised, ambitgous. seen in sherif study.
normative: minimising source of conflict, temporary, conflicting beliefs.
What influences change in conformity (seen in Asch study)
Size of majority : varied number of confederates
2 people = 13% errors, 3= 33% no addition effects. Confirming reaches full strength between 3 to 5 majority.
Independence from majority of group members.
If there is a descendant in the majority this can break conformity
Allene and Levine (1971)
When dissenter may be less reliable (e.g. suspect vision) conformity is still reduced just less then if they were more reliable
Milgram’s obedience study 1963,1974 aims
To investigate the effect of situational factors on obedience.
Method for Milgram’s obedience study.
Roles seemingly randomly assigned, confederate always assigned as learner. Word pairs with incorrect response punished with shock.
Results for Milgrams obedience study
62.5% administered shocks to the highest level and many participants showed distress about displaying shocks.
What are some situational factors in obedience according to Milgram’s study.
Imedicacy of learner: separate room (100%) , in same room (40%),
immediacy of authority : phone(20.5),
credability of authority : office block (48) original at Yale uni.
Ethics of Milgram study
were they free to withdraw?
did not give informed consent
What are some Norm-based compliance tactics.
perspective : way I’m meant to behaviour in given context.
Descriptive : behaviour exhibited by majority in given context.
What is Frame of reference
Taking other examples of what other people are doing to determine are own behaviours.
