Conformity Flashcards
What is reward power?
Person/group rewards you (tangible and non-tangible) for conformity
What is coercive power?
Person/group punishes you (tangible and tangible) for not conforming
What is legitimate power?
Person/group has the right to tell you what to do (e.g. police)
What is referent power?
Respect, admire and want to be like person/group
What is expert power
Listen to someone because they know more than you in specific area
What is informational power?
Person/group has information you don’t have
What are normative influences in conformity?
Want to fit in, be liked and avoid punishment
What 2 types of conformity happen as result of normative influence
- compliance - publicly conform, privately don’t
- identification - conform to people in your group
How durable is normative conformity?
compliance - stop conforming when group leaves
identification - conform as long as you are in group
What is informational influence in conformity?
Want to make correct decision
What type of conformity happen as a result of informational influence?
Internalization - privately and publicly conform
How durable is informational conformity?
Very durable in situation it is specific to
Which conformity process is used in ambiguous (vs clear) situations?
informational is used in ambiguous situations
Which type of conformity explains pluralistic ignorance?
Informational
What was the results of the Princeton drinking study?
- students overestimated average student’s drinking comfort level
- everyone trying to conform to what they THOUGHT the average was
What are sherif’s auto-kinetic effect experimental method?
- in dark room, give estimate how far stationary dot has moved
- either alone in first or last trial
- control was told about effect
- completed same experiment but alone a year later
What were the findings of the auto-kinetic experiment?
- starting alone: final group guess is average of individual members’ guesses
- ending alone: final individual guess is what group’s guess was
- year follow-up: use group estimate
- control: did NOT conform to group guess
What was the mechanism behind the auto-kinetic experiment?
informational influence in ambiguous situation (NOT normative because control didn’t conform)
What is Asch’s line experiment method?
- participants match lines of same length
- group of confederates either say right or wrong (but uniform) answer
- look at number of participants conforming to obviously wrong answer
- control: did experiment alone
What was the findings of Asch’s line experiment?
- control had high accuracy
- the more confederates added, more likely to conform (first 3 have largest influence; up to 7 people)
Mechanism behind the line experiment?
In unambiguous situation, conform mostly because of normative pressures
What was the result of the answering privately variation of the line experiment?`
Large reduction in conformity
What was the finding of the ostracism experiment?
confederate giving dissenting opinion was almost always voted out first
How can conformity be reduced
Have a lone dissenter (devil’s advocate)
What was the result of the line experiment variation where a confederate gives different incorrect answer than group?
Reduction in conformity
Problems conformity leads to?
bystander effect, peer pressure and genocide
What is obedience?
behavioural change because of authority’s demands
Why did Milgrim do his learner shock experiment?
- wanted to give Asch’s findings real world application
- wanted to understand why people are bad (post WW2)
What was the learner’s schedule of protests?
75V - first pain response
150V - heart is acting up and need out (point of no return)
345V - silence and failure to answer questions
What was the experimenter’s schedule of prods
- please continue
- experiment requires you to continue
- it is essential you continue
- you have no choice and must go on
What was Milgrim’s operational definition of obedience?
hit 450V multiple times and have experimenter end experiment
What was the results of the learner shock experiment?
- everyone obeyed up to 105V
- 2/3 obeyed to very end
Why did people obey in Milgrim’s experiment?
- Slippery slope hypothesis - each decision you make is small so can’t figure out when to stop
- Strong social situation - unambiguous situation with behavioural expectations and clear punishments
What was the results of the proximity to victim variation of learner shock experiment?
Physically closer to victim decreases obedience
What was the result of proximity to experimenter variation of learner shock experiment?
If experimenter is farther away, obedience decreases
What was the result of learner telling you to continue?
Listen to experimenter telling you to stop; learner doesn’t have authority
What was the result of random man giving instructions?
Low obedience because he doesn’t have authority
What was the result of having 2 other teachers who quit experiment?
Low obedience
What was the mechanism behind low obedience when other teachers quit?
- informational influence: ambiguous situation so look to others to figure out what to do
- normative influence: other teachers had no punishments when leaving and don’t wanna look like asshole
- diffusion of responsibility: personal responsibility increases as you takeover tasks
- experimenter loses powers and other teachers gain it (coercive, expert and legitimate)
What was the result of having a second teacher administer the shocks?
Obedience increases
What is the mechanism behind increased obedience when not giving shocks?
- diffusion of responsibility
- pluralistic ignorance: other teacher looks calm
- peer’s obedience enhances experimenter’s expert and legitimate power
Hypothesises for learner shock experiment that are NOT scientifically supported
- legitimacy of experiment matters (same results at run down stripmall)
- fairness of experiment (same results if experimenter agreed to let confederate out if heart bothered him and didn’t)
- Aggression (people gave low shocks if allowed to choose shock level)
How can we ethically run Milgrim’s learner shock experiment now?
Use point of no return 150V
What is persuasion?
Trying to change person’s behaviour (NOT attitudes)
What is a consistency based technique?
normative pressure to be consistent encourages compliance
What is the lowball technique? Why does it work?
- get target to agree to deal then increase terms of the deal
- want to appear consistent/committed to the person (must be same person making both requests)
- offers need to be made back to back
- once you make decision, think of all the positives of it
What is the foot in the door technique? Why does it work?
- get target to agree to smaller task, then ask for larger task
- self perception theory: behaviour tells us we care about task and want to be consistent with attitude (need to follow through on first task)
What was the point of the 7am experiment?
demonstrate the lowball technique
What was the method behind the household product experiment?
- performance condition: asked 8 item questionaire
- agree only condition: will get second call if we need you
- familiarity only condition: researcher introducing self
- control: only asked to participate in large request
What was the result of the household product experiment using different requesters and issues?
- requesters can be different
- issues do NOT need to be the same (but should be same vein)
Does number of small tasks completed increase agreence to larger task?
yes (recycling experiment)
What is the “but you are free” technique?
- increases FITD effectiveness
- impression they made own choice
- giving them an out seen as a favour they should reciprocate
What is the reciprocation rule?
feel deep need/social obligation to reciprocate favours
What was the findings in the confederate coke experiment?
buy many more raffle tickets if given coke
What is the door in the face/rejection then retreat technique? How does it work?
- ask for large favour, get rejected, immediately ask for smaller favour
- feel need to agree to smaller request because rejected the first one
- second request seems small compared to first one
When do we publicly conform?
Normative influence in clear situation
When do we privately conform?
Informational influence in ambiguous situation
Is 2 groups of 2 or 1 group of 4 more persuasive?
2 group of 2 (more independent minds)
What is social mobilization?
marshalling large group to sacrifice time/effort/money to achieve social goal
Do we conform more on unfamiliar issues or familiar issues?
Unfamiliar issues
When we think we’re being observed, which gender conforms more?
women, men conform less
What is minority influence?
Dissenters create group change
What is minority slowness effect
Takes more time to give minority opinion
What is Moscovici’s theory on minority vs majority influence?
- majority influence because of numbers
- minority influence because of behaviour style
- must be persistent and unwavering in opinion
What is Hollender’s theory on acceptance of dissenters? What are idiosyncrasy credits?
- must be group member to give dissenting opinion that is taken seriously
- get competent insider status by following group norms
Which questions does minority vs majority have more influence on?
- minority: attitude questions
- majority: correctness questions
What are the 3 factors distinguishing individualist and collectivist cultures?
individualists are: more industrially complex, richer and more diverse
What is compliance? Is it more likely with typical requests?
- behaviour change after direct requests
- more likely with atypical request
What are creditors?
People who use reciprocity to elicit compliance
What is the that’s not all technique? Why does it work?
- begin with inflated request then decrease it with discounts/bonuses
- think we are getting better deal
What is the continuum of social influence?
ranges from obedience to defiance
What is social impact theory?
Social influence is dependent on:
- strength (status, ability or target relationship)
- immediacy (physical proximity to target)
- ratio of source people: target people
Is the worldwide trend for conformity increasing or decreasing?
Decreasing
