Conformity and Obedience

Question 1

Compliance

Answer 1

When a person pretends to agree with the group while maintaining their own beliefs e.g. a person notices everyone else has taken their food off their tray in the dining hall so they decide to do the same

Question 2

Identification

Answer 2

When a person comes to agree with the group and adopts the same behaviours even when they are alone - if the person leaves the group the behaviour will stop e.g. a person supports their school sports team but then when they move school they will support the team of their new school instead

Question 3

Internalisation

Answer 3

A group has such influence on a person that they permanently adopt the behaviour and carry it out even if they are no longer a group member e.g. a person is friends with people who are vegan so becomes vegan and even when that person leaves that friend group they carry on being vegan

Question 4

Scenario - explain using the factors affecting conformity

Answer 4

Normative influence, informational influence, situational factors, individual factors

Question 5

Normative influence

Answer 5

When a person is influenced by social norms. The pressure comes from the group, based on a need to be liked and accepted by it.

Question 6

Informational influence

Answer 6

When uncertainty leads to a person adopting the behaviour of others - they conform because they don’t know what to do and want to be correct.

Question 7

Situational factors

Answer 7

Group size, group unanimity, task difficulty, secrecy of response

Question 8

Individual factors

Answer 8

Age, personality (self-esteem), sex, thought processes - strong beliefs less likely to conform and weaker beliefs more likely to conform, culture

Question 9

Evaluate Milgram’s Study

Answer 9

Strengths:
- well controlled in a lab which means it can be replicated
- convincing cover story that the shocks were actually hurting the person
- participants showed no signs of long-term harm in psychiatric assessments

Weaknesses:
- unethical and participants were both stressed and deceived
- all the participants were male meaning it can’t be generalised
- authority figure and lab coat meant that participants were more likely to obey because they thought it was for science
- tested in lab which is very different to real life situations of obedience so can’t be generalised. Lacks ecological validity.

Question 10

Factors affecting obedience

Answer 10

• legitimate authority
• proximity - Milgram’s experiment
• presence of authority - if authority figure is removed obedience tends to fall
• socialisation
• authoritarian parenting
• autonomous and agentic levels
  Autonomous state: seeing yourself as being in power; acting on your own wishes and morals
  Agentic state: seeing another reason as having power; acting on behalf of their principles/commands
• location - professional/legal setting
• wearing uniform