Conformity and Obedience Flashcards
What is compliance?
Outward conformity as a result of implicit SI
What is obedience?
Acting in accordance with direct orders or commands due to explicit SI
What is acceptance in the context of SI?
Inward conformity as a result of persuasion or social pressure
What did Sherif’s (1935) autokinetic experiment find about social influence?
People’s reactions to ambiguous stimuli tended to converge and were influenced by other’s opinions; interpreted events differently after hearing from others. Assessed the auto-kinetic effect.
What did Asch’s line experiment find in relation to SI?
less ambiguous perceptual stimuli (main difference from Sherif)- less requires the opinions of others. 99% gave correct answer in control conditions. 67% of ppts in the experimental condition gave correct answers. 1 in 3 ppts chose to conform to group even though there was an obvious correct answer.
What did Milgram’s line experiment find in relation to SI?
65% went all the way to 450V, ranged from 0-93% obedience
What four factors breed obedience?
- Proximity- victim’s closeness
2 Legitimacy of Authority - Institutional authority
- Agentic state theory
How does proximity influence obedience?
Milgram- greatest obedience when learner could not be seen but when learner was in the same room, 40% obeyed until 450V; dropped to 30% when teachers forced learner’s hand onto plate. Minimise the effect of SI on the learner when you prevent seeing. Anonymity and depersonalisation of the victims in everyday life.
How does legitimacy of authority and closeness to authority affect obedience?
Telephone- obedience dropped to 21%; when commands were given by a random clerk, obedience dropped to 20%. Authority must be perceived as legitimate as this is a crucial component of authority
How does institutional authority impact obedience?
Rate of compliance dropped to 48% when experiment was conducted in a research building. Prestige of institutional authority itself and its demands. Ppts are driven by demand characteristic, wanting to give the experimenter what they demand
How does agentic state theory impact obedience?
Milgram argued obedience involved denial of responsibility and a willigness to hand it to authority- shift from AUTONOMY TO AGENTIC STATE however this theory does not give a complete explanation as our tendency to be obedient in specific situations has a more complex causality than people giving up their autonomy
What is the fundamental attribution error and how does it relate to obedience?
Tendency to interpret others’ actions as expressing their dispositions rather than the situation they are in, also known as correspondence bias- moral rationalisations for immoral bhvr e.g. genocide
What practical applications can Milgram’s and Asch’s studies have?
- Blame the victim mentality where contempt licenses cruelty which when justified leads to brutality
- Structural atrocities: compliance can take precedence over moral senses
- Foot in the door phenomenon- gradually increases shock starting from harmless and moving slowly
What is the 5 step social identity model of the development of collective hate?
- Creation of a cohesive ingroup through shared social identification
- Exclusion of specific populations from the ingroup
- Consitution of the outgroup as a threat to the existence of the group
- Representation of ingroup as uniquely good and virtuous
- Celebration of the outgroup annihilation as the defense of the ingroup
What is infrahumanisation?
Tactic that believes the ingroup is more human than the outgroup arising when people reserve ‘human essence’ for the ingroup. Leyers et al says that people attribute uniquely human emotions to the ingroup. Evidence of infrahumanisation in conflicts and genocides, using non human descriptors.
