Conformity and Obedience Flashcards
What is social influence? !
Thinking, feeling, or acting differently from the way you would act, feel, or think if you were alone
Incluses conformity, compliance, obedience, and acceptance
Including: What is conformity !
Change in BEHAVIOUR OR BELIEF as a result of real or imagined group pressure
Including: What is compliance !
Publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request even if PRIVATELY DISAGREEING
Including: What is obedience !
Acting in accord with a DIRECT ORDER OR COMMAND
Including: What is acceptance !
Conformity that involves ACTING AND BELIEVING in accord with social pressure (opposite to compliance)
Outline Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Experiment (1935) !
this is NOT the line experiment this is the LIGHT experiment
Investigated how individuals’ perceptions are influenced by the social environment and group norms
Setup:
- Participants were placed in a dark room and asked to focus on a stationary point of light (which actually appeared to move due to the “autokinetic effect”).
- Without external reference points, people could not determine exactly how far the light moved.
Phase 1: Individual Judgments
- Each participant was asked to estimate how far the light moved, providing varying and inconsistent responses when alone.
Phase 2: Group Discussion
- Participants were divided into groups of 3 or 4 and asked to estimate the light movement together.
- Through discussion, they began to converge on a common estimate, influenced by the perceived answers of others.
Findings:
After group discussion, individuals’ responses became more similar, showing that people conform to group norms.
Even when asked individually afterward, participants maintained the group’s estimate, demonstrating norm formation and social influence.
Repeated over four days. By day 2 - answers began to converge.
After 1 Year: still answered to group norm
Outline Solomon Asch’s Line Experiement !
difference from Sherif: UNAMBIGUOUS STIMULI
Solomon Asch’s Line Experiment (1951) explored the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could influence an individual’s judgment.
- Setup:
–> Participants were shown a card with a reference line and another card with three comparison lines of varying lengths.
They were asked to identify which comparison line matched the reference line in length.
Procedure:
–> Each participant was placed in a group with 6-8 confederates (actors) who were instructed to give unanimous incorrect answers on some trials.
–> The real participant was seated in a position where they answered after most or all confederates, creating social pressure to conform.
Findings:
–> When alone, 99% gave correct answer
–> About 75% of participants conformed to the incorrect group judgment at least once, even though the correct answer was obvious.
On average, 1 in 3 participants conformed to the group norm on critical trials (where the answer was wrong)
Both Sherif and Asch results are striking because
- no pressure to conform
- no rewards or punishment
- inspired further work using direct coercision
Outline Milgram’s Obedience Experiments !
Setup:
- Participants (40 men aged 20-50) were told they were part of a study on learning and punishment.
- They were assigned the role of “teacher,” while a confederate played the role of “learner.”
- The “learner” was seated in another room and connected to what appeared to be an electric shock machine.
Procedure:
- The “teacher” was instructed by an authoritative experimenter in a lab coat to administer increasing electric shocks to the “learner” for incorrect answers to word-pair questions.
- The shocks ranged from 15 volts (“slight shock”) to 450 volts (“XXX – Danger: Severe Shock”).
- The “learner” (a confederate) did not actually receive shocks but acted as though they were, protesting, screaming, and eventually falling silent.
Findings:
- 65% of participants obeyed instructions fully, delivering the maximum 450-volt shock despite apparent distress from the “learner.”
- Most participants showed signs of stress, hesitation, and discomfort but continued when prompted by the authority figure.
Famous Ethical Debates:
- stress against participants’ will (BUT: Milgram said post experiment that only 1 of his entire ppts regretted it)
- deception = necessary
Milgram Variants: The Victim’s Distance !
Greatest obedience and least compassion = victim could not be seen
Remote victim + no complaints = almost full obedience to the end
Victim in same room = only 40% obeyed to full volts (30% when teacher had to place hand on shock pad)
Anonymity and depersonalisation
Milgram Variants: Closeness and Legitimacy of the authority !
Telephone commands from the experimenter = full obedience dropped to 21%
Random clerk as the experimenter = 80% refused to fully comply
Authority must be PERCEIVED AS LEGITIMATE
Milgram Variants: Institutional Authority !
At Yale (65%) vs research associate building (48%)
Prestige of authority (institutional) provides legitimacy for the authority figure himself
What is Agentic State Theory
Agentic State Theory, developed by Stanley Milgram, explains why people obey authority figures, even when doing so conflicts with their personal morals.
In the agentic state, individuals see themselves as agents of an authority figure, shifting responsibility for their actions to that authority.
–> This leads to moral disengagement and compliance with orders, as they view the authority’s commands as legitimate.
The theory contrasts this state with the autonomous state, where individuals act independently and take responsibility for their actions.
BUT: does not give a complete explanation as participants weren’t entirely morally disengaged - they were troubled by their actions!
Reflections: Outline
1. Structural Atrocities
2. Step-By-Step Towards Insensibility
Structural Atrocities:
- Bad barrel (rather than a bad apple)
–> whole system of society is responsible for atrocities
–> eg. the Apartheid in Africa became government ideology
Step-By-Step Towards Insensibility
- Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: explains how individuals are more likely to comply with a larger request after first agreeing to a smaller, more manageable one (could this be why there was high conformity in Milgram?)
Reflections: Outline
3. Blame the Victim
4. Power of the Social Context
Blame the Victim
- ‘justified’ cruelty - saying the ppt got it wrong so punishment was deserved
Power of Context
- evil situations produce evil behaviours
Reflections: Outline
5. Fundamental Attribution Error
6. Banality of evil or celebration of virtue?
FAE:
- tendency to interpret others actions are expressing their dispositions rather than the situation they are in –> bad people do bad things, good people do good things
- moral rationalisations for immoral behaviour
Banality of Evil or Celebration of Virtue:
- banality of evil: people commit extreme acts of inhumanity in a state where they LACK awareness or CONTROL over what they are doing
- celebration of virtue/virtue of evil: those who commit great wrongs such as ethnic cleansing and genocides, knowingly choose to act as they do because they BELIEVE that what they are doing is right and MORAL
