Conformity and Obedience

Question 1

social psychology

Answer 1

study of intrapersonal interactions, including individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior during these interacitions

Question 2

conformity

Answer 2

tendency people have to change their behavior to fit group norms

Question 3

informative influence

Answer 3

tendency of individuals to assume that the actions of the group are correct when in an ambiguous situation

Question 4

normative influence

Answer 4

tendency of the individuals to conform to the behaviors of the group, out of fear or rejection

Question 5

privately conforming

Answer 5

tendency of individuals to change one’s beliefs and behaviors to fit with the group

Question 6

publicly conforming

Answer 6

tendency of individuals to change beliefs outwardly, while maintaining one’s own beliefs privately, to fit in with the group

Question 7

compliance

Answer 7

tendency to go along with the orders of an authority figure, due to the rewards of obedience or the threat of a consequence in the case of disobedience

Question 8

identification

Answer 8

driving force of conformity, through which a person is motivated to behave in a certain way due to respect and a desire to be like another person

Question 9

internalization

Answer 9

strong driving force of conformity through which an idea has been both publicly and privately adopted by a person

Question 10

group polarization

Answer 10

phenomenon in which a decision made by a group tends to be more extreme than the opinions of any of the individuals

Question 11

confirmation bias

Answer 11

tendency of an individual or group to seek out information that reinforces their pre-existing beliefs
often contributes to group polarization

Question 12

groupthink

Answer 12

phenomenon in which group unity or agreement is favored over analyzing information and making the correct decision
strong leader and a feeling of invincibility in a group often play a role in this

Question 13

obedience

Answer 13

tendency of individuals to comply with authority figures and their recommendations, actions, and ideas

Question 14

Asch conformity studies

Answer 14

experiments that used many confederates that intentionally gave the wrong answer to an obvious question in order to observe the tendency of the subject of the study to give the same wrong answer
studies found that 75% of subjects gave the wrong answer at least once in order to agree with the group

Question 15

Gestalt psychology

Answer 15

way of studying the mind that focuses on the whole individual in terms of the environment in which they live

Question 16

confederate

Answer 16

actor that takes part in a study

supposed to look like another participant but is actually working for the study

Question 17

ecological validity

Answer 17

degree to which a study predicts real world behavior

Question 18

demand characteristics

Answer 18

tendency of a participant in a study to change their behavior to more closely match what they believe the experimenter wants them to do

Question 19

Milgram studies on conformity

Answer 19

group of experiments designed to observe participants’ willingness to act against their morals to obey an authority figure
most famous experiment used confederates who instructed subjects to administer increasingly large (with some marked potentially lethal) electric shocks and confederates who pretended these shocks were real
65% of subjects would continue obeying the authority figure up through the largest shock, well past the lethal warning

Question 20

just world phenomenon

Answer 20

belief that people have earned or deserved their outcomes or consequences, clearly placing blame on any individual in a negative situation
eg blaming the victim of the shocks in the Milgram studies for answering questions wrong and earning a punishment for this

Question 21

passing responsibility

Answer 21

phenomenon that often contributes to a person completing violent acts because they attribute blame to the person ordering the violent act, not themselves for executing the act

Question 22

self-serving bias

Answer 22

cognitive distortion of facts to maintain self-esteem

often seen as an individual attributing success to intrinsic factors and failures to extrinsic factors

Question 23

fundamental attribution error

Answer 23

cognitive distortion in which negative actions of people in the outgroup are attributed to personal flows but the negative actions of that individual and their ingroup are attributed to their situation

Question 24

Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 24

unethical study by today’s standards that aimed to examine how social norms influence the actions of groups of participants with different authority and power
half of the participants were told to play prisoners and the other half told to act as guards in a mock prison setting

Question 25

situational attribution

Answer 25

idea that behaviors can be explained by the context or environment rather than by intrinsic factors
helps explain why guards and prisoners behaved as they did in the Zimbardo Prison Experiment

Question 26

dispositional attribution

Answer 26

idea that behaviors that can be explained by intrinsic personality factors

Question 27

deindividuation

Answer 27

effect of belonging to a group that results in the loss of self-awareness or identity
often leads to individuals taking actions as part of a group that they would not perform when alone

Question 28

cognitive dissonance

Answer 28

experience of discomfort due to one’s conflicting and currently-held beliefs, or actions that conflict with one’s held beliefs

Question 29

internalization

Answer 29

process of changing one’s own beliefs to better align with those belonging to the group

Question 30

selection bias

Answer 30

issues and confounding variables resulting from a participant group that was not randomly chosen, or was selected for some specific feature

Question 31

factors that affect conformity

Answer 31

specific aspects of the group that make a person more likely to go along with the beliefs or actions of the group
influences that make a person more likely to go along with a group include: group size of 3-5 people, unanimity within the group, seemingly elevated status of the group, group cohesion, observation by others, public response, insecurity, prior commitments to the group or others

Question 32

factors that affect obedience

Answer 32

aspects of the situation that make a person more or less likely to listen to an authority figure
influences include: closeness (physical or psychological) to the authority, legitimacy of authority, institutional qualifications, depersonalization of the victim, and role models of authority