Conformity & Dissent October 7th, 2009: Lecture 8.
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Conformity & DissentConformity & DissentOctober 7th, 2009: Lecture 8
Lecture OverviewLecture Overview
Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
Conformity
Depth of Conformity
Compliance
Obedience
Dissent
Conformity, Conformity, Compliance, and Compliance, and
ObedienceObedienceCONFORMITY
➔ Change in behaviour due to the real or imagined influence of other people
COMPLIANCE:
➔ Change in behaviour due to direct requests from another person
OBEDIENCE:
Change in behaviour due to commands of an authority figure
Conformity, Conformity, Compliance, and Compliance, and
ObedienceObedience
Increasing Pressure on the IndividualIncreasing Pressure on the Individual
ConformityConformity Compliance
Compliance ObedienceObedience
ConformityConformity
➔A change in behaviour due to the real or imagined influence of other people
How Does Conformity How Does Conformity Operate?Operate?
Implicit Social Influence
Informational Social Influence
Normative Social Influence
Implicit Social Implicit Social InfluenceInfluence
➔ Influence caused by increasing the accessibility of social beliefs in working memory
Typically occurs outside of awareness
Implicit Social Implicit Social InfluenceInfluence
“The Unbearable Automaticity of Being” (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999)
Method:
ElderlyStereotypes
ElderlyStereotypes
NeutralWords
NeutralWords
Implicit Social Implicit Social InfluenceInfluence
“The Unbearable Automaticity of Being” (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999)
Results:Tim
e t
o W
alk
Aw
ay (
s)
Informational Social Informational Social InfluenceInfluence
➔The influence of other people that leads us to conform because we see them as a source of information to guide our behaviour
Mass psychogenic illness
Sherif’s (1936) dot studies
Factors that increase informational social influence
Resisting informational social influence
Mass Psychogenic Mass Psychogenic IllnessIllness
➔ The occurrence of similar physical symptoms in a group of people with no known physical cause
Orson Welles (1938)
War of the Worlds Broadcast
Sherif’s (1936) Dot Sherif’s (1936) Dot StudiesStudies
Relied on the Autokinetic Effect
Your eyes jump back and forth constantly - this is called a “saccade”
Contributes to depth perception
Due to saccades, a single, unmoving point appears to move when you stare at it for a while
Sherif’s (1936) Dot Sherif’s (1936) Dot StudiesStudies
Method:
1. Participants watch a dot of light in a dark room with 2 others
2. Each person has to give an estimate aloud of how far dot moves
3. Real participant goes first, then two actors
4. This procedure is repeated for a series of trials
Sherif’s (1936) Dot Sherif’s (1936) Dot StudiesStudies
Results: Conformity with group over time
Est
imate
of
Dot
Movem
en
t
Situations that Increase Situations that Increase Informational Social Informational Social
InfluenceInfluenceMore likely to look to others for cues in:
Ambiguous situations
Situations of Crisis
When you have reason to believe other people are Experts
Resisting Resisting Informational Social Informational Social
InfluenceInfluence
Look for non-human evidence
Remember your consistency bias
If something is wrong, then be the one who speaks out!
Normative Social Normative Social InfluenceInfluence
➔ Influence of others that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them
Causes:
Power of Social Norms
Conformity & Social Approval
Social NormsSocial Norms➔ The implicit or explicit
rules of a group about the acceptable behaviours, values, and beliefs of its members
Group members are expected to conform to these norms
Members who deviate from norms are punished or rejected
UC Berkeley’s “Naked Guy”UC Berkeley’s “Naked Guy”
Asch’s LinesAsch’s LinesAsch (1951, 1956)
Study of Normative Social Influence
Method:
1.Participants completed a judgement 2. task in groups with actors
3.Participants stated which example line (pic B) was the same length as a standard line (pic A)
4.On 12 trials, all the actors gave the wrong answer
A B
Asch’s LinesAsch’s Lines
Results:
% o
f Part
icip
an
ts
A B
QuickTime™ and a decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Asch’s LinesAsch’s LinesIt’s uncomfortable
Social Impact TheorySocial Impact Theory➔ The study of factors that increase conformity based on
Normative Social Influence
Strength
The group is important
Immediacy
The group is temporospatially proximal
Number
Group size (larger group = more conformity)
Resisting Normative Resisting Normative Social InfluenceSocial Influence
Find an ally
Social norms allow occasional deviation
Idiosyncrasy credits
By conforming over time, you earn “idiosyncrasy credits” that you can effectively cash in when you want to deviate from the group
Depth of ConformityDepth of ConformityPrivate Acceptance
➔ Conformity due to a genuine belief that others are right
Likely to change long term behaviour
Public Compliance
➔ Conformity where behaviour is only changed publicly
You believe the others are wrong
May or may not change behaviour in the long run
Putting It All TogetherPutting It All Together
Source of Source of InfluenceInfluence
Depth of Depth of ConformityConformity
Bargh & Bargh & Chartrand’s Chartrand’s “Unbearable “Unbearable Automaticity”Automaticity”
Implicit Social Influence
Private Acceptance
Sherif’s Dot Sherif’s Dot StudiesStudies
Informational Social Influence
Private Acceptance
Asch’s LinesAsch’s LinesNormative Influence
Public Compliance
ComplianceCompliance➔ Change in behaviour due to direct requests
from another person
Persuasion Strategies:
Door-in-the-face
Reciprocity Norm
Foot-in-the-door
Low-Balling
ObedienceObedience
➔ Change in behaviour due to commands of an authority figure
Milgram’s Obedience Milgram’s Obedience to Authorityto Authority
Milgram (1964)
Method:
Student
Teacher
Obedience to Obedience to AuthorityAuthority
Results:
64% of participants shocked up to 450 V mark
Recent meta-analysis (Blass, 1999):
Mean of 61 - 66% of participants shock up to the 450 V mark
ObedienceObedienceWhy obey?
Normative social influence
Disobeying authority figures can have severe consequences - very rigid social norms
Informational social influence
Authority figures are experts
Why disobey?
Sometimes the costs of compliance are too great
Minority DissentMinority Dissent
➔ Observing minority dissenters may not result in explicit behaviour change, but has a deeper impact on implicit attitudes
Minority DissentMinority Dissent
Nemeth (1974)
Method:
1. Participants say colour of blue and green slides with 5 other “participants” (1 participant, 5 actors)
2. 2 of the actors say some of the blue slides are green
3. After the task, participants are shown a gradient from blue to green, and asked where blue becomes green
Minority DissentMinority DissentNemeth (1974)
Results:
No participants agreed with minority dissenters when naming the colour of the slides
However, their perception of blue had shifted toward the green end of the spectrum
Control Condition
Dissent Condition
Why Not Dissent?Why Not Dissent?Two step process of group responses to Dissent:
1.The group’s attention is focused on the dissenter
2.The other group members begin to ignore the dissenter
Long term consequences:
More likely to be dropped from a social group
Assigned more menial tasks
Minority Slowness Minority Slowness EffectEffect
People take longer to express attitudes when those attitudes are not held by most people
Why Dissent?Why Dissent?
Someone has to
You have power over others in very subtle ways
Private acceptance
All great shifts in humanity began with the minority
TheThe Group Made Me Group Made Me Do It!Do It!
Next Lecture (10/7):
OPTIONAL = Not on test
Dr. Page-Gould’s Research (1st Hour)
Grad School in Social Psych (2nd Hour)
Related Websites:
Original War of the Worlds Broadcast in .mp3:
http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWellesMrBruns
Normative Influence - Fads across the Decades:
http://www.crazyfads.com
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