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