【Social Psychology】Chapter 06 — Main Points
* All the following abstractions are excerpted from <Social Psychology>, David G. Myers, 12th edition
Chapter 06 — Conformity and Obedience.
— What Is conformity?
Conformity — changing one's behavior or belief as a result of group pressure — comes in two forms. Compliance is outwardly going along with the group while inwardly disagreeing; a subset of compliance is obedience, compliance with a direct command. Acceptance is believing as well as acting in accord with social pressure.
— What Are the Classic Conformity and Obedience Studies?
Three classic sets of experiments illustrate how researchers have studied conformity.
Muzafer Sherif served that others' judgments influenced people's estimates of the movement of a point of light that actually did not move. Norms for "proper" answers emerged and survived both over long periods of time and through succeeding generations of research participants.
Solomon Asch had people listen to others' judgments of which of three comparison lines was equal to a standard line and then make the same judgment themselves. When the others unanimously gave a wrong answer, the participants conformed 37 percent of the time.
Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments elicited an extreme form of compliance. Under optimum conditions — a legitimate, close-at-hand commander, a remote victim, and no one else to exemplify disobedience — 65 percent of his adult male participants fully obeyed instructions to deliver what were supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to a screaming, innocent victim in an adjacent room.
These classic experiments expose the potency of several phenomena. Behavior and attitudes are mutually reinforcing, enabling a small act of evil to foster the attitude that leads to a bigger evil act. The power of the situation can induce good people, faced with dire circumstances, to commit reprehensible acts (although dire situations may produce heroism in others).
— What Predicts Conformity?
Using conformity testing procedures, experimenters have explored the circumstances that produce conformity. Certain situations appear to be especially powerful. For example, conformity is affected by the characteristics of the group: People conform most when three or more people, or groups, model the behavior or belief.
Conformity is reduced if the modeled behavior or belief is not unanimous.
Conformity is enhanced by group cohesion.
The higher the status of those modeling the behavior or belief, the greater likelihood of conformity.
People also conform most when their responses are public (in the presence of the group).
A prior commitment to a certain behavior or belief increases the likelihood that a person will stick with that commitment rather than conform.
— Why Conform?
Experiments reveal two reasons people conform. Normative influence results from a person's desire for acceptance: We want to be liked. The tendency to conform more when responding publicly reflects normative influence.
Informational influence results from others' providing evidence about reality. The tendency to conform more on difficult decision-making tasks reflects informational influence: We want to be right.
— Who Conforms?
The question "Who conforms?" has produced few definitive answers. Personality scores are poor predictors of specific acts of conformity but better predictors of average conformity. Trait effects sometimes seem strongest in "weak" situations where social forces do not overwhelm individual differences.
Although conformity and obedience are universal, different cultures socialize people to be more or less socially responsive.
Social roles involve a certain degree of conformity, and conforming to expectations is an important task when stepping into a new social role.
— Do We Ever Want to be Different?
Social psychology's emphasis on the power of social pressure must be joined by a complementary emphasis on the power of the person. We are not puppets. When social coercion becomes blatant, people often experience reactance — a motivation to defy the coercion in order to maintain their sense of freedom.
We are not comfortable being greatly different from a group, but neither do we want to appear the same as everyone else. Thus, we act in ways that preserve our sense of uniqueness and individuality. In a group, we are most conscious of how we differ from the others.