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What is conformity?
Change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure
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What are three types of conformity?
Compliance (outward conformity): acting publicly in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing
Obedience: acting in according with a direct order or command
Acceptance (inward conformity): acting and believing in accord with social pressure
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Sherif’s norm formation (experiment)
Used autokinetic phenomenon then asked groups of men to determine how much the point of light had moved – the responses of the men changed markedly
The point of light never moved
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Sherif's studies of norm formation:
- Suggestibility (Social contagion): Contagious
- yawning, comedy laugh tracks
Mood linkage: Being around happy people can make you happy as well
Chameleon effect: Person is more likely to move their foot back and forth if someone else does, too; mirroring grammar that they read.
“Werther effect”: Copy-cat suicides.
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Asch’s group pressure study
Six confederates gave incorrect answers to see if participant would agree even if he knew it was the incorrect answer
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What did Asch's study find?
People feel pressured to conform, even when there was no obvious pressure to conform or any reward for doing so.
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Milgram’s obedience study
Teacher “shocks” learner at the insistence of experimenter
65 percent of participants continued beyond expectations-- go all the way to "xxx"
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What Milgram's study showed
Demands of authority (the experimenter) clashed with conscience (is this right?)
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What was the main criticism regarding Milgram’s experiment?
experiment stressed the participants against their will
participants’ self-esteem may have been altered
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What are four factors which breed obedience?
Victim’s distance or depersonalization: showed the most obedience when they cannot see victim
- Closeness and legitimacy of the authority:
- authority should be physical present and perceived as legitimate
Institutional authority:people obey the order/commands from certain institution with higher social power/reputation
Liberating effects of group influence: heroic firefighter rushed into WTC towers because “they were partly obeying their supervisors, partly conforming to extraordinary group loyalty”
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Be able to argue how conformity, especially obedience, resulted in extreme violence and slaughter throughout history (i.e., Nazi, and My Lai)
“I was only following orders”
A small act of evil to foster the attitude that leads to a larger evil act
Blame the victim
- Power of the situation
- - small acts of evil gradually build
- - heat, desease
- - normative pressure
- - "just doing my job"
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How foot-in-the-door technique can be applied to the development of evil act?
Doing one small evil act can lead to larger, more evil acts
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How a situation would have powerful normative
pressure and influence people’s behavior
we have a desire to be liked and to maintain a social image
We do not want social rejection
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What are factors that predict conformity?
- -Group Size
- -Unanimity
- -Cohesion
- -Status
- ~High status people have more impact
- -Public Response
- -No Prior Commitment
- ~Once a person makes a public commitment, they stick to it.
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What are two possible explanations of conformity?
- Normative Influence: desire to fulfill other's expectations
- Informational Influence: accept evidence about reality provided by other people; desire to be correct
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Who would conform more than the others?
- People conforming to a new role
- People in collectivist cultures
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What is a group?
Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us”
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