Social Psychology: Influence on Behavior - Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience - Prof. B, Study notes of Psychology

Download Social Psychology: Influence on Behavior - Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience - Prof. B and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 12 – Social Psychology How Others Influence our Behavior 1. Why we conform i. Conformity – change in behavior, belief, or both to conform to a group norm as a result of real or imagined group pressure. b. The Sherif Study and informational social influence i. When alone – judgments for light distance varied greatly. When in a group, all agreed on one distance. ii. Informational social influence – influence stemming from the need for information in situations in which the correct action or judgment is uncertain. iii. Stems from our desire to be right in situations in which the correct answer is not clear. c. The Asch study and normative social influence i. One line compared to three others. Obvious answer. ii. When alone, always picked the right answer iii. When in group where others picked wrong answer, 75% conformed some of the time, while overall, participants conformed 37% of the time. iv. Normative social influence- influence stemming from our desire to gain approval and to avoid the disapproval of others. d. Situational factors that impact conformity i. Unanimity of the group. They didn’t want to go against a full room of opposite answers. ii. Mode of responding. – voting aloud vs. secret ballot. iii. More conformity is observed from a person who is of lesser status than the others. 2. Why we Comply i. Compliance – acting in accordance with a direct request from another person or group. b. The foot in the door technique i. Compliance to a large request is gained by preceding it with a very small request. ii. Signed a petition, then are willing to put up ugly sign. iii. Communist POWs came out being ok with communism because they brainwashed. c. The door in the face technique i. Compliance is gained by starting with a large, unreasonable request that is turned down and following it with a more reasonable, smaller request. ii. Success is due to our tendency toward reciprocity. Making mutual concessions. d. The low-ball technique i. Compliance to get a costly request is gained by first getting compliance to an attractive, less costly request but then reneging on it. Car dealerships. e. The that’s not all technique i. Compliance to a planned second request with additional benefits gained by presenting this request before a response can be made to a first request. 3. Why we Obey i. Obedience – following the commands of a person in authority b. Milgram’s basic experimental paradigm i. Stanly Milgram’s obedience studies done at Yale University in the early 1960s. ii. Participants took switch up to 450 volts despite screaming. c. Milgram’s initial obedience finding i. 62.5% continued to obey the experimenter and administrated the maximum shock. ii. In a pilot study without any auditory screams, 100% went all the way. d. Situational factors that impact obedience i. Physical presence of the experimenter. 1. If the experimenter left, or gave his instruction over the telephone, obedience dropped to 20% 2. The prestige and authority of the university setting did contribute to obedience rate. e. The “Astroten” study i. Nurses told to give lethal dose to patient. ii. 21/22 nurses did not question the order. f. The Jonestown massacre i. Almost 1000 followers drank poison laced cool-aid. ii. People looked to others to define the correct response, which meant that they followed the lead of those who quickly and willingly drank the poison. Drinking the poison seemed to be the correct thing to do. “herd mentality”. 4. How Groups Influence Us a. Social facilitation i. Facilitation of a dominant response on a task due to social arousal, leading to improvement on simple or well-learned tasks and worse performance on complex or unlearned tasks when other people are present. b. Social loafing and the diffusion of responsibility i. Social loafing – tendency to exert less effort when working in a group toward a common goal than when individually working toward the goal.