conformity

internalisation:

• accepts group norms
• private and public
• permanent
• continues without group present

identification:

• group we value
• change our opinions
• privately disagree
• temporary

Compliance:

• go along with others
• public change but not private
• superficial
• stops when group is gone

Key info:

• we are uncertain - think everyone else is probably right - we want to be right
• cognitive process
• occurs when situation is ambiguous (or we are new to it)
• common when decisions need to be made quickly
• strong when one person or group considered expert

Pros:

• research - Lucas et al (2006) - more confomrity to incorrect answers when difficult maths question - even higher when students rated themselves as bad at maths

Cons:

• individual differences - Asch (1955) found students were less (28%) conforminst than other partcicipents (37%) - Perrin and Spencer found same in engineer students - more confident we are less influenced 

key info:

• what is normal? - behave like that
• emotional - want social approval
• more inportant with people you know ie friends - need for social approval

Pros:

• Asch (1951) - partcicpents wo conformed to know answer said they were afraid of disapproval - when asked to write answers conformity rates droped 12.5% - conforming because of NIS

Cons:

• individual differences - care about being liked (nAffiliators) - McGhee and Teevan (1967) found nAffiliator students more likely to conform

key info:

• Deutsch and Gerard (1955)
• ISI and NSI together
• conform because of: need to be right (ISI) & need to be liked (NIS)

Cons:

• oversimplified - confomrity reduced when there is dissenting partner (Asch) - partner reduces power of NSI (provides social support) and ISI (alternative source of infomation)

• 123 american male participants
• 1 in group with 6-8 confederates
• identify length of standard line
• 18 trials - 12 were critical
• participants gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
• high level of confomrity - Asch effect
• 25% never gave wrong answer
• 75% gave wrong answer at least once
• many claimed to have conformed to avoid rejection (NSI) & continued to trust their judgement privately (compliance)

•  group size - 2 confederated = 13.6% confromity - 3 confederates = 31.8% - adding more doesnt make a difference 

• unanimity - dissenting confederate reduced conformity even if they still didn't give right answer - 25% confromity rate

• task difficulty - ISI plays bigger role

cons:

• "child of its time" - Perrin & Spencer (1980) found 1 conformer in 396 trials (particpents UK engineering students - maybe more confident) - 1950s were more conformist times

• task was artificial - likely to have demand characteristics - task was trivial (no reason to conform) - findings dont generalise to everyday (consequences are inportant)

• findings only apply to certain groups - only men tested - Neto (1995) suggested wmen are more conformist (need for social relationships) - USA is an individualist culture  (low conformity) - Smith & Bond (1998) suggest high conformity in collectivist cultures ie China

• only apply to certain situations - in experiment it was group of strangers  - Williams and Sogon (1984) found higher conformity among friends

• ethical issues - decived - thought confederates were part of study 

• mock prison in basement of stanford uni - aim: see if brutality of guards is due to personality or situation
• 24 'emotionally stable' students assiged randomly to guard or prisioner
• prisoners areested at homes, delivered to prison, blindfolded, *****-searched, deloused and issued unifrom and number
• 16 rules enforced by guards - 3 at a time (shift)
• De-individuation (losing a sense of personal identity) - prisoners had numbers not names - guards had unifroms and told they had total power
• within 2 days prsioners rebelled - guards retaliated putting it down - then on harassed prisioners - conducting frequent head counts (some in middle of the night)
• after rebellion, prisioners became subdued, anxious and depressed
• 3 prisoners realesed early due to psychological disturbances 
• 1 prisoner went on hunger strike - guards force fed him - put him in 'the hole' 
• study stopped 6 days, planned to go on for 8
• showed power of situation to influence people
• all conformed to their social roles - more guards identified more brutal they became
• Lucifer effect - 'barrel makes apples rotten' - situation not people - Zimbardo 

pros:

• researchers had control over some varibles - emotionally stable & randomly assigned - behaviour due to situation not personalities - high internal validity

Cons:

• lack of realism - Banuazizi & Mohavedi (1975) suggest participents play acting to sterotypes - on guard based role off film 'cool hand luke' - Zimbardo's data shows 90% of prisioner convosations is about prision life - felt real to them - high internal validity
• Fromm (1973) - Zimbardo understated dispositional varibles - one third guards applied rules fairly, third behaved burtally and other third was leanient - zimbardo exagerates situations effect & pressure to conform
• contradicted by other research - Reicher & Haslam (2006) replicated SPE & prisoners eventually took control - Tajifel (1981) social identity theory suggests that the guards failed to make a shared group identity where as the prisoners did - brutality in orginal SPE was due to the guards shared social identity
• ethical issues - zimbardo = prison superintendent - limited ability to protect participents

• 40 male participants - newspaper add - 'memory study' - 20 to 50 years old - uskilled to professional
• confederate 'learner' would be shocked by true participant 'teacher' with 'experimenter' confederate watching (in lab coat) - told they could leave at any time
• leaderner given increasing shock everytime they get question wrong from 15v (slight shock) to 450v (danger - severe shock)
• at 300v ('intense shock') learner would pound wall and give no answer to next question ("absence of response should be treated as wrong answer")
• proded - please continue - please go on - the experiment requires you to go on - it is absolutly essential that you continue - you have no other choice you must go on
• no one stoped below 300v
• 5 stopped at 300v
• 65% continued to 450v
• participents showed extreme stress - sweat, tremble, dig nails into hand - 3 had full blown uncontrollable seizures
• 14 psychology students before suggested 3% would go to 450v
• after participants were debriefed - 84% glad to have participated - 74% felt they had learned something of personal importance 

pros:

• good external validity - relationship between experimenter and participant reflect real-life autority - Hofling et al (1966) tested obedience in nurses with unjustified doctors demands (21 out of 22 obeyed)  - can be generalised
• replications - french documentary, contestants in reality TV show, constestants paid to give (fake) electric shocks - 80% gave max 450v to unncouncious man, they showed similar isgns of anxiety

cons:

• lacked internal validity - Orne and Holland (1968) suggests participants knew shocks were fake - Sheridan and King (1972) gave real shocks to puppy, 54% males & 100% females gave what they thought was a fatal shock - 70% participant in Milgram believed shocks were real
• Social Identity theory - obedience = group identification - participants identified with examiner - Haslam and Reicher (2012) suggsts 3 prods = appeals to science 
• ethical issues - Baumrind (1964) critisised deceptions - believe role allocation was random - believed electric shocks were real

• Proximity - teacher & learner in different rooms - in same room, obedience drops from 60% to 40% - place learners hand on shock plate, obedience rate dropped to 30% - experimenter says what to do over telephone, obedience droped to 20.5% with participenst pretending to give shocks or giving weaker ones

• Location - rundown building rather than Yale - obedience fell to 47.5% - less authority

• Uniform - in original experimenter wore lab coat - authority - when ordinary member takes over after experimenter gets phonecall, obedience dropped to 20%

pros:

• research support - Bickman (1974) - people twise as likely to obey security guard rather than jaket & tie confederate 
• replicated in other cultures - Miranda et al (1981) over 90% obedience in spanish students - Smith and Bond (1998) most replications take place n western society not  different to USA
• control variables - Milgram systematically altered one varible at a time showing effects - varibel manipulation showing cause and effect 

cons:

• lack internal validity - Orne and Holland (1968) suggest participants knew it was fake when "member of the public" took over - may have demand characteristics
• provide an 'obedience alibi' - gives an excuse for obedience - Mandel (1998) claims offensive to holocaust surivors - Adolf Eichman

Agentic State:

• act on behalf of another person
• opposite = autonomous state - act as an independent with own priciples
• agentic shift - shift from autonomous to being an 'agent' 
• binding factors - aspect of situation allowing you to ignore the damaging effect of behaviour

Legitimacy of authority:

• obey people at the top of the social heirarchy 
• authorities have legitimacy through society's agreement - their authority allows society to function smoothly
• obey because of trust and upbringing - we learn to obey - parents and teachers

pros:

• agentic state research - Blass and Schmidt (2001) showed students Milgram film and asked who was responsible for learners pain - they said experimenter - they recognised his authority - legitimate authority (top of heirarchy) & expert authority (scientist)
• legitimacy of authority is useful account of cultural differences in obedience - 16% of austrailians went to top voltage (Kilham and Mann 1974), 85% Germans did (Mantell 1971)
• legitimacy of authority can explain real-life obedience - Kelman and Hamilton (1989) suggest My Lai massacre due to US army heirarchy - solider assume orders given to be legal even if they are not

cons:

• agentic shift doesnt explain reserach findings - some did not obey - Hofling (1966) nurses should have shown anxiety as gave up responsibility, but did not - only account for certain situations
• agentic state cannot account for Nazis - Mandel (1998), German Reserve Police Battalion 101 - men shot civilians in small polish village - did it event though not directly ordered to

authoritarian personality: 

• Theodore Adorno et al (1950) suggests unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder
• authoritarian personality includes exagerated respect for authority & contempt for people of inferior social status
• personality originates in childhood - strict discipline & impossible high standards - conditional love
• childs anger towards parents taken out on their inferiors (scapegoating) - Psychodynamic explanation

• F-scale - authoritarians identified with strong people and contemptious of weak - conious of their and others status - have a cognitive style where there was no blurr between catagories of people

pros:

• support for link with  A-personality and obedience - Elms and Milgram (1966) inetrviewed participents who fully obeyed and all scored high on F-scale - just a correlation, may be third factor - Hyman and Sheatsley (1954) suggest personality caused by low level of education

cons:

• explanation is limited - millions of germans obeyed Nazis not all have A-personality - more realistic it was Social Identity Theory - they identified with Nazi state
• F-scale is politically bias - aimed at right wing veiws but left wing can be authroitarian as well
• based on flawed methodology - Greenstein (1969) suggests test is worded in same direction so measures tendency to agree to everything  - interviewers knew who had A-personality & study hypothosis before interview - makes bias results likely - lacks validity
• research uses correlations - no matter who string correlation between two varibles, does not mean one caused the other

social support: 

• conformity reduced when someone else goes against majority even if they too are wrong - Asch - dissenter acts as a model
• effect is not long lasting, if model goes back to conforming so will participant
• obedience is the say - fi one person disobeys others find it easier - Milgram saw disobedience rates increase from 35% to 90% when disobeying partner is there - thye free participant to use own conscience

Locus of Control:

• Rotter (1966) internal ( I control what happens to me) vs extrenal (things outside my control control what happends to me) LOC 
• range of LOC, high internal to high external - low inetrnal and external in-between
• internals show greater resistance - take responsibility for thei rown actions  

pros:

• research evidence supports conformity resistnace is easier with partner - Allen and Levine (1971) found independence increased with 1 dissenter in an Asch type study - even if the dissener wore thick glasses and said he had problems with his vison - frees people from group pressure
• research to support this idea in obedience - Gamson et al (1982) found higher levels of rebellion than Milgram with his participants in groups - 29 out of 33 groups (88%) rebelled
• research supports link between LOC and resistance to obedience - Holland (1967) reapted Milgrams study but also measured to LOC in participants - 37% of inetrnals did not continue to highest v, 23% externals did not - increases validity of LOC

cons:

• not all research supports link - Twenge et al (2004) meta-analysis over 40 years of US research showed people have become more indpendent but also more external - if resistance linked to internal LOC then people should have become more internal - this challenges link between internal LOC and resistance
• Rotter (1982) found LOC only inportant in new situations - LOC only helpful in explaining some situations 

• minority influence leads to internalisation - 3 process; consistency, commitment, flexibility

• consitency - makes you rethink your own veiws - synchronic consistency = minority are all saying the smae thing, Diachronic consitency = saying the same thing over time

• commitment - gains attention, create some risk to the minority demonstates commitment - Augmentation Principle = minorit pay even more attention 

• Flexibility - Nemeth (1986) being consistant and repeating same arguments makes minority seen as rigid and puts off majority - shoudl adapt their viewpoints and accept reasonable arguments

• Snowball effect - minority is added to and added to untill minority becomes majority 

• Moscovici et al (1969) - group of 6 people view blue/green slides- (condition 1) confederates consistenly say slides were green = participants gave same wrong answer 8.42% of trials, 32% gave same answer on at least 1 trial - (condition 2) confederates were inconsistant = agreement fell to 1.25%- (condition 3) control group = wrongly identified colour 0.25% of the time

pros:

• Moscovici et al (1969) showed importance of consistency - Wood et al (1994) meta-analysis of almost 100 studies showed constistant as most influencial 
• research shows that change to minority position involves deeper thought - Martin et al (2003) gave prtcicpants message supporting particular veiwpoint & attitudes measured, then heard an endorsement of the veiw from minorit or majority & then conflicting veiw & attitudes measured again - people less willing to change opinion to new conflicting veiw if heard from minority than majority
• research supports involvement of internalisation - moscovici = participents wrote down answer (private) agreement with minority was greater - inetrnalisation took place - reluctant to admit their conversion publically

cons:

• research involves artificial task - ie. colour of slide - lacks external validity
• applications of minority influence are limitted - majorities dont have to have numbers just power and status - minorities are commited, tight-knit groups with members who support eachother - research rarely reflects dynamics of these groups

• think about the civil rightsd movement as an example

• dissenters make social change easier - Asch
• majority influence & Normative Social Influence (NSI) - health campaigns pay on conformity NSI by saiying "others are doing it"

• Disobedient models make change more likely - Milgram
• Zimbardo (2007) - once a small instruction is obeyed its hard to disobey larger ones - gradual commitment leads to 'drift' into new behaviour

Pros:

• Nolan et al (2008) had messages on front doors of houses saying "most residents are trying to reduce energy useage"  - there was a significant decrease in energy compared to control group (whose message had no reference to other peoples behaviour)

Cons:

• minority influence only indirectly effective - Nemeth (1986) suggests minority influence effects are indirect and delayed - took decades for drink driving to be bad 
• nature of deeper processing has been questioned - Moscovici suggests that thinking caused by minority groups is a different cognitive process from majority groups - Mackie (1987) suggests majority influence creates deeper processing - you believe everyone thinks the same way as you, so when majority doesent you are forced to think about there areguments - doubting the validity of moscovici's theory
• identification not mentioned - Bashir et al (2013) suggests people dont act enviroment friendly for fear of being assosiated with enviromentalists (minority) due to their poor repuation - minority must be able to identify with majority
• methological issues - research tasks are artifical and dont have group dynamic present in real life