Conformity

Conformity: a person changing their beliefs, attitudes and behaviour due to influence from the majority. E.g. Jennes did sweet study, ambiguous. All students, old, and low MR & EV.

Compliance: Invidivuals adjust their behaviour they voice in public to be in line with the majority but private views are different.     Internalisation: Individuals exam their beliefs on others and decide the others are correct. Private and public. E.g. Kelman found distinction between compliance and internalisation. Said to black american students, they must preserve black culture. In compliance condition, they were told message was from people who withdraw college funds and internailsation was attributed to group experts in problems faced by minority. Compliance found public message was far more influencing where as internalisation private and public were similar.

Idenification: Individuals area influenced by demands of their role and whats expected of them. Its the deepest type of conformity. E.g. Zimbardo Stanford Prison exp, with 24 students. Guards had control and came more aggressive and mean. Prisoners became depressed as guards forced them to do press ups etc. Unethical, psychological harm, cant generalise, Zimbardo was too involved in experiment, artificial and guards behaved agressive as didnt know what they expected from them. 

Informational Social Infl: People use others opinions to determin if theirs are correct. Theyre influenced by more knowledgable people with better judgements. It occurs when people are unsure of how to behave. E.g. Sherrif placed participants in dark room with one light hole, they looked at the light and were asked how much it moved. Autokinetic effect happens, they were asked alone then in groups, they all then conformed to group answer. Lacks MR and EV, 80 years, well controlled and unimportant task.

Normative Social Infl: People have a need to be liked by others, so avoid behaviour which causes rejection. They copy others or hang with people similar to them to avoid rejection. E.g. Asch placed naive participants with confederates, asked to match lines up with height, unambiguous. Confeds gave 12/18 answers wrong and naive was last to answer so had heard. 37% were wrong compared to actual mistake of 1%. 3/4 participants conformed 1//18 turns. In private mistakes fell from 37 to 12.5%. Shows power of ISI. Groups of 1,2,3 have 3% conform, greater than three has 33% chance. So NSI more powerful on groups more than three. Lack MR and EV, unethical, biased male usa, well controlled.

History: Perrin and Spencer did Asch study in UK and found decrease in conformity but engineering students used so may of been reason for less. Smith and Bond found decrease in conformity, meta analysis.

Cultural: Bond and Smith meta analysis; Figi indian teachers conformed 58%, Belgium students 14%. Indiviualistic cultures value individuals, responsible for own self and Collectivist cultures value the group, group solidarity and conformity is great here.

Gender: Ealgy and Carli found men conform less on tasks that theyre good at, Maslasch did equal tasks and found no differences.

Individual: Crutchfields conforming personality theory, they conform less if have less ego strength, less leadership, less intellect and narrow minded.

Obedience: behaving as instructed to by authority.  Authority: Having higher status than others and having power over them.

Milgram: determin how people respond to authority when asked to cause harm. Placed advert in paper for male student to do a memory test, they then met at Yale and met an experimenter and Mr Wallace(heart condition) who both are confederates. The participant was always the teacher not the learner. Teachers punished learner for wrong answers by a shock, increasing volts, 15-450V and slighy, moderate, danger, *** buttons aswell used. Experimenter ensured teacher carried on when reluctant. Learner gave vocal objecions and complained about his heart, room went silent. Found all participants went to 300V. 65% till 450V. They felt stressed and anxious so were high obedience. 

Very unethicalm, decieved, psychological harm, violation of right to withdraw, lack MR and EV and no experimental realism.

Hoffling did it with nurses to give more medience to people over the phone and she gave it, breaking hospital rules 2x max dose.

Females: Obedience rate didnt change

Remote victim: Learner placed seperately and only at 300V did hear bang. Rate of 65%.

Vocal Feedback: seperate room but protested, rate of 62.5% and few stopped before 300V as protested.

Two teacher condition: If participants with confed teacher who gave shocks the rate went up to 92.5% as werent the ones doing it.

Alternative Setting: If was carried out in run down office, rate was 47.5% as less realistic.

Social support: If they had confed teachers who also refused to carry on and obey the naive also conformed and stopped. Rate of 10%.

Absent experimenter: Instructions via phone, they missed out a lot of shocks. Rate of 20%.

Touch proximity: Teacher forced learners hand onto metal plate for shock, obedience was 30%

Power: Six sources: Reward: have ability to give rewards, Legitimate: right to be obeyed, Expert: superior knowledge, Coercive: ability to punish, Informational and Referent: respected. E.g. Bickman: confeds ordered passers to pick up litter or move from busstop. They dressed as guards, smart civillians. 90% guard, 50% smart civillians. Uniform means legitimate and high EV.

Authoritarian Personality: Having this youre likely to obey. Theyre: preoccupied with power, hostile to lower authority, categorise people, submissive to authority, rule following, inflexible in beliefs and intolerant of ambiguity. These are due to harsh upbringing, creating unconscious feelings and struggle to fight back to others. Idolise parents and cant take anger out on them as they fear them. Fascism scale invented. E.g. Milgram said if scored high on F scale, gave stronger electric shocks than those but less than 65% have AP.

Agentic State: People obey due to situation, if you follow orders you lose autonomy. Dont follow conscious, perciveve other as instrument of authority. Occurs as authority is trustworthy and orders are reasonable, dont see the consequences. Its necessary for heirachies to function in society. E.g. Milgram shows importance of situational factors, no experimenter gives 20%. Participants distressed as conflict of consicous & obey, no AS.

Independent Behavoiour: occurs when a person completely rejects all social inflence to behave in a certain way. Social pressures to conform and obey can influence peoples behaviour powerfully. People show independent behavour due to situational and individual differneces.
Reducing Obedience: Manipulate situational factors: Reduce buffers between two people and reduce percieved authority that issues orders (social impact theory). Also undermine a persons authority by having someone else who refused to obey (social support theory). Milgram said educate about blind obedience, encourage questions, provide role models. E.g. Milgram teacher administrated shocks 92.5% but when niave pushed onto metal plate 30%, these reduced bufffers. Run down office 47.5%. Gave via phone missed out shocks and 20%, these reduced pericieve authority. Social support when confeds refused so did naive 10%.
Reducing Conformity: have social support so they dont conform, easier to resist if people against you is smaller than those with you. They resist when influencing group is the outgroup than in group. E.g. Asch gave confed who didnt conform, fell 37-5%. E.g. Williams said if theyre strangers then resisting is easier. E.g. Abrams siad 92% didnt conform if outgroup and 42% didnt even if were in group.

Attribution Theory: peoples behaviour attributed to external/internal factors. E.g. Asch & Milgram. People underestimate power of obedience due to fundamental attribution error: tendency to discount the extent to which behaviours movtivated by external factors.

Locus of control: whether you atrribute to internal or external. Control over events determins locus and personaility determins if conforms: Internal: believe are in control of own lives and what happens is down to their actions. Agree with statements blaming theirselves. Less likely to conform and obey and show independent behaviour. They rely less on external explanation, feel have more control, more self confidence and more responsible for actions. Exernal: believe what happens is outside of their control, controlled by luck, change, fate so people cant alter it. Agree with external staatements. Will conform and obey more.

E.g. Kurosawa did study on Asch and found high self esteem were less likely to conform having internal locus of control. E.g. Milgram 35% who disobeyed had internal locus and high score of social responsibility. E.g. Oliner interviewed 406 Germans who sheltered Jews and found Germans had internal locus and high responsibility. E.g. Ritchie found that high internal locus meant less likely to conform, even with high authority figure.

Minority Influence: Small groups gain influence and change the way majority thinks and behaves. Leads to internalisation. Members truly believe rather than complying.

Conversion theory: Moscovici said diff psychological proccessses are behind maj and min. Only minority leads to truly chaning private views as leads to creative thoughts. Its caused by cognitive conflict which creat deviant ideas and questioning. Minority leads to conversion, majority to compliance. Conversion: change private beliefes due to minority influence but may alter public to avoid rejection. Its slower than compliance and is unconsicous as how idea originated(social crypyo amnesia). Once one person is converted others do too, snowball effect happens. Minority has to be commited, persuasive, flexible, consistent, confident and relevant. They must distrupt norm, draw attention, convey alternate view and demonstrate certainty. Act on principle and make sacrifices.

E.g. Moscovici showed females 36 blue slides in groups of 6. 2/6 were confed. In consistent cond, confed said card was green and inconsistent cond, confed said green for 12 goes and on control there were no confed. Wrong answer in control 0.25%, consist 8.42%, inconsist 1.25%. 32% swayed by minority on consist, so minority can effect if consant on majority. Well controlled, lack EV & biased. E.g. Nemeth redid Mos. found no minority when 1/2 blue, green. Min gave X answer 21% if confeds were consistent.

Social Change: changes in attitudes, belief that take place on large scale & affect society. Role Of Minority Inf in Social Change: If the only form of influence was majority, homogenity wouldve happened years ago as individuals wouldve conformed to majority. But society has changed as women can vote, enthicites have equal rights, homosexuality isnt a crime and woman have careers. This all wouldnt of happened if majority was only form. Social change occurs through social action, E.g. Rosa Parks sitting at bus of white people in USA or via social creativity, E.g. peacful protest by Civil Rights movement.

Examples: E.g. Suffragettes small min group who campaigned for women to vote. The chained selves to railings and used violent protests, one of them died from throwing herself under Kings horse. Finally 1928 majority was influenced and they could vote like men. E.g. Homosexuality used to be illegal, they then put a legal age of 21 on it despite hetrosexual of 16. Theres been majority shifiting to Gay Rights Movement and minority have changed their attitudes. Equality act now makes it illegal to discriminate upon sexuality.

E.g. Wood et al did meta analysis said people who're confronted by min on important issues resist appearance and private. E.g. Nemeth found if exposed to both maj and min, most converge to maj but min stimulated creative thinking and active processing. E.g. Mass found public Gay view follow maj & private min. Min's still needed for social change.