Conformity and Informational Social Influence Quiz

Normative Social Influence

• Occurs when people change their behavior to match that of others to remain a member of the group in good standing and continue to gain the advantages of group membership.
• Results in public compliance but not private acceptance of other people's ideas and behaviors.
• Conformity to the group's social norms, implicit or explicit rules for acceptable behaviors, values, and attitudes.

Conformity and Social Approval

• Asch's line-judgment studies found that people conform to the obviously wrong answer of the group, at least some of the time.
• Importance of being accurate: people are more likely to resist normative social influence and go against the group, giving the right answer.
• Public conformity still occurs.

The Consequences of Resisting Normative Social Influence

• Resisting normative social influence can lead to ridicule, ostracism, and rejection by the group.

When Will People Conform to Normative Social Influence?

• Conformity is more likely to occur when the group is one we care about, when the group members are unanimous in their thoughts or behaviors, when the group has three or more members, and when we are members of collectivist cultures.
• Past conformity gives people idiosyncrasy credits, allowing them to deviate from the group without serious consequences.

Minority Influence

• Under certain conditions, an individual (or small number of people) can influence the group majority.
• The key is consistency in the presentation of the minority viewpoint.

Conformity Tactics

• Knowing about the tendency to conform can inform our strategic efforts to change the behavior of others.
• Communicating injunctive norms (expectations regarding the behaviors that society approves of) is often a more powerful way to create change than communicating descriptive norms.
• Using norms to change behavior should be done with caution to avoid the "boomerang effect."

Other Tactics of Social Influence

• Foot-in-the-door technique: securing agreement with a small favor before following up with a larger request.
• Door-in-the-face technique: asking for a large favor that will certainly be rejected before following up with a smaller, second request.
• Propaganda is another, often nefarious strategy.

Obedience to Authority

• Obedience occurs when people change their behavior in response to an authority figure.
• The Milgram study found chilling levels of obedience, with a majority of participants administering what they thought were potentially lethal shocks to a fellow human being.

The Role of Normative Social Influence

• Normative pressures make it difficult for people to stop obeying authority figures.
• They want to please the authority figure by doing a good job.

The Role of Informational Social Influence

• The obedience studies created a confusing situation for participants, with competing, ambiguous demands.
• Unclear about how to define what was going on, they followed the orders of the expert.

Other Reasons Why We Obey

• Participants conformed to the wrong norm: They continued to follow the norms of "obey authority" and "all in the name of science" even when it was no longer appropriate to do so.
• It was difficult for them to abandon these initial norms because of the fast-paced nature of the study, the fact that the shock levels increased in small increments, and their loss of a feeling of personal responsibility.