Conformity: Social Norms and Social Influence

• Conformity: A change in behavior as a result of the real or imagined influence of other people.

Social Norms

• Implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members

Why do People Conform?

• Need for Mastery Informational Social Influence: Conforming because believe that others interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more correct than ours and will help choose an appropriate course of action.
• Private Acceptance: Conforming to other peoples behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing is right
• Need for Connectedness Normative Social Influence: The influence of other people that leads to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them; this type of conformity results in public compliance with the groups beliefs and behaviors but not necessarily in private acceptance
• Public Compliance: Conforming to other peoples behavior publicly, without necessarily believing in what they are doing or saying
• Sherifs (1937) Classic Experiments on the Autokinetic Effect (ambiguous judgment)
• Aschs (1956) Classic Experiments on the Line Length Judgments (unambiguous judgment)

Inhibiting Conformity: The Role of the Dissenter

• In Aschs studies, conformity decreases dramatically when there is a dissenter.
• Social Support (someone who agrees with you) vs . Break Consensus (someone who departs from group norm)
• Allen & Levines (1968) Dissenter Study Simple perceptual judgment; all individuals in group give wrong answer, except for one dissenterwhat does the subject do?
• Dependent Measure: Conformity, assessed in terms of change from pre-test to response in group setting
• Pluralistic Ignorance = Phenomenon whereby people observe others behaving similarly to themselves, but conclude that the same behaviors reflect different underlying attitudes or feelings than their own
• Can lead to inaccurate understanding of what other people really feel and believe, that is, perceiving that other peoples inner feelings correspond to their outward behavior when this is not really the case
• Prentice & Miller (1993): Princeton Alcohol Norms Study Key Hypotheses:
• Pluralistic Ignorance would be evident in this context
• Over time, people would change their attitudes in the direction of what they perceived to be the group norm, even though their perceptions of the norm were inaccurate
• Compliance: A change in behavior in response to a direct request from another person
• Robert Cialdini Influence Techniques: Preliminary steps/strategies to enhance likelihood of agreement

Influence Techniques

• Ingratiation: Appear physically attractive, appear similar, other-enhancement, impression management, positive associations
• Reciprocity Norm: A social norm by which the receipt of something positive from another person requires you to behave similarly in response
• Contrast Principle: Reactions to an event, object, or product can be strongly affected by comparisons with other events, objects, or products.
• Multiple Requests: Foot-in-the-Door: Small request first, large request second, Door-in-the-Face: Large request first, small request second, Low-Balling: Changing the Rules Midstream
• Obedience: Following the commands of an authority figure
• Obedience: Conformity in response to the commands of an authority figure
• Milgram (1974) Shock Experiments: Generally high obedience across a variety of social groups, average shock delivered was 360 Volts and 62.5% delivered the 450 Volt maximum
• Generally high obedience across a variety of social groups, Why?
• Incremental nature of task (self-justification)
• Normative social influence (desire experimenters approval, concerns about how appear to others)
• Informational social influence (bow to experimenters perceived expertise)
• Sense of working for the greater good or higher cause (here advancing science)