Chapter 8 quiz on main points from end of chapter

Normative Social Influence

• 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 gain advantages of group membership.
• Conformity to the group's social norms, including implicit or explicit rules for acceptable behaviors, values, and attitudes.
• Normative social influence usually results in public compliance but not private acceptance of other people's ideas and behaviors.

Conformity and Social Approval

• Solomon Asch's studies found that people conform to the obviously wrong answer of the group at least some of the time.
• When it is important to be accurate, people are more likely to resist normative social influence and give the right answer.

When Will People Conform to Normative Social Influence?

• Social impact theory specifies that normative social influence is most likely to occur when:
  • The group is one we care about.
  • The group members are unanimous in their thoughts or behaviors.
  • The group has three or more members.
  • We are members of collectivist cultures.
• Past conformity gives people idiosyncrasy credits, allowing them to deviate from the group without serious consequences.

Minority Influence

• An individual or small number of people can influence the group majority under certain conditions.
• Consistency in the presentation of the minority viewpoint is key.

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 (expectations regarding how people actually behave).

Obedience to Authority

• Stanley Milgram's studies examined obedience, when people change their behavior in response to an authority figure.
• Milgram found chilling levels of obedience in his research, with a majority of participants administering what they thought were potentially lethal shocks to a fellow human being.
• Normative pressures and informational social influence contribute to obedience.
• Participants conformed to the wrong norm and 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.

Informational Social Influence

• Informational social influence occurs when people do not know the correct (or best) action to take and look to the behavior of others as an important source of information.
• Informational social influence usually results in private acceptance, in which people genuinely believe in what other people are doing or saying.
• The tendency to conform to other people through informational social influence increases when it is important to be accurate.
• People are more likely to conform to informational social influence when the situation is ambiguous, when they are in a crisis, or if experts are present.