SOCPSY 1st Sem SY2022-2023 (2).pdf

PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT MENTAL EXERCISES Is there a difference between A and B? A. Buying a milktea because you want it B. Buying a milktea because most of your friends buy it too Conformity It is a change...

PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT MENTAL EXERCISES Is there a difference between A and B? A. Buying a milktea because you want it B. Buying a milktea because most of your friends buy it too Conformity It is a change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure. It is sometimes bad (when it leads someone to drive drunk or to join in racist behavior), sometimes good (when it keeps people from cutting into a theater line), and sometimes inconsequential (when it directs tennis players to wear white). 39 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Continue reading at next page > PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT In laboratory experiments, a small group can have a big effect. Asch and other researchers found that 3 to 5 people will elicit much more GROUP SIZE conformity than just 1 or 2. Increasing the number of people beyond 5 yieldsdiminishing returns (Gerard et al., 1968; Rosenberg, 1961). In a field experiment, Milgram and his colleagues (1969) had 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or 15 people pause on a busy New York City sidewalk and look up. As Figure 6 shows, the percentage of passersby who also looked up increased as the number looking up increased from 1 to 5 persons. Conformity experiments teach the practical lesson that it is easier to UNANIMITY stand up for something if you can find someone else to stand up with you. The more cohesive a group is, the more power it gains over its members. COHESION Group members who feel attracted to the group are more responsive to its influence STATUS Higher-status people tend to have more impact. People conform more when they must respond in front of others rather PUBLIC than writing their answers privately RESPONSE 40 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Once people commit themselves into prior commitment, people seldom PRIOR yield to social pressure. COMMITMENT Continue reading at next page > PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT PERSONALITY CULTURE SOCIAL ROLE 41 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Continue reading at next page > PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT CLASSIC STUDIES ON CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE 1. MUZAFER SHERIF'S STUDIES OF NORM FORMATION 2. SOLOMON ASCH'S STUDIES OF GROUP PRESSURE 3. MILGRAM'S OBEDIENCE STUDIES Muzafer Sherif observed that others’ judgments influenced people’s estimates of the movement of a point of light that actually did not move. autokinetic phenomenon Norms for “proper” answers emerged and mass hysteria survived both over long periods of time and through succeeding generations of research participants. Solomon Asch had people listen to others’ judgments of which of three comparison lines was equal to a standard line and then make the same judgment themselves. When the others unanimously gave a wrong answer, the participants conformed 37 percent of the time. Stanley Milgram’s studies of obedience elicited an extreme form of compliance. Under optimum conditions—a legitimate, close-at-hand commander, a remote victim, and no one else to exemplify disobedience—65 percent of his adult male participants fully obeyed instructions to deliver what were supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to a screaming, innocent victim in an adjacent room. 42 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY These classic studies expose the potency of several phenomena. Behavior and attitudes are mutually reinforcing, enabling a small act of evil to foster the attitude that leads to a bigger evil act. The power of the situation can induce good people, faced with dire circumstances, to commit reprehensible acts (although dire situations may produce heroism in others). Continue reading at next page >