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Chapter 7

TOPIC OUTLINE

▪ What is conformity?
➢ Conformity vs. obedience
➢ Types of conformity

▪ Classic conformity and obedience studies

➢ Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Experiment
➢ Asch’s Conformity Experiment

▪ What predicts conformity?

▪ Why do people conform?

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CONFORMITY

▪ a type of social influence where people choose to go

along with the majority

▪ involves changing one’s behaviors in order to “fit in”

❖ agreeing or behaving in a particular way in order to be
perceived as "normal" by the group

▪ Conformity vs. Obedience

❖ CONFORMITY
➢ describes how we adjust our behavior or thinking in order to go
along with the group
❖ OBEDIENCE
➢ describes how we follow orders and obey authority

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OBEDIENCE
▪ behaving as instructed but not necessarily changing
your opinions.
➢ doing something because a legitimate authority figure
asked us to

▪ usually in response to individual rather than group

pressure

▪ Obedience is by direction (being directed) whereas

conformity is affected by example (or observation).

▪ less frequent than conformity or compliance

❖ Even persons who possess authority and power generally
prefer to exert it through the velvet glove
➢ Through requests rather than orders

MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE STUDIES

▪ Stanley Milgram was interested in researching how far
people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved
harming another person.

▪ Milgram selected participants for his experiment by

newspaper advertising for male participants to take part
in a study of learning at Yale University.

▪ The procedure was that the participant was paired with

another person and they drew lots to find out who would
be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’ The draw
was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher,
and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates
(pretending to be a real participant).

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MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE STUDIES

▪ Study Setup
❖ Subjects were told that they were participating in a
study on the effect of punishment on memory.

❖ One participant in the study (“the learner”) was a

confederate of Milgram and one was a true subject
(“the teacher”).

❖ The teacher was given a list of “paired associates”.

➢ The teacher was told to shock the learner when the
learner gave an incorrect response.

MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE STUDIES

▪ Conclusion
➢ Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an
authority figure, even to the extent of killing an
innocent human being.
➢ Obedience to authority is embedded in us all from the
way we are brought up.
➢ People tend to obey orders from other people if they
recognize their authority as morally right and/or
legally based. This response to legitimate authority is
learned in a variety of situations, for example in the
family, school, and workplace.

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TYPES OF CONFORMITY
1. Compliance
▪ shallowest level of conformity
▪ people changes their public behavior and the way they act but not
their private beliefs/to gain a reward or avoid punishment
▪ change occurs publicly

2. Identification
▪ moderate level of conformity
▪ people conforms to the behaviors and opinions of a group because
there is something about that group which people values
▪ we identify with the group and want to be recognized as part of it
▪ beliefs are internalized in order to gain approval

3. Internalization
▪ deepest and permanent level of conformity
▪ people changes their public behaviors and private beliefs
▪ change occurs publicly and privately, whether the group is present
or not

COMPLIANCE
▪ change in behavior and expressed attitudes in
response to requests, coercion or group pressure

▪ change in behavior due to a direct request from

another person.

▪ People comply with the attempt to influence

▪ Strategies in compliance
1. Norm of reciprocity technique
2. Foot-in-the-door technique
3. Door-in-the face technique
4. Low-balling technique

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STRATEGIES IN COMPLIANCE
1. Norm of reciprocity – receiving anything positive from
another person requires them to reciprocate in
response.

2. Foot-in-the-door – gets people to comply with a small

request, followed by a larger request. This is better for
long-term compliance.

3. Door-in-the face – gets people to comply with a request

by presenting them first with a large request and then
with a smaller, more reasonable request.

4. Low-balling – a compliance method in which the

persuader gets a person to commit to a low-ball offer
they have no intention of keeping; then the price is
suddenly increased.

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NORMATIVE SOCIAL NORMS

▪ If a people do something in order to gain the support or
respect of their peers, we would say that we they are
complying with social norms or normative social
influence.

▪ Types of social influence

a. Normative social influence
➢ a type of social influence that people feel when they
want to avoid social rejection or group disapproval

b. Informational social influence

➢ happens when we should defer to the judgments of
others because we feel that they are more
knowledgeable than us

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SHERIF’S AUTOKINETIC EFFECT

▪ Sherif (1935) conducted an experiment with the aim of
demonstrating that people conform to group norms when
they are put in an ambiguous (i.e. unclear) situation.

▪ Sherif used a lab experiment to study conformity. He used

the autokinetic effect – this is where a small spot of light
(projected onto a screen) in a dark room will appear to
move, even though it is still (i.e. it is a visual illusion).

▪ It was discovered that when participants were individually

tested their estimates on how far the light moved varied
considerably (e.g. from 20cm to 80cm).

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SHERIF’S AUTOKINETIC EFFECT

▪ The participants were then tested in groups of three. Sherif
manipulated the composition of the group by putting
together two people whose estimate of the light movement
when alone was very similar, and one person whose
estimate was very different. Each person in the group had
to say aloud how far they thought the light had moved.

▪ Conclusion
➢ The results show that when in an ambiguous situation (such
as the autokinetic effect), a person will look to others (who
know more / better) for guidance (i.e. adopt the group
norm). They want to do the right thing, but may lack the
appropriate information. Observing others can provide this
information. This is known as informational conformity.

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ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIEMENT

▪ Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the
extent to which social pressure from a majority group
could affect a person to conform.

▪ He believed that the main problem with Sherif's (1935)

conformity experiment was that there was no correct
answer to the ambiguous autokinetic experiment.

▪ Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic

experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an
obvious answer to a line judgment task.

▪ If the participant gave an incorrect answer it would be

clear that this was due to group pressure.

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ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIEMENT

▪ 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA
participated in a ‘vision test.’

▪ Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant

in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The
confederates had agreed in advance what their
responses would be when presented with the line task.

▪ The real participant did not know this and was led to
believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were
also real participants like themselves.

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ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIEMENT

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ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIEMENT

▪ Asch measured the number of times each participant
conformed to the majority view. On average, about one
third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this
situation went along and conformed with the clearly
incorrect majority on the critical trials.

▪ Conclusion:
➢ Participants did not really believe their conforming answers,
but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed
or thought "peculiar.
➢ People were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect
answer in order to conform to the rest of the group
➢ People conform for two main reasons: because they want to
fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they
believe the group is better informed than they are
(informational influence).

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ASCH VS. SHERIF

❑Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Experiment

▪ moving light
▪ subject did not know that there were no correct answers
➢ Conformity leads to internalization

❑Asch’s Conformity Experiment

▪ parallel lines
▪ subject knew that there were correct answers
➢ Conformity does not lead to internalization

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WHAT PREDICTS CONFORMITY?

1. Group size
▪ 3 to 5 people will elicit more conformity than just 1 or 2
▪ Groups greater in size than 5 yields diminishing returns

2. Unanimity
▪ observing other’s conflict can increase own independence

3. Cohesion
▪ “we feeling”
▪ extent to which members of a group are bound together,
such as by attraction for one another
▪ The more cohesive a group is, the more power it gains
over its members.

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WHAT PREDICTS CONFORMITY?

4. Status
▪ Higher-status people tend to have more impact
▪ Note: status is in the eye of the beholder

5. Public response
▪ People conform more when they must respond in front of
others rather than writing their answers privately

6. Prior commitment
▪ Most people having made a public commitment stick to it

Example: Teens who make a public “virginity-till-marriage pledge”

become somewhat more likely to remain sexually abstinent

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WHY DO WE CONFORM?
▪ If we are unsure about something, it’s reasonable to seek
information and advice from others.
➢ When several others agree, we’re likely to assume that they are
right.

a. NORMATIVE INFLUENCE
▪ motivated by a desire to avoid the severe consequences of
appearing deviant
▪ In these situations, social influence leads to private
conformity
➢ results in superficial behavioral changes but no real,
long-lasting changes in thoughts or feelings

b. INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE
▪ motivated by a desire to be right
▪ In these situations, social influence leads to private
conformity or acceptance or conversion.
➢ results in genuine changes of our thoughts, feelings or
behaviors
➢ relatively long-lasting

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WHY DO WE CONFORM?
Experimental Task Primary Effect of Depth of Conformity
group produced

Sherif’s Ambiguous Informational

Private conformity
Autokinetic Effect influence

Asch’s Simple-line
Normative influence Public conformity
Judgments

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