Main Determinants of Social Influence

Compliance Obedience Conformtiy

(Response to a direct request) (Response to authority) (Response to social norms)
 Conformity –
 “a change in a person’s behaviour or belief as a result of real or
imagined group norms”. (Myers, 1999)

 Or
 “a tendency for people to adopt the behaviour, attitudes and
values of other members of a reference group”. (Zimbardo,
1995)

 Norms =
 the rules established by a group to regulate the behaviour of
its members.
 Informational Social Influence
 We want to be right
 we look to others, whom we
believe to be correct, to give us
information about how to
behave, particularly in novel or
ambiguous situations. (The
desire to be right)

 Normative Social Influence

 We want to be liked
 we conform because we think
that others will approve and
accept us. (The desire to be
accepted)
CONFORMITY IN AN UNAMBIGUOUS SITUATION.

 Solomon Asch (1951) carried out a study to show the pressure

which peers can put on you to conform to a wrong norm.

 Enter laboratory with 6 other people. Seven of you seated in a

series - you are number 6.

 Experimenter explains task:

 a single line on card on left
 3 lines on card on right.
 The experimenter arrives
and tells you that the
study in which you are
about to participate
concerns people's visual
judgments. She places two
cards before you. The card
on the left contains one
vertical line. The card on
the right displays three
lines of varying length.
 The experimenter asks all of you, one at a
time, to choose which of the three lines
on the right card matches the length of
the line on the left card. The task is
repeated several times with different
cards.
 On some occasions the other
"participants" unanimously choose the
wrong line. It is clear to you that they are
wrong, but they have all given the same
answer.
 Imagine yourself in the following
situation: You sign up for a psychology
experiment, and on a specified date you
and seven others whom you think are also
participants arrive and are seated at a
table in a small room.
 You don't know it at the time, but the
others are actually associates of the
experimenter, and their behavior has
been carefully scripted. You're the only
real participant.
What would you do? Would you go
along with the majority opinion, or
would you "stick to your guns" and
trust your own eyes?
If you were involved in this
experiment how do you think you
would behave? Would you conform
to the majority’s viewpoint?
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C

Asch, 1951
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.
Solomon Asch (1951)
conducted an experiment to
investigate the extent to
which social pressure from a
majority group could affect a
person to conform.
 Asch used a lab
experiment to study
conformity, whereby
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.
 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
participants were also
real participants like
themselves.
 Each person in the room had to state aloud
which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like
the target line. The answer was always
obvious. The real participant sat at the end of
the row and gave his or her answer last.
 There were 18 trials in total and the
confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails
(called the critical trials). Asch was interested
to see if the real participant would conform to
the majority view. Asch's experiment also had a
control condition where there were no
confederates, only a "real participant".
 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.
 Over the 12 critical trials:
 about 75% of participants conformed at least once
 25% of participant never conformed.
 In the control group, with no pressure to conform to
confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the
wrong answer
 Why did the participants conform so readily?
 When they were interviewed after the experiment,
most of them said that they did not really believe
their conforming answers, but had gone along with
the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought
"peculiar".
 A few of them said that they really did believe the
group's answers were correct.
 Apparently, people conform for two main
reasons:
1. because they want to fit in with the group
(normative influence)
2. because they believe the group is better informed
than they are (informational influence).
One limitation of the study is that is
used a biased sample. All the
participants were male students who
all belonged to the same age group.
This means that study lacks
population validity and that the
results cannot be generalized to
famales or older groups of people.
Another problem is that the
experiment used an artificial task to
measure conformity - judging line
lengths. This means that study has
low ecological validity and the
results cannot be generalized to
other real life situations of
conformity.
 Finally,
there are ethical issues:
participants were not protected from
psychological stress which may occur if
they disagreed with the majority. Asch
deceived the student volunteers claiming
they were taking part in a 'vision' test; the
real purpose was to see how the 'naive'
participant would react to the behavior of
the confederates. However, deception
was necessary to produce valid results.
The Asch (1951) study has also
been called a child of its time
(as conformity was the social
norm in 1950’s America). The
era of individualism, ‘doing your
own thing’, did not take hold
until the 1960s.
 Perrinand Spencer (1980) carried out an
exact replication of the original Asch
experiment using British engineering,
mathematics and chemistry students as
participants. The results were clear cut:
on only one out of 396 trials did a
participant conform with the incorrect
majority. This shows the Asch experiment
has poor reliability.
 One line is same length as line on other card. You and other
subjects need only call out, one at a time, which of the 3 lines
was the same length. Simple!

 You try it out. ‘A’ is obviously the correct line. The others all
agree. This continues until suddenly the others all disagree with
what you think is correct!

 What do you do? You begin to doubt your own judgement.

Nightmare.

 The nightmare is the pressure to conform. Actually the other 6

subjects are stooges.
A change in behaviour and expressed
attitudes in response to requests, coercion or
group pressure
 Superficial,
 public and
 transitory

A change in behavior due to a direct request

from another person.
 Comply with the attempt to influence.
 Public compliance –
 effect of coercion.
 Direct
requests most common form of
compliance and social influence.

 Strategies in compliance- Cialdini (1988)

 Foot-in-the-door (Freedman & Fraser, 1966)
 Door-in-the-face (O’Keefer & Hale, 2001)
 People make direct requests of us all the time
 salespeople,
 peers,
 friends,
 family

 Honoring those (reasonable) requests helps maintain the

social fabric
 helping others and anticipating their help in the future makes
for good social bonds
 RS. 1000 RS. 950

The door-in-the-face technique gets people to

comply with a request by presenting them first
with a large request and then with a smaller,
more reasonable request.
reciprocity norm:
receiving anything positive from another person
requires them to reciprocate in response.
The Foot-in-the-Door
Technique

The foot-in-the-door
technique gets people to
comply with a small request,
followed by a larger
request.
This is better for long-term
compliance.
 Doing something because a legitimate
authority figure asked us to
 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
 Obedience
 behaving as instructed but not necessarily
changing your opinions.

 Usually in response to individual rather than

group pressure
 Obedience is by direction (being directed)
whereas conformity is affected by example
(or observation).
Many people have power over us
 law enforcement,
 parents,
 military

Following the direct orders of a

(legitimate) authority is usually not a
matter of debate
 when the officer asks to see your driver’s
license, it’s usually prudent to obey
Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974, 1976)
 examined the power of obedience to authority in
social psychology’s most famous laboratory
experiments.
Milgram’s results indicate
 powerful tendency people have to obey
authority figures even when their orders go
against people’s values and morals.
 Obedience
 compliance of person is
due to perceived
authority of asker
 request is perceived as a
command
 Milgraminterested in
unquestioning
obedience to orders
 Stanley Milgram (1960’s)
 The participant is the “teacher”,
the confederate is the “learner”
 Teacher watches learner being
strapped into chair -- learner
expresses concern over his
“heart condition”
 If the learner makes an error, the
teacher has to ‘shock’ him…with
the level of shock increasing to
dangerous and deadly levels
 As the level of shock increases,
the “teacher” can hear the
learner is in obvious pain
Teacherto another room with
experimenter
 Shock generator panel –
 15 to 450 volts,
 labels “slight shock” to “XXX”

 Asked to give higher shocks for every

mistake learner makes
Shock Switch Labels Shock Switch Labels
Level and Voltage Levels Level and Voltage Levels
“Slight Shock” “Intense Shock”
1 15 17 255
2 30 18 270
3 45 19 285
4 60 20 300
“Moderate Shock” “Extreme Intensity Shock”
5 75 21 315
6 90 22 330
7 105 23 345
8 120 24 360
“Strong Shock” “Danger: Severe Shock”
9 135 25 375
10 150 26 390
11 165 27 405
12 180 28 420
“Very Strong Shock” “XXX”
13 195 29 435
14 210 30 450
15 225
16 240
 Learner protests 120 “Ugh! Hey this really hurts.”

more and more as 150 “Ugh! Experimenter! That’s all.

shock increases get me out of here. I told you
I had heart trouble. My heart’s
 Experimenter starting to bother me now.”

continues to 300 (agonized scream) “I absolutely

refuse to answer any more.
request obedience get me out of here You can’t hold
me here. Get me out.”
even if teacher is
unsure 330 “(intense & prolonged agonized
scream) “Let me out of here.
Let me out of here. My heart’s
bothering me. Let me out,
I tell you…”
 How many people would go to
the highest shock level?
 65% of the subjects went to the
end, even those that protested
Abnormal group of subjects?
 numerous replications with variety of
groups shows no support
 All male subjects

People in general are sadistic?

 videotapes of Milgram’s subjects show
extreme distress
Although 84% later said they were
glad to have participated and
fewer than 2% said they were
sorry, there are still ethical issues
Do these experiments really help
us understand real-world
atrocities?
 The Yes-Yes Technique
 The Tactic of Asking Not “If” but “Which”
 A Question for a Question
 The Partial Commitment
 Planting
 The IOU