Conformity and Obedience

Lecture # 6
Amber Gillani
 Conformity
We often change our attitudes and behaviors to
match the attitudes and behaviors of the people
around us. One reason for this conformity is a
concern about what other people think of us.
For example: Trends in clothing, music, foods, and
entertainment are obvious.
But our views on political issues, religious
questions, and lifestyles also reflect to some degree
the attitudes of the people we interact with.
Why we conform?
 Obedience
Sometimes we are directed by a more powerful
person to do things we may not want to do.
Researchers who study obedience are interested
in how people react when given an order or
command from someone in a position of
authority.
In many situations, obedience is a good thing.
We are taught at an early age to obey parents,
teachers, and police officers. It’s also important to
follow instructions from judges, firefighters, and
lifeguards. And a military would fail to function if
soldiers stopped obeying orders from superiors.
But, there is also a dark side to obedience.
In the name of “following orders” or “just doing
my job,” people can violate ethical principles and
break laws.
 Classical Studies
Psychologists have identified two primary
reasons for conformity.
• The first of these is normative influence.
When normative influence is operating,
people go along with the crowd because they
are concerned about what others think of
them.
Classical study of Solomon Asch (1956).
Asch Studies of Group Pressure
• The other reason we sometimes go along with
the crowd is that people are often a source of
information. Psychologists refer to this process
as “informational
influence”.
But sometimes it’s not clear
what society expects of us. In
these situations, we often
rely on descriptive norms
(Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren,
1990). That is, we act the way
most people—or most people
like us—act.
Sherif's study of Norm Formation

Auto kinetic effect

 Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
(1965,1974)
The unsettling side of obedience led to some of the
most famous and most controversial research in the
history of psychology. Milgram (1963, 1965, 1974)
wanted to know why so many otherwise decent
German citizens went along with the brutality of the
Nazi leaders during the Holocaust. “These inhumane
policies may have originated in the mind of a single
person,” Milgram (1963, p. 371) wrote, “but they
could only be carried out on a massive scale if a very
large number of persons obeyed orders.”
 Mass Delusion
A condition in which a large group of people exhibit
similar physical or emotional symptoms, such as
anxiety or extreme excitement. Also called
epidemic hysteria- known by multiple synonymous
terms, including mass hysteria, mass psychogenic
ill- ness, and mass sociogenic illness, has been
defined as a constellation of symptoms suggestive
of organic (biological) illness, but without an
identifiable cause, that occurs between two or
more people who share beliefs related to..
 Genes, Culture and Gender
Human Nature And Cultural Diversity
• We humans are intensely social.
• We join groups, conform, and recognize distinctions
of social status.
• There are several hundred universal behavior and
language patterns. (Brown, D. 1991,2000).
• Humans prefer living with others to living
alone.
• Our commonalities define our human nature.
 Genes, Evolution and Behavior.
Charles Darwin – a British naturalist that proposed an
evolutionary process, the natural selection.
 Organisms have many varied offspring.
 Offspring compete for survival in the environment.
 Biological and behavioral variations increase chances
of survival and reproduction.
 Over time, population characteristics may change
Evolutionary psychology – the study of the evolution
of cognition and behavior using principles of natural
selection.
 Culture and Behavior
• Our shared human biology enables cultural diversity.
It enables those in one culture to value timekeeping,
welcome frankness, or accept anything.
• Culture – the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and
traditions shared by a large group of people and
transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Cultural diversity: The diversity of our languages,
customs, and expressive behaviors confirms that
much of our behavior is socially programmed, not
hardwired. As we work, play, and live with people
from diverse cultural backgrounds, it helps to understand
how our cultures influence us and how our cultures differ.
Norms – standards for accepted and expected
behavior. These prescribe proper behavior in a culture.
All cultures have their accepted ideas about
appropriate behavior. Norms do restrain and control us.
Cultures vary in their norms for
• expressiveness,
• punctuality,
• Individual choices
• Rule breaking e.g. graffiti
• personal space is a sort of portable bubble or buffer
zone that we like to maintain between ourselves and
others.
Cultural similarity :As members of one species, the
processes that underlie our differing behaviors
are much the same everywhere.
• Universal Friendship e.g. Respect the friend’s
privacy; make eye contact while talking; etc.
• Universal trait dimensions e.g. Australians see
themselves as unusually outgoing. The German-
speaking Swiss see themselves as extremely careful.
And Canadians describe themselves as distinctly
delightful.
Universal status norms – wherever people form
status hierarchies, they also talk to higher-status
people in the respectful way they often talk to
strangers. They, as well, talk to lower-status people in
the more familiar, first-name way they speak to
friends-most languages have two forms of the English
pronoun “you”; a respectful form and a familiar form.
QUESTIONS ?