Conformity: Influencing Behavior

(chp - 8)
 Conformity
• Are we non-conforming creatures?
• Are our decisions
– Always based on what we think?
– Do we sometimes use other people’s behavior
to help us decide?
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 Conformity
• 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)
• So, are we weak and unreliable?
 Informational Social Influence:
The Need to Know What’s “Right”
• How should you address your psychology
professor—as “Dr. Doğruyol,” “Professor
Doğruyol,” “Mr. Doğruyol,” or “Burak”?
• Do you cut a piece of sushi or eat it whole?
• Did the scream you just heard in the hallway come
from a person joking with friends or from the victim
of a mugging?
 Informational Social Influence:
The Need to Know What’s “Right”
Informational Social Influence
The influence of other people that leads us to
conform because we see them as a source of
information to guide our behavior.
We conform because we believe that others’
interpretation of an ambiguous situation is
more correct than ours and will help us
choose an appropriate course of action.
WHY?
 Conformity
Sherif (1936):
• Alone in a dark room, participants estimated how
much a light 15 feet away moved.
• Even though the light did not move, the autokinetic
effect caused the illusion of motion. The light seem
to move, usually about 2-4 inches but as much as 10
inches.
• Days later, the participants did it again but not alone,
this time with other people who reached a common
estimate. Participants’ estimates tended to conform
to these, as shown in the next slide.
 Conformity

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 Public Compliance
Conforming to other people’s behavior
publicly without necessarily believing in
what we are doing or saying.

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 The Importance of Being Accurate
• Eyewitness conformity when
picking “perpetrators” out of police
lineups
• 3 confederates and 1 participant
• Manipulated importance of task
– High importance—Expect to
receive $20 for accurate
identification, used to develop
real task
– Low importance—Just another
PSYC experiment
– Confederates gave incorrect
answers
• Results—more conformity when
important (35% vs. 51%)
Baron, Vandello, & Brunsman (1996)
• Relying on someone else comes with risks
– In another study participants watched different
videos as eyewitness
– But they were let to believe that videos were
same
– Then they talked to each other before line up
– 71% participants pointed a perpetrator whom
they haven’t seen before
 When Informational
Conformity Backfires
When one’s personal safety is involved, the need
for information is acute—and the behavior of
others is very informative.
Orson Wells (1898)
[Link]
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 When Informational
Conformity Backfires
Mass Psychogenic Illness
The occurrence, in a group of people, of
similar physical symptoms with no
known physical cause.

• In 1998, a teacher in Tennessee reported a gasoline smell in

her classroom.
• The school was evacuated. Over 170 students, teachers, and
staff reported symptoms like headaches, nausea, dizziness.
• But nothing was found to be wrong in the school.
• The rash of mysterious illness went away.
• KORO disease [Link]
 When Informational
Conformity Backfires
• What is particularly interesting about mass psychogenic
illness (as well as other peculiar forms of conformity) is the
powerful role that the mass media play in their dissemination.
• Through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the
Internet, and e-mail, information is spread quickly and
efficiently to all segments of the population.
• Whereas in the Middle Ages it took two hundred years, today
it takes only minutes for most of the inhabitants of the planet
to learn about an unusual event.
• Luckily, the mass media also have the power to quickly stop
these uprisings of contagion by introducing more logical
explanations for ambiguous events.
 When Will People Conform to
Informational Social Influence?
• When the situation is ambiguous.
• When the situation is a crisis.
• When other people are experts.
 When the situation is ambiguous
• Ambiguity is the most crucial variable for determining how
much people use each other as a source of information.
• When you are unsure of the correct response, the appropriate
behavior, or the right idea, you will be most open to influence
from others.
• The more uncertain you are, the more you will rely on others.
(Allen, 1965; Tesser, Campbell, & Mickler, 1983; Walther, et al.,
2002).
 When the situation is a crisis
• In a crisis situation, we usually do not have time to stop and
think about exactly which course of action we should take. We
need to act—immediately.
• If we feel scared and panicky and are uncertain what to do, it
is only natural for us to see how other people are responding
and to do likewise.
• Unfortunately, the people we imitate may also feel scared and
panicky and not be behaving rationally.
 When other people are experts
• Typically, the more expertise or knowledge a person has,
the more valuable he or she will be as a guide in an
ambiguous situation.
• For example, a passenger who sees smoke coming out of
an airplane engine will probably check the flight
attendants’ reaction rather than their seatmates’.
• However, experts are not always reliable sources of
information.
 Resisting
Informational Social Influence
How can we tell when other people are a good source of
information and when we should resist their definition of a
situation?
1. It is possible to resist illegitimate or inaccurate
informational social influence.
2. Ask yourself critical questions:
– Do other people know any more about what is going on
than I do?
– Is an expert handy who should know more?
– Do the actions of other people or experts seem
sensible?
– If I behave the way they do, will it go against my
common sense or against my internal moral compass,
my sense of right and wrong?
 Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
Why does anyone follow the group’s lead
when the resulting behavior is less than
sensible and may even be dangerous?

We also conform so that we will be liked and

accepted by other people.
 Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
Social Norms: The implicit or explicit rules a group has for
the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its
members.
- We human beings are by nature a social species.
- Through interactions with others, we receive emotional
support, affection, and love, and we have enjoyable
experiences.
- Other people are important to our sense of well-being.
- Research on individuals who have been isolated for long
periods of time indicates that being deprived of human
contact is stressful and traumatic.
 Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
Given this fundamental human need for social
companionship, it is not surprising that we often
conform in order to be accepted by others.

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• Asch criticized Sheriff since his design is highly
ambiguous
• He proposed that individuals will behave
rationally and objectively when the situation is
wholly unambiguous
 Conformity and Social Approval:
The Asch Line Judgment Studies
Solomon Asch (1951, 1956) had participants guess
which line in the right box is the same length as
the line on the left. Almost everyone easily gets
this right – when alone.
 Conformity and Social Approval:
The Asch Line Judgment Studies
Asch had people repeatedly evaluate lines like these, while
hearing other people also evaluate the lines.
Sometimes, though, everyone else got it wrong. Guess how
often the participants conformed by repeating those
obviously wrong answers.
76% of the participants conformed on at least one trial.
Participants in an Asch line study. The real participant is seated in the middle. He is surrounded
by the experimenter’s accomplices, who have just given the wrong answer on the line task.

[Link]
 Conformity and Social Approval:
The Asch Line Judgment Studies
These are classic normative reasons for conforming:
• People know that what they are doing is wrong but
go along anyway so as not to feel peculiar or look like
a fool.
• In contrast to informational social influence,
normative pressures usually result in public
compliance without private acceptance—people go
along with the group even if they do not believe in
what they are doing or think it is wrong.
 Conformity and Social Approval:
The Asch Line Judgment Studies
In a variation of his study, Asch (1957) demonstrated
the power of social disapproval in shaping a
person’s behavior.
The confederates gave the wrong answer 12 out of 18
times, as before, but this time the participants
wrote their answers on a piece of paper instead of
saying them out loud.
Now people did not have to worry about what the
group thought of them because the group would
never find out what their answers were.
Conformity dropped dramatically, occurring on an
average of only 1.5 of the twelve trials.
• Berns et al. (2005) conducted similar study with
fMRI to examine brain activity
• One-third of the trials responded alone
• Two-third of the trials responded together
– Confederates give correct answer on half of them
• Same brain regions when respond alone or
conform to wrong answer
• Different areas are activated when responded in
a nonconformist way areas related to negative
emotions and modulating social behavior
 The Importance of Being Accurate,
Revised
• What happens when it is important to people to be
accurate?
• They conform less to the obviously wrong answers of
the group.
• But they still conform sometimes!

• [Link]
 The Importance of Being Accurate,
Revised
• What happens when it is important to people to be
accurate?
• They conform less to the obviously wrong answers of
the group.
• But they still conform sometimes!
• Recent explanation:
– Proximately wrong but ultimately correct
 The Consequences of Resisting
Normative Social Influence
If you disregard the norms of the group by failing to
conform to them, two things would most likely
happen:
1. First, the group would try to bring you “back into
the fold,” chiefly through increased
communication with you, whether long
discussions or teasing comments.
2. If these discussions didn’t work, your friends
would most likely say negative things to you and
about you, and start to withdraw from you.
 When Will People Conform to
Normative Social Influence?
Social Impact Theory
The idea that conforming to social influence
depends on:
• The strength of the group’s importance
• Its immediacy: How close the group to you in
time and space during the attempt to influence
• The number of people in the group.
 When Will People Conform to
Normative Social Influence?
The more important a group is to us and the
more we are in its presence, the more likely
we will be to conform to its normative
pressures.

But the influence of number operates

differently.
Asch (1955) and later researchers found that:
Conformity increased as the number of people in the group increased, but
once the group reached four or five other people, conformity does not increase
much.
 WHEN THE GROUP IS IMPORTANT
Normative pressures are much stronger when they
come from people whose friendship, love, and
respect, because there is a cost to losing this love
and respect.

Highly cohesive groups can make

less logical decisions because no
one wants to upset relationships.
 WHEN ONE HAS NO ALLIES
IN THE GROUP
If no one else in the group expresses
agreement with your dissenting view, it can
be difficult to stick to your position.
• Asch (1955) varied his experiment by having
6 of 7 confederates pick the wrong line
instead of all 7.
• Now the subject was not alone.
• Conformity dropped to 6% of the trials.
 WHEN THE GROUP’S CULTURE
IS COLLECTIVISTIC

Stanley Milgram (1961, 1977) replicated the Asch studies in

Norway and France and found that the Norwegian
participants conformed to a greater degree than the French
participants did.
Norway has a more collectivistic culture than France.
These differences were observed in other international
comparisons as well.
TURKEY??
 Resisting
Normative Social Influence
What can we do to resist inappropriate
normative social influence?
1. Be aware that it is operating.
2. Take action.
• Try to find an ally
3. Conforming most of the time earns an
occasional deviation without consequences.
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 Minority Influence:
When the Few Influence the Many
Minority Influence
The case where a minority of group members influence
the behavior or beliefs of the majority.

The key is consistency:

People with minority views must express the
same view over time.
Different members of the minority must agree
with one another.
• Majority influence other via normative
influence
• What about minority?
– They cannot use normative influence
– Majority member will not conform publicly to
avoid social rejection
– So, they should use informational influence
• Come up with a groundbreaking knowledge
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• Obedience is a social norm that is valued in every
culture.

• Consequently, we are socialized, beginning as

children, to obey authority figures whom we
perceive as legitimate.
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• We internalize the social norm of obedience such
that we usually obey rules and laws even when the
authority figure isn’t present—you stop at red
lights even if the cops aren’t parked at the corner.
:p
• What is happening here in Turkey?
• However, obedience can have extremely serious
and even tragic consequences.
• People will obey the orders of an authority figure to
hurt or even kill other human beings.
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
Imagine that you were a participant in one of Milgram’s studies.
• When you arrive at the laboratory, you meet another participant, a 47-
year-old, somewhat overweight, pleasant-looking fellow.
• The experimenter, wearing a white lab coat, explains that one of you
will play the role of a teacher and the other a learner.
• You draw a slip of paper out of a hat and discover that you will be the
teacher.
• Your job is to teach the other participant a list of word pairs (e.g., blue–
box, nice–day) and then test him on the list.
• The experimenter instructs you to deliver an electric shock to the
learner whenever he makes a mistake because the purpose of the study
is to examine the effects of punishment on learning.

[Link]
watch?v=xOYLCy5PVg
M
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
And how many people do you think would continue to obey the
experimenter and increase the levels of shock until they had
delivered the maximum amount, 450 volts?
Psychology majors at Yale University estimated that only about 1% of
the population would go to this extreme.
A sample of middle-class adults and a panel of psychiatrists made
similar predictions.
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
Most of Milgram’s participants succumbed to the
pressure of an authority figure.
The average maximum shock delivered was 360 volts, and
62.5% of the participants went all the way, delivering
the 450-volt shock.
A full 80 percent of the participants continued giving the
shocks even after the learner cried out seemingly in
pain, saying his heart was bothering him.

Note: No learners were harmed in the making of

Milgram’s experiments. The learner was a confederate
working with Milgram, only pretending to get shocked.
Ethics??
 Role of Normative and
Informational Social Influence
• The obedience experiment was a confusing situation
for participants, with ambiguous demands.
• Unclear about how to define what was going on, they
followed the orders of the expert, the authority figure.
• Confusing situation for participants
– Competing social norms
• Obey authority versus Don’t harm others
• Experimenter is an expert
– Look to experimenter for information on how
to respond
• Follow orders of expert
 Role of Normative and
Informational Social Influence
• Variations on original study
– Non-expert gives instructions about
shock level
• 20% of participants gave maximum shock
– Compared to 62.5% in original study
– Two experts disagree about continuing
• All participants stopped obeying
 Milgram’s Studies:
Other Reasons We Obey
1. Conform to wrong norm “obey
authority”
• No time to reflect
2. Self-justification
– Shock levels increased in small
increments
• Internal pressure to continue to obey
3. Loss of a personal responsibility