Social influenceConformity, obedience

• A large part of psychology is devoted to the study of the various ways that people influence each other when they are together.

• It has been established for quite a long time that people can have an effect on each other's behaviour, just by being there.

• Some people feel that they can truly be 'them selves' only when they are alone, while other people feel happier if they are amongst others in a crowd or a group of friends.

• Triplett (1898) set up one of the first experimental studies of social influence.

• He asked children to turn a fishing reel as fast as they possibly could, and measured how quickly they could do it. Then he arranged things so that they would either be doing it alone, or with a friend or another child.

• When the children were working in coaction (together) he found that they worked very much faster even just the presence of another person seemed to have a stimulating effect on their behaviour.

• Do we agree with others, even we have a different opinion?

• Do we obey commands of others, even if we do not strongly agree with them?

Conformity

Obedience

Conformity

• Asch (1951).• He set up an experiment in which subjects were told

that they were participating in a perception study. • They were asked to judge the correct length of a given

line, by identifying which of three sample lines was identical to it.

• Asch arranged that the subjects would be tested as members of a group, all of whom would report their judgments openly.

• Unknown to the subjects, the rest of the group consisted of 'stooges‚ (assistants of the experimenter), who, from time to time, deliberately gave prearranged but obviously wrong answers.

• Subjects clearly found it uncomfortable when they were in a position of disagreeing with the majority

• Many of them at one time or another during the study gave answers which they knew to be wrong, but which conformed with the majority judgments.

• In total, 74% of Asch's subjects conformed at least once, and 32 % of them conformed all the time.

• Asch reported that the anxieties being experienced by the subjects as they heard others giving the wrong judgments.

• A more recent study by Perrin and Spencer (1980) involved replicating Asch's experiments with a new set of subjects.

• They found that, despite the clear existence of anxiety by the subjects, subjects did not conform as they did in Asch's study.

• Suggestion: the Asch effect might be 'a child of its time' rather than a general effect.

• However, Doms and Avermaet (1981) questioned this conclusion.

• They argued that a possible reason was because of their effort to obtain subjects who had not heard of the original Asch experiments.

• In doing so, they had asked students from disciplines such as engineering, chemistry, and medicine to take part in the studies. Students from scientific disciplines were likely to emphasise the need for correct judgements of measurements.

• Even though they disliked going against the majority, they would feel obliged to do so, because they would see accuracy as being important.

Reasons for conformity

• An effort to avoid a conflict.

• Subjects believed that a group harmony is more important than the correct answer.

• Subjects had feel anxiety during incorrect answers.

Asch (1951)

Asch (1951)

Types of conformity

• Kelman (1958) identified three main forms of conformity:

• (1) Compliance - going along with the majority, however we do not change our opinions.

• (2) Identification – a change of opinions and behaviors, identification with an another person.

• (3) Internalization – we agree that opinions of majority are better than our one.

(1) Compliance

• This form of conformity which is the most superficial,

• Going along with the majority in order to avoid rejection,

• or to gain rewards such as social acceptance or approva1.

• The distinguishing feature of compliance,, is that the conforming behaviour will only last as long as the situation does.

• Once the inf1uencing 'agents' are no longer present, the individual will stop conforming.

(2) Identification

• The individual conforms at particular times and in particular ways because these are part of a general overall series of relationships which he or she is trying to maintain.

• In this type of conformity, the particular behavior is not an important thing in itself but only as it forms part of a whole system of behavior which establishes or maintains some kind of relationship.

• Example: • A shop assistant who wishes to establish a positive

working relationship with a supervisor will tend to conform to the behavior expected of a 'good' assistant - being pleasant with customers, accurate and fast when serving, polite and attentive to other employees, and so on.

• Although the individual will actually be likely to believe in each of these acts of conformity as a 'righť way to behave, none of the individual acts will matter much on their own. They all arise from the person's identifying with the role of the assistant, and conforming to that.

(3) Internalization

• This form is concerned with an individual's own personal value system, their way of understanding the world and morality in both small and large matters.

• Someone may accept another person's inf1uence, and conform to their demands or expectations because they fully agree with the principles involved.

Milgram’s study

• Milgram• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience.

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,52, 500-510.

• Experiment: influence of pain on learning

• A subject was informed that he/she takes part in an experiment. The goal of a study is help people to improve their memory (altruistic goal).

• „Teacher“ was asked to read a couple of words to a „student“ and than to test his memory. The teacher said the first word from a pair, the student was required to say the second word from the pair.. Incorrect answers were punished with an electrical shock.

• „Teacher““ controlled a „shock generator“ with 30 switches in units of 15 volts. The switches were labeled with increasing voltage designations, from 15 to 450 volts.

• The switches also had descriptive labels. For example, „slight shock“ (15-60 V), „very strong shock“ (195-240 V), „danger:severe shock“ (375-420 V). The 435 to 450 V range very simply labeled „XXX“.

• „Teacher“ had to punish the first recall error with a mild 15-volt shock and then increase the shock by 15 volts for each succeeding error.

• The„student“ was middle-aged, mild-mannered, and likable man, He was escorted to a nearby room where he was strapped to a chair and hooked up to an electrode that transmits the electric shock.

• The „student“, a bit worriedly, mentions that he has a „slight heart condition“. But the experimenter assures him that „although the shocks may be painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage.“

Milgram’s study

Milgram’s study

• The subjects were aware that they were administering extremely high levels of shock, and that these could prove fatal.

• They could hear the 'stooge' subject, who they had seen strapped into a chair, giving increasingly loud cries of pain at first and then becoming silent as if he had passed out or died.

• They were extremely disturbed by what they were being asked to do, and frequently argued with the experimenter.

• But, nonetheless, 65 % of them gave electric shocks up to the maximum possible level. All of Milgram's subjects found it very difficult to disobey the experimenter by refusing to participate any further.

Explanation

• Milgram attributed his findings directly to the power of social roles.

• By entering into the experiment and adopting the role of participant, the subjects felt that they had entered into a social contract which involved their behaving obediently.

• Their view of the contract was also that it involved the experimenter behaving responsibly, and many afterwards stated that they had gone along with it because it took place at a high-status university, Yale, where they assumed the experimenter would be a responsible scientist.

• The original studies were conducted at Yale University

• When they were repeated in downtown building indicated as „Research Associates of Bridgeport“ – the full obedience rate dropped from 63% to 48%.

• When an „ordinary man“ gave the orders, obedience fell to about 20 %.

• But when the research was conducted at Princeton University, obedience increased to 80%.Obedience decreased with the decrease of the authority of the experimenter or an institution.

Milgram’s study

Milgram’s study

• The study was replicated in other countries.

• Shanab and Kahya (1977) in Jordan. The level of obedience 80%

• Kilham and Mann (1974) in Australia. The level of obedience only 50%.

Milgram’s theory of obedience

• Milgram’s theory of obedience (1973)

• Two modes of social consciousness: – Autonomous state – individuals behave on

the basic of their own conscience, attitudes, norms. The majority of people is fair, gentle, and in aggressive.

– Substitute state – individuals think and act as substitutes of an other person.

Obedience in a work• Another study which shows the power of

social roles and expected behaviour in a more real-life setting was per formed by Hofling (1966) in a hospital. – The aim of the study was to see if nurses would

comply with a doctor's instructions (which, of course, is a strong part of their expected role behaviour) even if it went against the hospital regulations.

– While on duty, a nurse would receive a phone call from a doctor who claimed to be Dr. Smith from psychiatry, about a particular patient. The nurse would be asked to give the patient a particular drug called Astroten.

– At first, they would be asked to go to the drug cabinet, check that the drug was there and to report back.

– This gave the nurse a chance to see the bottle, which was clearly labelled 'maximum doseage 10 mg'. Dr. Smith would then ask the nurse to administer 20 mg to the patient.

– This request required the nurse concerned to contravene hospital regulations in two ways, firstly by administering a dose which was above the maximum considered safe, and secondly, by taking instructions from an unknown person, which was also forbidden.

– Despite this, 21 out of 22 nurses involved in the study poured out the medication, and were prepared to administer it to the patient.

• Social pressure elicited by inequality causes that a nurse prefers to endanger a patient than do not respect the order of a physician.

• Milgram (1963) - experiments in the New York subway system.

• He found that 50% of the people asked to give up their seat to another person with no explanation would comply.

• It seems that for many people, refusing a direct request from someone is very difficult.

Bystander intervention

• Some kind of situation arises in which we feel that we ought to help out a total stranger, either because they have had an accident or because they are being attacked. Although most people know what they „ought“ o do in such situations, there have been several cases in which crimes or even murders have been committed in full view of the public, but no-one intervened.

• The bystander apathy has been studied by many psychologists, in an attempt to identity the factors which bring about people's reluctance to intervene.

• There would appear to be three main factors: – the influence of other people's presence

– the way that people comprehend what is going on

– the effects of other people's example.

The presence of other people

• The presence of other people is thought to have an effect because each person expects the next one to act or, in some cases, assumes that they already have.

• In the case of a murder reported by Rosenthal (1964), of the 40 or so witnesses to the murder (it took place in front of a block of flats and went on for a considerable time) each assumed that someone else had called the police, which meant that in the end no body did.

• Latane and Rodin (1969) – Subjects were seated in a room, with only a curtain

separating them from another room in which a 'secretary' was working. They heard her climb on a chair to reach the bookcase shelf, fall, and cry for help, saying that her foot was trapped and that she was in pain.

– 70% of the subjects who were waiting alone came to her rescue,

– whereas only 40% of the subjects who were waiting in pairs came to help.

– When they were waiting with other people, it seemed, the subjects considered the other person equally responsible for helping, and if the other person didn't help then they didn't either.

Diffusion of responsibility

• This factor is usually called diffusion of responsibility, whereby the more people who are considered able to help, the less any particular individual feels responsible.

• The way that people understand the situation seems to result also in different kinds of behaviur.

• People tend to define situations for themselves and if a situation is defined as an emergency, they will be far more ready to help than if they have defined the situation to themselves as a non-emergency.

• This factor also tends to work in terms of other people's responses. If someone appears to be very calm in a particular situation, we may assume that they have defined the situation as a non emergency.

• Latane and Darley (1968) asked experimental subjects to sit in a waiting room, waiting for an interview. – As they sat there, a wall vent began to pour

smoke into the room. – Subjects were observed through a one-way

mirror to see how long it would be before they reported the smoke to someone else outside the room.

– The subjects were tested either singly or in groups.

– 75% of the single ones reported the smoke within two minutes of it starting.

– When the subjects were in groups, less than 13% of them reported the smoke at all, despite the fact that the little room filled up with it over a six minute period!

– Those subjects said afterwards that they had not really thought of the smoke as indicating a fire but as some other harmless phenomenon, such as steam or smog.

– It seems that the presence of other people, and their unwillingness to act, had meant that they all defined the situation as a non-emergency, and so acted accordingly.

How other people's examples may infIuence our behaviour

• Bryan and Test 1967. • They set up a motorway study, in which a 'model'

scenario was acted out by the side of a motorway, and a bit further on drivers had the chance to imitate the 'model'.

• Drivers passed a broken-down car, with a man repairing it by the roadside, and a woman standing watching.

• A bit further on down the road, they came to the 'test' car, which had a flat tyre, and a woman apparently unable to change it.

• A control group of drivers saw the 'test' situation, but not the 'model' beforehand.

• Out of 4,000 passing cars, 93 drivers who had seen the 'model' stopped to help, but only 58 of the 'control' group stopped.

• Although this might not seem like much of a difference, it was one which was very unlikely to have happened by chance alone, and implies that seeing another person helping does affect how likely we are to help other people ourselves.