6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
Chapter 8
Conformity:
Influencing
Behavior
It were not best that we should all
think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse races.
—Mark Twain
Conformity: When and Why
• American culture stresses the importance
of not conforming.
• American mythology has celebrated the
rugged individualist in many ways.
• The photograph of a cowboy alone on
the range has been an archetypal image.
It has also sold a lot of cigarettes.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Conformity: When and Why
• But are we, in fact, nonconforming
creatures?
• Are the decisions we make always based
on what we think, or do we sometimes
use other people’s behavior to help us
decide what to do?
Conformity: When and Why
• But are we, in fact, nonconforming
creatures?
• Are the decisions we make always based
on what we think, or do we sometimes
use other people’s behavior to help us
decide what to do?
Conformity
A change in one’s behavior due to the real or
imagined influence of other people.
Informational Social Influence:
The Need to Know What’s “Right”
• How should you address your psychology
professor—as “Dr. Berman,” “Professor
Berman,” “Ms. Berman,” or “Patricia”?
• How should you vote in the upcoming
referendum that would raise your tuition to
cover expanded student services?
• 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.
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.
These results indicate that people used each other as a source of
information, coming to believe that the group estimate was correct.
Private Acceptance
Conforming to other people’s behavior
out of a genuine belief that what they
are doing or saying is right.
Public Compliance
Conforming to other people’s behavior
publicly without necessarily believing
in what we are doing or saying.
Sherif cast doubt on public compliance,
however, by asking people to judge the
lights again when alone. They continued
to give the group’s answer.
The Importance of Being Accurate
The degree to which
eyewitnesses conform to
others when picking
suspects out of police
lineups depends on the
importance of the task.
Those who expected to receive $20 for
accurate identification were correct most
often when alone.
However, when not alone, they sought
information from others and conformed
more regardless of accuracy.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Contagion
The rapid spread of emotions or behaviors
through a crowd.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
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
for the “dancing manias” (a kind of psychogenic illness)
to crisscross Europe, 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
squelch these uprisings of contagion by introducing
more logical explanations for ambiguous events.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
When the situation is a crisis
• 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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Informational Social Influence
and Emergencies
• An emergency is by definition a crisis situation.
• In many respects, it is an ambiguous situation
as well; sometimes there are “experts” present,
but sometimes there aren’t.
• In an emergency, the bystander is thinking:
What’s happening? Is help needed? What
should I do? What’s everybody else doing?
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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. Remember 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 do some adolescents engage in such
risky behavior?
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
We human beings are by nature a social species.
Through interactions with others, we receive
emotional support, affection, and love, and we
partake of enjoyable experiences.
Other people are extraordinarily 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.
Normative Social Influence
The influence of other people that leads us to conform in
order to be liked and accepted by them.
This type of conformity results in public compliance with
the group’s beliefs and behaviors but not necessarily
private acceptance of those beliefs and behaviors.
Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
Normative Social Influence
The influence of other people that leads us to
conform in order to be liked and accepted
by them; this type of conformity results in
public compliance with the group’s beliefs
and behaviors but not necessarily private
acceptance of those beliefs and behaviors.
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.
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.
Recent research found that when participants
conformed to a group’s wrong answers, fMRI
indicated brain activity in areas for vision and
perception.
However, when participants chose to give the
right answer and disagree with the group,
different areas of the brain became active: the
amygdala, an area devoted to negative
emotions, and the right caudate nucleus, an
area devoted to modulating social behavior.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Importance of Being Accurate,
Revisited
• 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!
The Importance of Being Accurate,
Revisited
• 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!
• Even when the group is wrong, the right answer
is obvious, and there are strong incentives to be
accurate, some people will find it difficult to risk
social disapproval, even from strangers.
The Consequences of Resisting
Normative Social Influence
If you disregard the friendship 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.
Normative Social Influence
in Everyday Life
• Although most of us are not slaves to
fashion, we tend to wear what is
considered appropriate at a given time.
• Fads are another fairly frivolous example
of normative social influence.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND
WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE
• A MORE SINISTER FORM OF NORMATIVE
SOCIAL INFLUENCE INVOLVES WOMEN’S
ATTEMPTS TO CONFORM TO CULTURAL
DEFINITIONS OF AN ATTRACTIVE BODY.
• WHILE MANY, IF NOT MOST, WORLD
SOCIETIES CONSIDER PLUMPNESS IN
FEMALES ATTRACTIVE, WESTERN
CULTURE AND PARTICULARLY AMERICAN
CULTURE CURRENTLY VALUE EXTREME
THINNESS IN THE FEMALE FORM.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
• HEAVY WOMEN WERE FOUND TO BE PREFERRED OVER SLENDER
OR MODERATE ONES IN CULTURES WITH UNRELIABLE OR
SOMEWHAT UNRELIABLE FOOD SUPPLIES.
• AS THE RELIABILITY OF THE FOOD SUPPLY INCREASES, THE
PREFERENCE FOR HEAVY-TO-MODERATE BODIES DECREASES.
• MOST DRAMATIC IS THE INCREASE IN PREFERENCE FOR THE
SLENDER BODY ACROSS CULTURES.
• ONLY IN CULTURES WITH VERY RELIABLE FOOD SUPPLIES (LIKE
THE UNITED STATES) WAS THE SLENDER BODY TYPE HIGHLY
VALUED.
In the 1980s, Brett Silverstein and her colleagues
analyzed photographs of women appearing in Ladies’
Home Journal and Vogue magazines from 1901 to
1981, and found how presentation of women had
changed over the century.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND
WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE
• Standards for physical attractiveness for
Japanese women have also undergone
changes in recent decades.
• Since World War II, the preferred look
has taken on a “Westernized” element—
long-legged, thin bodies or what is called
the “hattou shin beauty.”
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND
WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE
• Informational social influence affects how
women learn what kind of body is
considered attractive at a given time in
their culture.
• Women learn what an attractive body is
(and how they compare) from family and
friends and from the media.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND
WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE
• Crandall (1988) found that sororities each
develop their own group norms regarding
eating disorders.
• Binge eating served as a form of
normative social influence.
• Throughout the year, new members
conformed to their respective sororities
group norms.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Social Influence and
Men’s Body Image
• Studies conducted in the past decade
suggest that cultural norms have changed
in that men are beginning to come under
the same pressure to achieve an ideal
body that women have experienced for
decades.
• The ideal male body is now much more
muscular.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Social Influence and
Men’s Body Image
• Adolescent and young men respond to
pressure by developing strategies to
achieve the ideal, “six-pack” body.
• An increasing number are also using risky
substances such as steroids or ephedrine
to achieve a more muscular physique.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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, and
• 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.
As the size of the group increases, each
additional person has less effect.
WHEN THE GROUP SIZE IS
THREE OR MORE
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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, as
opposed to 32% when alone.
WHEN ONE HAS NO ALLIES
IN THE GROUP
The difficulty of being the lone dissenter is
apparent even in the U.S. Supreme Court.
• The most common decision ratio is
unanimous, 9-0 vote among the Justices.
• The least common decision ratio is 8-1 with
a single dissenter.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
IN CONFORMITY
Eagly & Carli (1981):
META-ANALYSIS OF 145 STUDIES OF
INFLUENCEABILITY THAT INCLUDED MORE
THAN 21,000 PARTICIPANTS FOUND THAT,
ON AVERAGE, MEN ARE LESS PRONE TO
BEING INFLUENCED THAN WOMEN.
BUT THE SIZE OF THE DIFFERENCE WAS
VERY SMALL.
ONLY SLIGHTLY MORE THAN HALF OF MEN
ARE LESS INFLUENCEABLE THAN THE
AVERAGE WOMAN.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
IN CONFORMITY
One other finding in this area is surprising
and controversial.
The gender of the person conducting
conformity studies makes a difference too.
Eagly and Carli (1981) found that male
researchers were more likely than female
researchers to find that men were less
influenceable.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Resisting
Normative Social Influence
Idiosyncrasy Credits
What can we do to resist inappropriate
normative person earns, over
The tolerance asocial influence? time, by
conforming to group norms; if enough
Be aware credits are earned, the
1. idiosyncrasy that it is operating. person
Take occasion,
2. can, on action. behave deviantly without
• Try to from the group.
retributionfind an ally.
3. Conforming most of the time earns an
occasional deviation without
consequences.
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.
Using Social Influence to
Promote Beneficial Behavior
Robert Cialdini, Raymond Reno, and Carl
Kallgren have developed a model of
normative conduct in which social norms
(the rules that a society has for
acceptable behaviors, values, and
beliefs) can be used to subtly induce
people to conform to correct, socially
approved behavior.
Using Social Influence to
Promote Beneficial Behavior
Cialdini and his colleagues (1991) suggest
that first we need to focus on what kind of
norm is operating in the situation.
Only then can we invoke a form of social
influence that will encourage people to
conform in socially beneficial ways.
Injunctive Norms
People’s perceptions of what behaviors are
approved or disapproved of by others.
Descriptive Norms
People’s perceptions of how people actually
behave in given situations, regardless of
whether the behavior is approved or
disapproved of by others.
The Role of
Injunctive and Descriptive Norms
Establishing
norms can
influence
littering
behavior.
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• Obedience is a social norm that is valued
in every culture.
• You simply can’t have people doing
whatever they want all the time—it would
result in chaos.
• 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.
• 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
• How can we be sure that the Holocaust, My Lai,
and other mass atrocities were not caused
solely by evil, psychopathic people but by
powerful social forces operating on people of all
types?
• Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974, 1976) decided to
find out, in what has become the most famous
series of studies in social psychology.
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.
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
Imagine that you were a participant in one of Milgram’s studies.
• The learner makes many mistakes.
• The experimenter instructs you to keep shocking the learner.
What would you do?
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.
The Role of
Normative Social Influence
• The obedience experiment was a
confusing situation for participants, with
competing, ambiguous demands.
• Unclear about how to define what was
going on, they followed the orders of the
expert, the authority figure.
Other Reasons We Obey
Participants conformed to the wrong norm: They
continued to follow the “obey authority” norm
when it was no longer appropriate.
It was difficult for them to abandon this norm for
three reasons:
1. The fast-paced nature of the experiment,
2. The fact that the shock levels increased in
small increments,
3. Their loss of a feeling of personal
responsibility.
6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University