Social Influence:
Conformity, Compliance,
Obedience
Will you jump off the bridge too?
What is social influence?
Social Psychology: “an attempt to explain how
the thoughts, feelings an behaviour of
individuals are influenced by the actual,
imagined or implied presence of others”
(Allport, 1954)
Social influence: The process whereby people
directly or indirectly influence the thoughts,
feelings and actions of others
Goals of social influence: Choosing correctly,
gaining social approval, managing self image
The bright and dark sides of
conformity
David Koresh
Reverend
James Jones
Allison Hinkamper’s dissertation
“priming”
manipulation
control images (1)
“thin ideal” images
control images (2)
Self-reported mood after exposure to images
ratings of dejection/negative affect
1.7
1.6
1.5
1.4
1.3
inanimate objects
PRIME
people
"thin ideal"
How many of you own something
from one of these companies?
Social
Influence/Persuasion
Fads
Static or Dynamic
Social Influence
Four historical distinctions

Conformity  change is behavior or belief to accord
with others (social norms)

Compliance  conformity that involves publicly
acting in accord with an implied or explicit request
while privately disagreeing

Obedience  acting in accord with a direct order

Acceptance  conformity that involves both acting
and believing in accord with social pressure
When is compliance bad
and disobedience good???
Crime of Obedience

Should a physician perform an abortion on a
patient who requests one?
– What if the procedure has been made criminal by
government or religious edict?
– What if abortion is legal, but goes against the
physicians belief to a fetus’ moral entitlement to life?

Tyler (1980) – 1575 telephone respondents
– 8 of 10 agreed that people should obey the law, even if
it goes against what they think is right
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory

Brewer (1991); Brewer and Weber (1994)
 People feel uncomfortable when they are
too different – but they also feel
uncomfortable when they are too similar
 Fundamental tension between similarity and
uniqueness and similarity
 Social identity is a compromise
Social Norms

Descriptive Norms
– Describe behavior that
is TYPICALLY done


Most college students dress
casually for class
Injunctive Norms
– Describe behavior is
APPROVED or
ACCEPTED

Its inappropriate to wear a
bathing suit to most classes
Broad Conformity Principles

Informational Influence
– Influenced because of a desire to be correct and
obtain valuable information

Normative Influence
– Influenced to gain rewards or avoid punishment
Classic studies
Sherif
(1935)
– Autokinetic effect
– Saccadic eye movements
•Method:
•Phase I (private)
•Phase II (public)
Private trials
Trial 1
Public trials
Trial 110
Important aspects of Sherif (1935)





Highly ambiguous
Guessing
Compromise
Re-test FULL YEAR later (in private)
Suggests internalization
 Asch (1951)
– Original goal: to critique Sherif (1935)
A
B
C
Details of results
for 12 “critical” trials
33%
24%
17%
15%
11%
0
1-3
4-6
7-9
10-12
Percentage of participants who conformed
Implications/summary
 conformity surprisingly high
– Unambiguous
– Strangers
– Low stakes for being wrong
– Asch’s original hunch WRONG
given
What about individual
differences?

24% participants in Asch (1951)
NEVER conformed—why?
– High levels of self esteem

Was Solomon
Asch’s experiment
a sign of the
times???
 Perrin and Spencer
(1980) replication
failed to find same
results
 Pratkanis – UC
Santa Cruz
A
B
C
When do people conform?

Group size (see graph)
 Unanimity (see graph)
 Cohesion – the “we” feeling
 Status
 Public response
 No prior commitment
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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13 of 15
15 of 15
Who conforms?

Gender
– Women conform more (but only slightly and only in
public – no difference privately)
– Possible bias in research/women more concerned about
harmony in social relationships
– Effects of historically disadvantaged status?

Personality
– Interdependent self concept

Culture
– Collectivist cultures: One of the strongest predictors
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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Variation across 54 cultures
(Anderson, 1994)
high
Preference for heavy body
Preference for thin body
low
Low
(unreliable)
Food supply in that culture
High
(reliable)
Mean bust-to-waist ratio (high #s = heavier, more “voluptuous” body type)
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
WHY Conform?
Informational vs. normative social influence

Informational social influence—
–
–
–
–

Need to know “what’s right”
Arises when correct answer ambiguous (e.g. Sherif, 1935)
Crisis situation (e.g. War of the Worlds)
Importance of task should generally increase conformity
Normative social influence
– Need to be accepted
– Correct answer relatively unambiguous (e.g. Asch, 1951)
– Importance of task should generally decrease conformity
Gaining social approval

Similarity = Liking
 Nonconformists often rejected – why? Peer
pressure?
 Social Norms
– Descriptive
– Injunctive
Reciprocity  norm requiring that we repay others to
the extent they have given to us

Ever felt uncomfortable when a stranger or
acquaintance helped you (gave you something? a
compliment?)
Summary of Baron et al.

When correct answer unclear (ambiguous)
– Informational social influence
– Conformity higher when important

When correct answer clear (unambiguous)
– Normative social influence
Conformity lower when task is important
Conformity

What about sex differences in public
conformity? Why?
 What about those people who do not conform?
Why would individual conformity be
important for a society?
– Predictability
– Reciprocity
• One culture’s nonconformist hero is
another culture’s sociopath
Milgram (1965) - Obedience
Slight (0-240)
Intense (255-300 volts)
Extreme intensity (315-360 volts)
Danger: severe shock (375-420 volts)
XXX (435-450 volts)
Initial prediction study
Psychiatrists: predict that 1 out of 1,000 would go to
highest level

Results of main study: In actuality, 65% go to highest level
How far will people go?
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Actual
Predicted
1560
75- 135- 195- 255- 315- 375- 435120 180 240 300 350 420 450
Level of Shock (Volts)
Willing participants?
I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter
the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes
he was reduced to a twitching, shuddering wreck, who was
rapidly approaching nervous collapse. He constantly
pulled on his ear lobe, and twisted his hands. At one point
he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered ‘Oh God,
lets stop it’. An yet he continued to respond to every word
of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end.
Milgram
What breeds obedience?

Emotional Distance from Victim
– Learner in same room (obedience only 40%)
– “Contact” condition (30%)

Closeness and Legitimacy of Authority
– Telephone condition (21%)
– Illegitimate authority condition (20%)

Institutional Authority
– Research Associates of Bridgeport condition (48%)

Group Influences
– Multiple confederate condition (10%)
Criticisms of Milgram
It’s a tad unethical
 Sign of the times?
 Subjects were self selecting volunteers – so
perhaps they were more willing to obey
then the rest of the population
 Of 636 subjects – only 40 women: But they
showed same obedience rate as men
 What happens in the lab may be unrealistic

Taking it OUTSIDE the lab!

Hofling, et al (1966)
 Naturalistic experiment
 Real nurses paired with ‘confederate’
doctors
 Instructed to administer a dose of medicine
(placebo) that was twice the maximum
indicated on bottle
 21 of 22 complied without hesitation
Milgram and the FAE

Largely assumed that what Milgram showed was
that given the opportunity – people would harm a
stranger.
 This presumes and inherent cruelty that is
common among humans
– “Cruelty is presumed to be inflicted by the cruel at
heart”

By attributing cruelty to the participants (evil
disposition) – one is committing the F.A.E.
Destructive Obedience or
Indecisive Disobedience?

Ross and Nisbett (1991)
 Milgram has less to say about destructive
obedience than about ineffectual/indecisive
disobedience.
 In short – it was the lack of a well defined
legitimate channel to discontinue participation
 Subjects given a disobedience channel (button) –
reduction in obedience rates.
When do we RESIST??

Theory of Ordinariness of Goodness
 Rochat and Modigliani (1995)
 Resistance occurs for any of the following
reasons:
– One should not impose their will on others
– One is responsible for what one does to another
– One is always free to choose not to obey
harmful demands
Reactance

Romeo and Juliet Effect
– Driscoll, David, and Lipitz (1972)
– 140 Couples studied in regards to parental
interference
Reactance

Doing opposite of what we are pressured to
do helps to reassert our personal freedom to
choose
 “Free Will” versus Determinism