Conformity and Groupthink
MAR 3503
February 14, 2012
Conformity
• …is a change in behavior or belief as a result
of real or imagined group pressure
Autokinetic effect
• In a very dark room, people will perceive a
point of light as moving even though it is
actually stationary
• Sherif asked participants to look at the point
of light and judge how far it moved
• Participants made these judgments alone or in
groups on successive days, calling out their
responses
Autokinetic effect
• Sherif found that
participants’ responses
influenced each other,
with different responses
converging to a single
estimate over several
trials
Asch, 1956
% of participants
Asch, 1956
% conformity
Conformity and public vs private
Critical trial
% conformity
Conformity and unanimity
Critical trial
Conformity and group size
# of people in group
60
Errors (%)
50
40
30
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
10
15
Conformity and group size
Reasons for conforming
• Normative: In the service of avoiding the
disapproval, scorn, or ostracism that
accompanies norm violations
• Informational: In the service of learning what
is right or appropriate in a situation
Behavioral mimicry
• …aka the “chameleon effect”
• The tendency to unconsciously imitate the
behaviors, gestures, and mannerisms of one’s
interaction partners
# instances per minute
Behavioral mimicry
Behavioral mimicry
• Participants watched a video of a confederate
who was touching her face
– In the conscious goal condition, participants were
told they would later interact with the girl
– In the unconscious goal condition, they were
subliminally flashed words related to interaction
– Control participants were given no goal
Seconds S touched face
No goal
5.7
Conscious goal
13.1
Unconscious goal
14.5
Lakin & Chartrand, 2003
• Participants completed
2 interaction tasks, one
on the computer and
one in person
• In the computer
interaction, the
confederate was either
nice or mean to them
• Participants who felt
their 1st interaction
was a failure were
more likely to mimic
% of time shaking foot
Behavioral mimicry
Behavioral mimicry
Behavioral mimicry
Behavioral mimicry
• Does mimicry buy you anything?
• Chartrand showed that when a confederate
simply mimicked the quirks a participant
showed when they interacted, Ps liked the
confederate more, even though they didn’t
know the confederate was mimicking
• Waitresses get bigger tips when they mimic
their customers, by simply repeating the
orders back in the exact same way
Groupthink
• “A kind of faulty thinking on the part of highly
cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that
should be devoted to the issues at hand is
subverted by social pressures to reach
consensus”
• Basically, groups try to agree with one another,
and they can ignore problems with their plans to
do so
• Bay of Pigs is the classic example
• Enron is a tragic modern day example
Groupthink
Antecedents of groupthink
• High cohesiveness
• Insulation of the group
• Lack of procedures for
information search and
appraisal
• Directive leadership
• High stress w/little hope of
finding a better solution
than the leader’s proposed
one
Symptoms of groupthink
• Illusions of vulnerability
• Collective rationalization
• Belief in inherent morality
of group
• Stereotypes of outgroups
• Direct pressure on
dissenters
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity
Pluralistic ignorance
• Happens when virtually every member of a group
privately feels one way, yet believes that virtually
everyone else privately feels another way
– People mistakenly think they’re “out of step” with the
rest of the group
• Trigger: Discrepancy between people’s private
feelings and public acts
• Results in conformity from almost everyone
– People end up conforming to a norm that almost no
one is happy with!
Examples of pluralistic ignorance
• Gang members
• College drinking (Prentice & Miller, 1993)
– Women: own comfort = 4.8, other comfort = 7.0
– Men: own comfort = 5.8, other comfort = 7.0
– This discrepancy leads to conformity
• How to dispel pluralistic ignorance?
– Peer session (about pluralistic ignorance) vs. individual
session (about responsible alcohol choices)
– Interviewed months later, they reported drinking:
• 3.0 drinks a week (peer session)
• 4.9 drinks a week (individual session)
Examples of pluralistic ignorance
• Some products/interventions seem to “suffer”
from pluralistic ignorance problems
• You may need to dispel pluralistic ignorance,
rather than convince people that your product
is good
Diffusion of responsibility
• Kitty Genovese
• A smoke-filled room
– Single subject: 75% reported it
– Groups of three: 38% reported it
• You’re more likely to help when fewer people
are around!
– One factor: diffusion of responsibility
– Another: pluralistic ignorance  normative and
informational conformity
Summary
• People feel compelled to act like the others in
their group
• This can lead them to:
–
–
–
–
Espouse things they know to be wrong
Blindly follow the rest of the group
Ignore problems
Literally act just like those around them
• They do so for informational and normative
reasons
• This can be reduced through awareness of the
problem and active skepticism
Next time…
• Obedience and power