Going along: conformity, obedience and the power of roles

Transcript

RyanA junior midwife fills out a private questionnaire about best practice in delivering a baby. She's clear about one procedure: she's against it. Then a senior midwife, her supervisor, asks her to do exactly that procedure.

SoheeAnd she does it.

RyanThat's a real line of research, by Martin and Bull in 2008. Most of the junior midwives obeyed, going against their own stated beliefs.

SoheeWelcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Sohee.

RyanI'm Ryan. Today, social influence: conformity, compliance and obedience. Plus the roles and scripts that quietly tell us how to act.

SoheeLet's start with Solomon Asch in the 1950s. Participants were shown three line segments, then a fourth, and asked which of the three matched it in length. An easy task.

RyanBut each group had only one real participant. Everyone else was a confederate, someone working for the researcher. And the confederates confidently picked a line that was obviously shorter. The wrong answer.

SoheeThen the real participant had to answer out loud. And Asch found that 76 percent of participants conformed to group pressure at least once, choosing the incorrect line.

RyanSo, the definition. Conformity is changing your behavior to go along with the group, even if you don't agree with the group. And the Asch effect is the influence of the group majority on an individual's judgment.

SoheeNow the details the exam likes. What makes conformity more or less likely? The textbook lists three things.

RyanFirst, the size of the majority. More people in the majority, more conformity, up to a point. In Asch's work, conformity rose with the majority up to seven people. Beyond seven, it leveled off and decreased slightly.

SoheeSecond, the presence of another dissenter. If there's at least one dissenter, conformity drops to near zero.

RyanThat one is so powerful. One ally changes everything.

SoheeAnd third, public versus private responses. Conformity is more likely when people answer in front of others, and less likely when they answer privately, like writing it down. The textbook notes that's why government elections use secret ballots.

RyanWhich brings us to compliance. Compliance is going along with a request or demand, even if you don't agree with it. In Asch's studies, participants complied by giving wrong answers out loud, but privately they didn't accept those answers as correct.

SoheeSo why did they go along? Deutsch and Gerard described two motives. Normative social influence: conforming to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group.

RyanAnd informational social influence: conforming because you believe the group is competent and has the correct information, especially when the situation is ambiguous.

SoheeSo which one drove Asch's participants?

RyanNormative. The line task wasn't ambiguous. They didn't need the group for information. They went along to fit in and avoid ridicule.

SoheeAnd the textbook's example of informational influence is a movie theater. Something like smoke drifts in under the exit door. Is it a fire or a fog machine? You don't know, so you watch everyone else. If they leave, you leave.

RyanPause and think. A new employee at her first formal company dinner has no idea which fork to use, so she watches her manager and copies him. Normative or informational?

SoheeInformational. The situation is unclear, and she believes he has the right information. She isn't hiding a different private opinion to fit in.

RyanOne more Asch note. Research suggests overall conformity rates may have dropped since his time, and replications show it depends on factors like age, gender and socio-cultural background.

SoheeNow obedience. The change of an individual's behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure. People often comply because they're worried about the consequence if they don't.

RyanStanley Milgram, a social psychology professor at Yale, was influenced by the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, whose defense was that he was just following orders. Milgram wanted to test that.

SoheeHe initially recruited 40 men, who believed they were in a study on learning and memory. Each was a teacher who would shock a learner for wrong answers, in 15-volt increments, all the way up to 450 volts.

RyanThe learner was a confederate who received no real shocks. But he cried out, begged to stop, and complained of heart trouble. And when the experimenter told them to continue, 65 percent of participants went to the maximum voltage.

SoheeTwo out of three. And the variations are where the deep understanding is.

RyanMoving the study to an off-campus office building dropped the rate to 48 percent. With the learner in the same room, 40 percent. When teacher and learner had to touch hands, 30 percent. When the experimenter gave orders by phone, 23 percent.

SoheeAnd the textbook draws two lessons. When the humanity of the person being shocked increased, obedience decreased. When the authority of the experimenter decreased, obedience decreased too.

RyanPause and think. Of those four variations, which one produced the lowest obedience?

SoheeOrders given by phone, at 23 percent. The experimenter's authority was literally at a distance. Compare that with 65 percent in the original study.

RyanAnd it isn't just history. Burger in 2009 partially replicated it with a multicultural sample of women and men and found obedience levels matching Milgram's. Doliński and colleagues replicated Burger's work in Poland in 2017, again with results consistent with Milgram's.

SoheeNow let's widen out to the forces that shape behavior even with no one giving orders. Roles, norms and scripts.

RyanA social role is a pattern of behavior expected of a person in a given setting or group. Student, parent, employee. Nearly everyone in a culture knows what behavior goes with a role.

SoheeA social norm is a group's expectation of what's appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members. How we're supposed to behave and think.

RyanAnd a script is a person's knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting. Like a restaurant. The textbook notes that in the United States you get a server's attention with eye contact, while in Brazil you'd make the sound psst.

SoheeWhich shows scripts are cultural. Now, the famous demonstration of roles is Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment, in 1971.

RyanVolunteers were screened, leaving 24 healthy male college students, randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards in a mock prison in the basement of the psychology building.

SoheeThe guards grew increasingly harsh, and the prisoners showed severe anxiety and hopelessness. The study was planned for several weeks and was ended after only six days.

RyanAnd here's what an up-to-date answer needs: the criticisms. They range from ethics to generalizability. One concern is that how students were recruited may have affected the outcome.

SoheeAnother is that Zimbardo appears to have given the guards specific guidelines about expected behavior, so the guards may have acted as they thought they were expected to act.

RyanAnd attempts to replicate aspects of the study haven't been successful. When no guidelines were given to guards, Reicher and Haslam documented different outcomes than Zimbardo reported.

SoheeSo if an exam option says the Stanford prison experiment proves that ordinary people inevitably become abusive in a guard role, be careful. The textbook presents it as a memorable demonstration with serious criticisms.

RyanLet's talk about exam traps. The big one is mixing up the three kinds of influence. Conformity is going along with a group. Compliance is going along with a request. Obedience is going along with a demand from an authority figure.

SoheeThe second trap is normative versus informational. Ask: is the situation ambiguous? If it's clear and people go along anyway, that's normative. If it's unclear and they look to others for the right answer, informational.

RyanAnd the third: details. One dissenter drops conformity to near zero. Private answers reduce conformity. In Milgram's work, 65 percent went to the maximum.

SoheeQuick recap. Asch: 76 percent conformed at least once. Conformity rises with majority size up to about seven, collapses with a single dissenter, and drops when responses are private.

RyanNormative influence is about acceptance, informational about accuracy. Compliance means going along publicly without private agreement.

SoheeMilgram: 65 percent obeyed fully. Obedience fell as the victim became more human and the authority weaker. Burger's partial replication found similar levels.

RyanRoles, norms and scripts shape behavior too. And the Stanford prison experiment comes with criticisms you should know.

SoheeHere's a thought to carry with you. Those junior midwives weren't bad people. Situations are powerful. And learning how they work is one of the first steps to standing firm when it matters.

RyanTry some practice questions on social influence next. Thanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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