Social PsychologyChapters 8-10

Overview for Exam 3

• October 26 & 28 Chapter 8 Conformity

• November 2 & 4 Chapter 9 Group Processes

• November 11 Chapter 10 Interpersonal Attraction

• Exam 3 November 16 (chapters 8, 9, 10)

Upcoming Papers

• Tuesday, November 2 (election day) Personal experience paper on chapter 8 (conformity)

• Tuesday, November 16 Reading Assignment from “Close relationships: Love, Sex, and Marriage” This paper is due the same day as EXAM 3

Overview for Final Exam

• November 18 & 23 Chapter 11 Prosocial Behavior

• November 30 & December 2 Chapter 12 Aggression

• December 7 & 9 Chapter 13 Prejudice

• December 14 FINAL EXAM 8:30 AM!!

Remaining Important Dates

• November 23 (Tuesday before Thanksgiving) Reading Assignment on Prosocial Behavior is due. This is also the LAST DAY I will accept extra credit summaries.

•• December 7 (Tuesday last week of class) your last

Reading Assignment on Intergroup Conflict and Prejudice is due.

Conformity: Influencing Behavior

Chapter 8

Conformity

• A change in behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others

• A person changes their behavior in order to conform to the expectations of others

Candid Camera

Sherif Study

• Autokinetic effect

• Ambiguous situation (1-10 inch estimates)

• Two phases of the study; alone and in group of 3

• Can lead to private acceptance not public compliance

• Informational influence in new “social norms” approaches to binge drinking

Informational Social Influence & Conformity

• 3 conditions that make people more likely to conform to informational social influence

• When the situation is ambiguous, and you are motivated to “get it right”

• When the situation is a crisis

• When other people are experts

How does Informational Influence Backfire?

• During crises, and one feels ill-equipped to respond, the need for information is acute

• People may start to reinterpret evidence to fit with their definition of the situation

• Example: “war of the worlds”

• Contagion, mass psychogenic illness

Social Influence & Social Norms

• Social Norms: rules for acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs

• Normative social influence: in order to be liked and accepted by others results in public compliance but not necessarily private acceptance

Asch Study

• Classic studies on normative social influence

• When a situation was unambiguous -- Asch expected that people would act rationally

• When the group said or did something that contradicted an obvious truth, people should resist social pressure!

Asch Study (con’t)

• Line task

• 76% conformed at least once.

• People conformed on about 1/3 of the 12 trials

• Public compliance without private acceptance

Exercise

• Describe a time you changed your behavior because of real or imagined pressure from other people

• DO NOT put your name on the paper

How do Sherif & Asch Studies Differ?

• Class?

Examples of normative social influence

• Women’s body image

• Men’s body image

Social Impact Theory

• We don’t always conform to normative social influence

• strength: how important is the group to you?

• immediacy: how close is the group to you in space and time during the attempt to influence you?

• number of influence sources: how many people are in the group

• Conformity to social influence increases as strength and immediacy increase

• Conformity increases when group reaches 4 or 5, but then is relatively stable (figure 8.6)

• Conformity increases when you have no allies

Cross cultural research

• People in collectivist cultures show higher rates of conformity on the line task (meta-analysis)

• Normative social influence may promote harmony and group relationships

Gender & Conformity

• very small differences (meta-analysis)

• public situations women tend to conform more (social roles)--but differences are small

• gender of researcher differentially related to findings that men are less influenceable

Minority Influence

• Individuals CAN influence the behaviors and beliefs of the majority

• consistency

• use informational influence

• early opposition

Injunctive & Descriptive Norms

• Injunctive norms: what we think other people approve or disapprove of

• motivate behavior via rewards and punishments

• Descriptive norms: our perceptions of how we think people actually behave in a given situation

• motivate behavior by informing us about what is effective or adaptive behavior

• Injunctive norms are more powerful in producing desirable behavior

Obedience to Authority

How did it happen?

• Mai Lai massacre

• Genocide (Germany, Ukraine, Rwanda, Bosnia)

• Abu Grabe

• Informational influence, normative influence, and obedience to authority

Milgram Study

• Read the description on page 274

• Read the transcript

• See the film clip

• Look for more information on the web

What can we learn from Milgram’s obedience studies?• Norms evoked in a situation can change, can be

in conflict (Abu Grabe physicians and clergy)

• What was the role of self-justification in increasing obedience? Requested behavior came in small increments....

• Socially organized evil--no one person makes the decisions, carries out the evil act and is confronted with the consequences