Social Psychology: Conformity, Obedience, and Group Dynamics

Social Impairment and Conformity

Social impairment occurs when an individual acts in a less positive way or performs worse when they are around others. Conformity can be defined as adjusting one's behavior or thinking to match those of other people or a group standard.

Asch’s Experiment on Social Pressure

In Asch’s experiment, students were asked which bar was longer. Only one participant was naive; the others were confederates. Eventually, the confederates began providing the wrong answer. Due to peer pressure, the naive participant often gave the incorrect answer as well. The study investigated the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. With one naive participant and seven confederates, about 1/3 of the participants conformed, and 70% conformed at least once.

Factors That Strengthen Conformity

• The group is unanimous.
• The group consists of at least three people.
• One admires the group’s status.
• One has made no prior commitment.
• One is from a culture where they would not want to embarrass others.

Obedience and the Milgram Experiment

Obedience is a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure. Stanley Milgram wanted to see just how far people would be willing to go. Milgram’s studies involved placing participants in a room and directing them to deliver electrical shocks to a "learner" in another room.

Unbeknownst to the participant, the person supposedly receiving the shocks was a confederate merely acting out responses to imaginary shocks. Surprisingly, Milgram found that 65 percent of participants were willing to deliver the maximum level of shocks on the orders of the experimenter. This suggests that ordinary people can do shocking things under authority.

Group Dynamics and Behavior

Social Loafing and Group Polarization

Social loafing is the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable. Group polarization occurs when groups make more extreme decisions than individuals. This happens because the individual is exposed to more ideas and does not see themselves as solely responsible, as the decision-making is diffused.

Groupthink and Deindividuation

Groupthink happens when members suppress their reservations about ideas supported by the group because they are more concerned with group harmony. This is worse in highly cohesive groups. Deindividuation occurs when people get swept up in a group and lose their sense of self, feeling anonymous and aroused. This often explains rioting behaviors.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

In Zimbardo’s prison experiment, a mock prison was created in the basement of Stanford University. Participants were assigned roles as prisoners or guards. The study had to be discontinued after six days because the participants became too involved in their roles. Guards utilized authoritarian techniques, psychological abuse, harassment, and physical torture to gain obedience. The results demonstrated how easily people are influenced by the characteristics of the roles and situations they are cast in, while also suggesting that environmental factors play a role in how prone people are to obey authority.