Welcome to lesson seven, module one; conformity. In this
first module we’re going to be discussing conformity as an informational
social influence.
Let’s move to slide two and begin. Sherif’s study of the autokinetic
effect or the watch the light study is one demonstration of conformity.
In this study, everyone was asked to focus on a red dot of light on the
wall, similar to that that would be delivered by a laser pointer, and
then they were asked how much the light moved. If the light was being
held stable and did not move at all, then everyone perceives that it
moved somewhat because their eyes typically moved back and forth without
conscious awareness. What they found is that when people did this in a
group, their estimates tended to conform over time, so whatever the
first person said influenced what the next people said. They saw that as
informational influence. In the Asch’s Line study where people are asked
to judge a series of lines and determine which one is most like the
target line, only 25% of people were able to stand their ground when
others in the group gave the wrong answer. We can talk about lots of
these studies as being compliant, that is public conformity, versus
private conformity which is the idea that one has internalized and
actually believe that the wrong answer is the right answer.
Let’s move to slide three. We often use others as reference groups and
especially if we’re doing an intellective task. If we’re doing something
that has an objective right or wrong answer, we want to look to others,
specifically others with whom we have little in common, to assure that
everyone’s arriving at the same answer. On the other hand, if our task
is a value judgment task, we’re more likely to ask those similar to us
if we’re making the right decision. This is one reason sales persons are
encouraged to look like their customers. The more they look like their
customers, the more the customer will trust the sales person for making
value judgments about which things to buy. In addition, we know that
people are likely to systematically process in-group messages, that is
if someone in your group is saying something, you’re more likely to
exert cognitive effort to understand what is being said. Cohesiveness
also influences the ways in which groups make decisions. We can talk
about two types of cohesiveness; interpersonal and task. Interpersonal
cohesiveness is the type of cohesiveness that Janis in 1972 decided led
to group think, that is you have a very charismatic leader who peer
pressures others into going along with what the group is saying. Task
cohesiveness, on the other hand, is the idea that everyone is very
committed to the task, whereas interpersonal cohesiveness is more
commitments and liking of the group.
Let’s move on to slide four; consensus. Is it a good thing? We often
rely on consensus when making decisions about how to behave or what
decisions to make. One example of this is canned laughter. Anyone who’s
watched a sitcom has experienced canned laughter, that is, you hear
people on TV laughing, therefore you will find yourself laughing too,
even if you really don’t think that whatever has been said is especially
humorous. Contamination. This is the idea that when we hear an out group
member say something, we believe that they are simply repeating the
party line, so therefore six individual opinions is more powerful than
two groups of three.
Let’s discuss this study in more length on slide five. Harkins & Petty
in 1987 had people watch tapes of six different folks giving their view
on a court case. They were told that these six people were two groups of
three or six individuals. Participants who heard all six individuals and
were told they were not a group, were more influenced. They felt that
when the people were considered grouped, as two groups of three, that they
were only repeating the party line and therefore had less power and less
persuasive appeal.
Let’s move on to slide six. Pluralistic ignorance. This is the idea that
we believe that everyone else must know the answer, otherwise they would
raise their hand. For example, if I don’t know, then that’s just me,
everyone else probably already knows. If they didn’t they would do
something about it. We assume that other people’s behavior is based
solely on their disposition. Remember the fundamental attribution says
we underestimate the power of the situation. So in a classroom,
pluralistic ignorance often gets demonstrated by having the teacher
discuss a slide or discuss an example, then ask if there are any
questions. Even if the example was very confusing, no one will raise
their hand. Therefore, everyone believes that everyone else gets it,
it’s just them. They’re the only ones. This leads to pluralistic
ignorance. No one learns the correct answer or gets the example in a
more clarified manner. How can we overcome this effect. One is being
aware that there is pluralistic ignorance and not making the assumption
that the reason no one else is raising their hand is because they know,
but rather because they’re being influenced by social pressure. This
may, then, in turn allow us to raise our hand and ask questions when
we’re confused.
Let’s move on to slide seven. Minority influence. Any time you have a
group of people in which conformity might be an issue, there may be
people who stand out as being a minority on some characteristics. For
example, they could be an ethnic or racial minority, a gender minority,
a sexual orientation minority or simply an attitude minority. That is,
they disagree with most of what the majority is saying on a particular
issue. So what should you do to be a good minority member. If you want
to be the most influential, the first thing you need to do is agree with
the majority on most of the things that the majority stands for. The
second thing is to be consistent. If you choose to disagree about a
specific issue, you need to disagree about that issue always and always
on the same ground. And the third thing you need to do is point out
similar goals or characteristics. Try to be different only on that one
thing that makes you different. Always start out agreeing, agree with
the majority first and avoid trying to be a double minority or
disagreeing on several issues. You’ll be most powerful if you only have
one issue about which you disagree. Minorities typically have indirect
influence. That is, they may not persuade the final decision, but they
have at least allowed the majority to entertain ideas that they may not
have thought about prior to the minority member voicing their opinion.
Let’s move on to slide eight. When the minority versus the majority. If
we have a unanimity rule, then we know that people are more likely to
systematically process. If the decision must be unanimous, everyone must
agree. Therefore, everyone needs to think very carefully about their
reasoning. However, if we have a 2/3 rule, then most of the time the
majority will win and minority candidates aren’t likely to have much of
a say. What decision rules would you prefer? We know that John Kenneth
Galbreath felt that faced with the choice between changing one’s mind
and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on
the proof. They’d must rather not have to systematically process and
simply go along with the majority and not think about it too much.
Let’s move on to slide nine. What happens if you know before you go into
a situation that you’re going to be a minority. Levine and his friend,
Zdaniuk in 1996 did a study in which they told participants that they
would be engaging in a group discussion and that no one else in the
group would agree with them, that one other person would, that two other
people would, that three other people would or that four other people in
the room would agree with them. Then they were asked how much pressure
they were under and also asked to take a few minutes to prepare their
thoughts before their discussion.
The results are on slide ten, so let’s go there. In the yellow graph,
you see that they felt more pressured when no one was going to agree
with them and there’s a linear trend such that there’s the least amount
of pressure when four people would be allied or agree with them.
Examinations of counter arguments found that the difference between no
one agreeing with you resulted in about 50% more counter arguments than
when four people were agreeing with you, where there were only 20%
counter arguments in the thought listing.
Let’s move on to slide eleven. So when do we conform. Often we’ll
conform when there’s an ambiguous situation. For example, are these
circles on this page actually moving or is that an optical illusion.
It’s ambiguous for many people. Perhaps there’s HTML code that’s
actually moving those around and perhaps they’re animated or perhaps it
is simply an optical illusion. We would probably conform and go with the
majority when asked which one we thought it was. We’re also likely to
conform under conditions of crisis. If a disaster strikes, we tend do
what the crowd does. If everyone starts running, we also begin to run.
We’re also likely to conform if we believe that others are more expert
than us at that particular decision making task. In addition if there
are three or more people in the group, we’re more likely to conform with
that group. We’re also more likely to conform with an important group
and to conform if we don’t have any friends in the group.
Let’s move to the last slide, slide twelve. We know that people who live
in collectivist cultures are also more likely to conform, as well as
those who have low self-esteem. There’s a new type of mob forming in the
country and across the world. These are called flash mobs. You can click
this link and listen to a newscast regarding flash mobs. Essentially
here you have a number of people conforming, they’ve received an email
and have decided to go to a particular time, particular place and engage
in some particular behavior. I think that this type of conformity is
very distinct from the types of conformity we’ve discussed so far and
you should post your answers to the discussion questions forward about what
you believe the purpose of a flash mob is.
This concludes lesson seven, module one.
