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Conformity and Obedience - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Compliance: Conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.
        
        Obedience: A type of compliance involving acting in accord with a direct order or command.
        
        "Compliance is conforming to an expectation or a request without really believing in what you are doing. You put on the necktie or the dress, although you dislike doing so. You say you like your friends' favorite band even though you don't. You might comply primarily to reap a reward or avoid a punishment. (...) In other words, compliance is an insincere, outward conformity."
      - Acceptance: Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.
        
        "Acceptance occurs when you genuinely believe in what the group has persuaded you to do—you inwardly and sincerely believe that the group's actions are right."
- - - - "Sherif and others have used this technique to answer questions about people's suggestibility. When people were retested alone a year later, would their estimates again diverge or would they continue to follow the group norm? Remarkably, they continued to support the group norm (Rohrer et al., 1954). (Does that suggest acceptance or compliance?)
        
        "In everyday life, the results of suggestibility are sometimes amusing. One person, coughs, laughs, or yawns, and others are soon doing the same. One person checks her cell phone and then other check theirs."
        
        "Just being around happy people can help us feel happier, a phenomenon that Peter Totterdell and his colleagues (1998) call 'mood linkage.' In their studies of British nurses and accountants, people within the same work groups tended to share up and down moods. People within a social network also move toward sharing similar obesity, sleep loss, loneliness, happiness, and drug use (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). (...) friends function as a social system."
        
        "Another form or social contagion is what Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh (1999) call 'the chameleon effect'—or mimicking someone else's behavior. (...) Would you—like their participants—be more likely to rub your face when around the face-rubber or shake your foot when around the foot-shaker? If so, it would quite likely be an automatic behavior, done without any conscious intention to conform."
        
        "Behavior synchronizing includes speaking; people tend to mirror the grammar that they read and hear (Ireland & Pennebaker, 2010). And, because our behavior influences our attitudes and emotions, our natural mimicry inclines us to feel what the other feels (Neumann & Strack, 2000)."
        
        "An experiment in the Netherlands by Rick van Baaren and his colleagues (2004) suggests that mimicry helps people look more helpful and likeable. People become more likely to help pick up dropped pens for someone whose behavior has mimicked their own. Being mimicked seems to enhance social bonds, which even leads to donating more money to a charity. (...) There is one exception to the imitation-fosters-fondness rule: mimicking another's anger fosters disliking (Van der Velde et al., 2010)."
        
        "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."—Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1955
        
        Mass hysteria: Suggestibility to problems that spreads throughout a large group of people.
  - - - "Imagine yourself as one of Asch's volunteer subjects. You are seated sixth in a row of seven people. The experimenter explains that you will be in a study of perceptual judgments, and then asks you to say which of the three lines in Figure 4 matches the standard line. You can easily see that it's line 2. So it's no surprise when the five people before you all say, 'Line 2.'"
        
        "The next comparison proves as easy, and you settle in for what seems a simple test. But the third trial startles you. Although the correct answer seems just as clear-cut, the first person gives the same wrong answer, you sit up in your chair and stare at the cards. The third person agrees with the first two. Your jaw drops: you start to perspire. 'What is this?' you ask yourself. 'Are they blind? Or am I?' The fourth and fifth people agree with the others. Then the experimenter looks at you. Now you are experiencing an epistemological dilemma: 'What is true? Is it what my peers tell me or what my eyes tell me?'"
        
        "Dozens of college students experienced that conflict in Asch's experiments. Those in a control condition who answered alone were correct more than 99 percent of the time. Asch wondered: If confederates coached by the experimenter gave identical wrong answers, would people declare what they would otherwise have denied? Although some people never conformed, three-quarters did so at least once. All told, 37 percent of the responses were conforming (or should we say 'trusting of others')."
        
        "Of course, that means 63 percent of the time people did not conform. The experiments show that most people 'tell the truth even when others do not,' note Bert Hodges and Anne Geyer (2006). Despite the independence shown by many of his participants, Asch's (1955) feelings about the conformity were as clear as the correct answers to his questions; 'That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."
    - - "In addition, people in collectivistic countries were more willing to conform than those in individualistic countries, those in more recently settled frontier states less than non-frontier states, and women more conforming than men (Bond & Smith, 1996; Varnum, 2012). These are precisely the results you'd expect if culture and gender shaped conformity, with recent, individualistic cultures and maleness promoting the autonomy of the self, and established, collectivistic cultures and femaleness encouraging fitting in with the group."
        
        "Ethical note: Professional ethics usually dictate explaining the experiment afterward. Imagine you were an experimenter who had just finished a session with a conforming participant. How could you explain the deception without making the person feel gullible and dumb?"
    - - Cancer screening: "Monika Sieverding and her colleagues (2010) approached middle-aged German men on the street and invited them to sign up to receive information about cancer screening. If led to believe few ('only 18 percent!') of other men in Germany had undergone the screening, a similar 18 percent signed up. But 39 percent signed up after being told that most other men ('indeed 65 percent!') had been screened. Health education campaigns had best not publicize low participation rates, surmised the researchers."
        
        Soccer referee decisions: "In many sports, from figure skating to soccer football, referees make instantaneous decisions amid crowd noise. When rating a skating performance or deciding whether a soccer player collision merits a yellow card, does the crowd noise—which increases when an opposing player commits a seeming infraction—make a difference? To find out, Christian Unkelbach and Daniel Memmert (2010) examined 1,530 soccer matches across five seasons in Germany's premier league. On average, home teams received 1.89 yellow cards and away teams 2.35. Moreover, the difference was greater in louder soccer stadiums where fans were not separated from the field by a running track. And in laboratory experiments, professional referees who judged filmed foul scenes awarded more yellow cards when a scene was accompanied by high-volume noise."
  - - - https://youtu.be/8bbVFeTIIg8?list=PLAjW9maqPB5UDiZxpPY0-995_wlIKG12a
        
        "Wondering if people today would similarly obey, Jerry Berger (2009) replicated Milgram's study—though only to the 150-volt point. At that point, 70 percent of participants were still obeying, a slight reduction from Milgram's result. (In Milgram's study, most who were obedient to this point continued to the end. In fact, all who reached 450 volts complied with a command to continue the procedure until, after two further trials, the experimenter called a halt.) However, Berger's participants were more diverse than Milgram's—for example, half were women, unlike Milgram's initial all-male sample. Comparing Milgram's 1962 men to Berger's 2006 men, obedience at 150 volts dropped from 83 percent to 67 percent. In other words, nearly twice as many modern men (33 percent vs. 18 percent) disobeyed, but many still obeyed. Cultural change toward more individualism might have reduced obedience, but far from eliminated it. Even 54 years later, Milgram's obedience paradigm was powerful—just a little less so (Twenge, 2009)."
        
        "Berger and his colleagues (2011) later analyzed their participants' spontaneous comments. Whether people stopped or obeyed was not predictable from their expressing concern for the learner's well-being, which most did, but from their voicing feelings of responsibility for their actions."
        
        "Further, notes Jerry Berger (2014), Milgram's results were not as surprising as they first seem. Four features of Milgram's study design, he argues, mirror well-documented psychological effects:
        
        the 'slippery slope' of small requests that escalate into large ones,
        
        the framing of shock-giving as the social norm for the situation,
        
        the opportunity to deny responsibility, and
        
        the limited time to reflect on the decision.
        
        All of these, in Milgram's studies and in other research, increase compliance."
        
        "In a virtual reality re-creation of the Milgram studies, participants responded—when shocking a virtual onscreen woman—much as did Milgram's participants, with perspiration and racing heart (Slater et al., 2006)."
    - - "(...) some critics said that Milgram did to his participants what they assumed they were doing to their victims: He stressed them against their will. Indeed, like Nazi executioners in the early days of the Holocaust (Brooks, 2011), many of the 'teachers' did experience agony. They sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, or even broke into uncontrollable nervous laughter. A New York Times reviewer complained that the cruelty inflicted by the studies 'upon their unwitting subjects is surpassed only by the cruelty that they elicit from them' (Marcus, 1974)."
      - "Critics also argued that the participants' self-concepts may have been altered."
      - "Some have also pointed out that, although Milgram referred to his studies as experiments, they were not true experiments, as they did not include a control group."
    - - "Milgram did more than reveal that people will obey an authority; he also examined the conditions that breed obedience. (...) Four factors determined obedience: the victim's emotional distance, the authority's closeness and legitimacy, whether the authority was part of a respected institution, and the liberating effects of a disobedient fellow participant."
      - The victim's distance
        
        "Milgram's participants acted with greatest obedience and least compassion when the 'learners' could not be seen (and could not see them). When the victim was remote and the 'teachers' heard no complains, nearly all obeyed calmly to the end. That situation minimized the learner's influence relative to the experimenter's."
        
        "When the learner was in the same room, 'only' 40 percent obeyed to 450 volts. Full compliance dropped to a still-astonishing 30 percent when teachers were required to force the learner's hand into contact with a shock plate. In a reenacted Milgram study—with videotaped actors who were either hidden or seen on a computer screen and known to be feigning hurt—participants were, again, much less obedient when the victim was visible (Dambrun & Vatiné, 2010)."
        
        "In everyday life, too, it is easiest to abuse someone who is distant or depersonalized. People who might never be cruel to someone in person may be nasty when posting comments to anonymous people on Internet discussion boards."
        
        "Throughout history, executioners have often depersonalized those being executed by placing hoods over their heads."
        
        "The ethics of war allow soldiers to bomb a helpless village from 40,000 feet but not to shoot an equally helpless villager. In combat with an enemy they can see, many soldiers either do not fire or do not aim. Such disobedience is rare among those given orders to kill with the more distant artillery or aircraft weapons (Padgett, 1989). It may even be true for nuclear war. In recent years, distance from victims has further lengthened with the use of unmanned flying drones that can drop bombs, with the controller sitting at a console many miles away from the destruction and death on the ground."
        
        During the Second World War, "(...) the construction of concrete gas chambers, where the killers would not see or hear the human consequences of their fatal actions (Russell & Gregory, 2005)."
        
        "On the positive side, people act most compassionately toward those who are personalized. That is why appeals for the unborn, for the hungry, or for animal rights are nearly always personalized with a compelling photograph or description."
        
        "When queried by researchers John Lydon and Christine Dunkel-Schetter (1994), expectant women expressed more commitment to their pregnancies if they had seen ultrasound pictures of their fetuses that clearly displayed body parts."
      - Closeness and legitimacy of the authority
        
        "When Milgram's experimenter gave the commands by telephone, full obedience dropped to 21 percent (although many lied and said they were obeying). Other studies confirm that when the one making the command is physically close, compliance increases. Given a light touch on the arm, people are more likely to lend a dime, sign a petition, or sample a new pizza (Kleinke, 1977; Smith et al., 1982; Willis & Hamm, 1980)."
        
        "The authority, however, must be perceived as legitimate. In another twist on the basic study, the researcher received a rigged telephone call that required him to leave the laboratory. He said that since the equipment recorded data automatically, the 'teacher' should just go ahead. After the researcher left, an assistant (actually a second confederate), assumed command. The assistant 'decided' that the shock should be increased one level for each wrong answer and instructed the teacher accordingly. Now 80 percent of the teachers refused to comply fully. The confederate feigning disgust at this defiance, sat down in front of the shock generator and tried to take over the teacher's role. At that point most of the defiant participants protested. Some tried to unplug the generator. One large man lifted the zealous confederate from his chair and threw him across the room. This rebellion against an illegitimate authority contrasted sharply with the differential politeness usually shown with the experimenter."
        
        "In a later reanalysis of the Milgram studies, Stephen Reicher and his colleagues (2012) found that participants were significantly more obedient when they identified with the researcher or the scientific community he represents. They obeyed orders because they believed they were making a contribution to science and were thus doing something worthy and noble. 'Followers do not lose their moral compass so much as choose particular authorities to guide them through the dilemmas of everyday life,' they noted (Reicher & Haslam, 2011, p. 61)."
        
        "In one study, hospital nurses were called by an unknown physician and ordered to administer an obvious drug overdose (Hofling et al., 1966). The researchers told one group of nurses and nursing students about the experiment and asked how they would react. Nearly all said they would not have followed the order. Nevertheless, when 22 other nurses were actually given the phoned-in overdose order, all but one obeyed without delay (until being intercepted on their way to the patient). Although not all nurses are so compliant (Krackow & Blass, 1995; Rank & Jacobson, 1977), these nurses were following a familiar script: Doctor (a legitimate authority) orders; nurse obeys."
        
        "The compliant nurse might empathize with the reported 70 fast-food restaurant managers in 30 states who, between 1995 and 2006, complied with orders from a self-described authority, usually a con man posing as a police officer (ABC News, March 2004; Snopes, 2008; Wikipedia, 2008). (...) After forcing a 19-year-old female employee to strip against her will, a South Dakota restaurant manager explained that 'I never wanted to do it... I was just doing what he told me to do.' The manager feared that disobedience might mean losing his job or going to jail, explained his defense lawyer."
      - Institutional authority
        
        "If the prestige of the authority is that important, then perhaps the institutional prestige of Yale University legitimized the Milgram experiment commands. In post-experimental interviews, many participants said that had it not been for Yale's reputation, they would not have obeyed."
        
        "To see whether that was true, Milgram moved the study to less prestigious Bridgeport, Connecticut. He set himself up in a modest commercial building as the 'Research Associates of Bridgeport.' When the 'learner-has-a-heart-condition' study was run with the same personnel, what percentage of the men do you suppose fully obeyed? Although the obedience rate (48 percent) was still remarkably high, it was lower than the 65 percent rate at Yale. In a recent replication of Milgram's paradigm in France, a TV game show host—rather than an experimenter in a lab coat—gave the orders to shock the learner, and 81 percent obeyed to the end (Beauvois et al., 2012)."
      - The liberating effects of group influence
        
        "Conformity can also be constructive. The heroic firefighters who rushed into the flaming World Trade Center towers on 9/11 were 'incredibly brave,' note social psychologists Susan Fiske, Lasana Harris, and Amy Cuddy (2004), but they were also 'partly obeying their superiors, partly conforming to extraordinary group loyalty."
        
        "Perhaps you can recall a time you felt justifiably angry at an unfair teacher but you hesitated to object. Then one or two other students spoke up about the unfair practices, and you followed their example, which had a liberating effect."
        
        "Milgram captured this liberating effect of conformity by placing the teacher with two confederates who were to help conduct the procedure. During the study, both confederates defied the experimenter, who then ordered the real participant to continue alone. Did he? No. Ninety percent liberated themselves by conforming to the defiant confederates."
  - - - Behavior and attitudes
        
        "When external influences override inner convictions, attitudes fail to determine behavior. These experiments vividly illustrate that principle. When responding alone, Asch's participants nearly always gave the correct answer. It was another matter when they stood alone against a group."
        
        "Why were the participants unable to disengage themselves?"
        
        "They were (...) in a different psychological state from that of someone beginning the experiment at that point—it was a 'slippery slope' of obedience, and once they started down it was difficult to stop."
        
        "External behavior and internal disposition can feed each other, sometimes in an escalating spiral. Thus, reported Milgram (1974, p. 10):
        Many subjects harshly devalue the victim as a consequence of acting against him. Such comments as, 'He was so stupid and stubborn he deserved to get shocked,' were common. Once having acted against the victim, these subjects found it necessary to view him as an unworthy individual, whose punishment was made inevitable by his own deficiencies of intellect and character."
        
        "During the early 1970s, Greece's military junta used this 'blame the victim' process to train torturers (Haritos-Fatouros, 1988, 2002; Staub, 1989, 2003). (...) they would first assign the trainee to guard prisoners, then to participate in arrest squads, then to hit prisoners, then to observe torture, and only then to practice it. Step by step, an obedient but otherwise decent person evolved into an agent of cruelty. Compliance bred acceptance."
        
        "(...) From his study of human genocide across the world, Staub (2003) shows where gradually increasing aggression can lead. Too often, criticism produces contempt, which licenses cruelty, which, when justified, leads to brutality, then killing, then systematic killing. Evolving attitudes both follow and justify actions. Staub's disturbing conclusion: 'Human beings have the capacity to come to experience killing other people as nothing extraordinary' (1989, p.13)."
        
        "But humans also have the capacity for heroism. During the Nazi Holocaust, the French village of Le Chambon sheltered 5,000 Jews and other refugees destined for deportation to Germany. (...) Ordered to divulge the locations of sheltered Jews, the head pastor modeled disobedience (...). Without knowing how terrible the war would be, the resisters, beginning in 1940, made an initial commitment and then—supported by their beliefs, by their own authorities, and by one another—remained defiant until the village's liberation in 1944."
      - The power of social norms