Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Chapters 1–5
This chapter covers one of the most famous areas of social psychology: how and why people conform, comply, and obey. It walks through the classic studies of Sherif, Asch, and Milgram, then examines the situational and personal factors that predict conformity. Understanding why ordinary people go along with group pressure or authority is central to the course.
Conformity takes three forms: acceptance (you believe it), compliance (you go along publicly but disagree privately), and obedience (you follow a direct order). The classic studies by Sherif (norm formation), Asch (group pressure), and Milgram (obedience to authority) show how powerfully situations shape behaviour. Conformity is highest when responses are public, the group is unanimous, and the person feels uncertain. People conform for two reasons: the desire to be liked (normative influence) and the desire to be right (informational influence).
Conformity
A change in behaviour or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure.
Acceptance
Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure. You change your mind for real.
Compliance
Publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.
Obedience
Acting in accord with a direct order or command.
Autokinetic phenomenon
The apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark. Used by Sherif to study norm formation.
Normative influence
Conformity based on a person's desire to fulfil others' expectations, often to gain acceptance. Springs from the desire to be liked.
Informational influence
Conformity that occurs when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people. Springs from the desire to be right.
Cohesiveness
A "we feeling"; the extent to which members of a group are bonded together. Higher cohesiveness increases conformity.
Reactance
A motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom. Arises when someone threatens freedom of action.
Acceptance: both public behaviour and private belief change. You genuinely adopt the group's view.
Compliance: public behaviour changes but private belief does not. You go along to get along.
Obedience: behaviour changes in response to a direct command from an authority figure.
Sherif used the autokinetic phenomenon (a stationary point of light appears to move in a dark room) to study how norms form.
When tested alone, participants' estimates varied widely. When placed in groups, their estimates converged toward a shared group norm.
The results showed that even without obvious pressure, people adjust their judgements to match others.
Other examples of suggestibility: contagious yawning, comedy-show laugh tracks, mood linkage in social systems, the chameleon effect (natural mimicry), and mass hysteria.
Asch had six confederates give obviously incorrect answers on a line-comparison task to see whether the real participant would conform.
75% of participants conformed at least once. Overall, 37% of responses were conforming; 63% were not.
Some participants never conformed, but the finding is striking given there was no explicit pressure.
Conformity in everyday settings has been observed in dental flossing, cancer screening, referee decisions, and eating behaviour.
Milgram tested what happens when the demands of authority clash with personal conscience.
Participants were told to deliver escalating electric shocks to a "learner" (actually a confederate) for wrong answers.
65% of participants continued to the maximum voltage despite the learner's apparent distress.
Four factors that determined obedience:
Victim's emotional distance (depersonalisation made obedience easier).
Closeness and legitimacy of the authority.
Institutional authority (the experiment's prestige).
Liberating effects of group influence (seeing others disobey made it easier to refuse).
Ethical concerns: the experiment stressed participants, involved deception, and may have altered participants' self-concepts. Milgram argued the results generated important lessons, and most participants were supportive after debriefing.
Both the Asch and Milgram studies show how compliance can override moral sense.
They affirm two social-psychological principles: the link between behaviour and attitudes, and the power of the situation.
Milgram's results parallel "I was only following orders" defences, though the brutality of war and genocide goes beyond obedience and involves indoctrination.
Conformity increases when judgements are difficult or the person feels incompetent.
The more insecure we are about our judgements, the more influenced we are by others.
Group attributes
Groups of 3 to 5 elicit more conformity than groups of 1 or 2.
Unanimity matters greatly. Even one dissenter (even a wrong one) can increase independence.
Cohesiveness: the more bonded the group, the more influence it exerts.
Higher-status people have more impact; junior members acknowledge more conformity.
Public response and prior commitment
Conformity is highest when responses are public and made without prior commitment.
Once a public commitment is made, people tend to stick with it.
Prior commitments also restrain persuasion.
Normative influence: the desire to be liked and accepted. We conform to meet others' expectations.
Informational influence: the desire to be right. We look to others as a source of information about reality.
Friends exert extra influence for both normative and informational reasons.
People who seek to please others and are comfortable following rules are most likely to conform.
The situation has a significant effect, however. Conformity is not purely a personality trait.
Different cultures socialise people to be more or less socially responsive.
Social roles involve a certain degree of conformity. Conforming to role expectations is important when taking on a new social role.
Reactance: when we feel our freedom is threatened, we may resist or do the opposite.
In Western cultures, people act in ways that preserve their sense of individuality, but they are wary of being too different.
In a group, we are most conscious of how we differ from others.
Where community is prized, conformity is more accepted.
Conformity is neither all bad nor all good. We do well to balance independence and attachment, individuality and social identity.
Students often think Milgram's participants were unusually cruel. They were ordinary people placed in an extraordinary situation. The lesson is about the power of situational forces, not individual sadism.
Students sometimes confuse conformity with obedience. Conformity is yielding to group pressure (which may be implicit); obedience is following a direct command from an authority figure.
Students may assume that conformity is always harmful. Conformity enables social coordination, shared norms, and cooperation. It becomes problematic when it overrides moral judgement or stifles dissent.
The Asch study is sometimes remembered as showing that most people conform most of the time. In fact, 63% of individual responses were non-conforming. The striking finding is that 75% conformed at least once, despite knowing the answer was wrong.
⚠️ Know all three classic studies (Sherif, Asch, Milgram) in detail: procedure, key findings, and what they demonstrate.
⚠️ The four factors that determined obedience in Milgram's studies are commonly tested.
⚠️ Normative influence vs. informational influence: know the definitions and be ready to identify which is operating in a given scenario.
⚠️ Understand the conditions that increase conformity: group size, unanimity, public response, prior commitment, status.
⚠️ Reactance is a popular short-answer or multiple-choice item.
Fill in the blank: The three varieties of conformity are ______, ______, and ______. (Acceptance, compliance, obedience)
True or False: In Milgram's studies, 65% of participants stopped delivering shocks before the maximum voltage. (False. 65% continued to the maximum.)
Fill in the blank: Conformity based on the desire to be liked is called ______ influence. (Normative)
True or False: A single dissenter in the Asch paradigm had no effect on the participant's conformity. (False. A single dissenter significantly reduced conformity.)
Fill in the blank: The motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom is called ______. (Reactance)
Q: In Asch's line-comparison experiment, what was the key finding?
A: 75% of participants conformed to the group's obviously wrong answer at least once, and 37% of all individual responses were conforming, despite there being no explicit pressure to agree. This demonstrated the power of implicit group pressure on judgement.
Q: Milgram found that 65% of participants delivered the maximum shock. Name two situational factors that increased obedience.
A: (1) The victim's emotional distance, that is, not being in the same room, made it easier to obey. (2) The closeness and perceived legitimacy of the authority figure: when the experimenter was in the room and presented as a credible scientist, obedience increased.
Q: A student goes along with a study group's answer on a practice problem even though she thinks they are wrong, because she does not want to seem difficult. Is this normative or informational influence?
A: Normative influence. She is conforming to be accepted by the group (the desire to be liked), not because she believes the group's answer is correct.
Q: What is the difference between acceptance and compliance?
A: Acceptance means your private belief genuinely changes to match the group's position. Compliance means you publicly go along with the group while privately maintaining your original belief.
Q: How does reactance work? Give an example.
A: Reactance is the motivation to restore a threatened sense of freedom. For example, if a parent forbids a teenager from seeing a particular friend, the teenager may become more determined to see that friend precisely because their freedom was restricted.
The conformity studies connect directly to the attitude-behaviour gap in Chapter 4: Milgram's and Asch's participants behaved in ways that contradicted their private attitudes. The power of the situation is the same theme that underlies the fundamental attribution error (Chapter 3), since we tend to underestimate situational forces when judging others. Normative and informational influence relate to the self-presentation and self-monitoring concepts from Chapter 2. Cultural variation in conformity ties back to the individualism/collectivism framework from Chapters 2 and 5.
Conformity, compliance, acceptance, obedience, Sherif, autokinetic effect, norm formation, Asch, line study, group pressure, Milgram, obedience study, electric shock experiment, authority, normative influence, informational influence, cohesiveness, group size, unanimity, dissent, public commitment, reactance, social roles, chameleon effect, mass hysteria, suggestibility, NYU social psychology, Chapter 6