Exam 8: Conformity and Obedience: Influencing Behavior

Burger's (2009) replication of Milgram's studies on obedience to authority suggests that compared with people in the 1970s, people in 2006 were __________ likely to obey authority.

Based on your text, which of the following is the best example of obedience to authority based on normative social influence?

Antoinne is serving on his first jury. Before deliberations, Antoinne is sure that the defendant is guilty. However, when deliberations start, it is clear that he is the only one who thinks the defendant is guilty. Because the defendant is facing twenty years in prison, Antoinne knows he really needs to get this right. What is most likely to happen in this situation?

Which of the following comparisons represents the strength dimension as defined by social impact theory (Latané, 1981)?

In essence, normative social influence arises from humans' fundamental __________.

What is the relation between idiosyncrasy credits and normative conformity? Provide a concrete example of this relation.

Which of the following phenomena is most likely to result in private acceptance of an idea or behavior?

Mariahna has been called to court to testify about a car accident she witnessed. She has never testified before, so she plans to attend a few hearings before the court date to see what really happens in a courtroom. She hopes to see how to address the judge and how people dress when called to testify. Mariahna is using __________ to guide her behavior.

In the study by Berns and colleagues (2005), they used a mental rotation task to replicate Asch's study of conformity to results reported in error by confederates. In the Berns study, they measured brain activity as participants completed the mental rotation task while not knowing the answers provided by confederates, and again after knowing the answers provided by confederates. In this experiment, what percentage of people conformed to the confederate group's wrong answers?

Paul spent Saturday picking up litter on a nearby beach with the biology club. At the end of a very long, hot day, one of the other members asked him to come with the group that evening to catch some invasive lizards as part of a science project. Paul hates lizards. Paul is more likely to agree to the second request now, after spending the day picking up litter, because of __________.

What is the moral or the take-home message of Solomon Asch's (1951, 1956, 1957) series of experiments in which participants were asked to judge the lengths of lines? People will go to great lengths __________.

First-year college students may be more susceptible than seniors to informational social influence because __________.

According to the authors of your text, the work of Milgram and Burger on obedience to authority is a clear example of which conflicting goals of science?

Mark is a Democrat. He just joined a welfare reform committee made up of nine Republicans. Mark holds a minority opinion on this issue. If Mark wants his opinion to influence the group's final recommendations, he should __________.

Rachel is attending Catholic mass for the first time with her best friend Maria. Rachel is unfamiliar with when to sit, when to kneel, or when to stand, and doesn't know when to respond to what the priest says and when to remain silent. When it is time for parishioners to receive Communion, Rachel looks quizzically to Maria, who silently shakes her head. Rachel remains seated while the rest of the congregation files toward the altar. This situation best exemplifies __________.

In a variation on his original experiment, Milgram had the experimenter leave the room after telling participants that they could deliver whatever level of shock they chose. After the experimenter left, a confederate suggested that the participant increase the shock by one level each time the learner made a mistake. In this variation, only about 20 percent of participants went to the highest shock level. The fact that the authority figure's presence made much more of a difference than that of a peer suggests the role of __________.

It's Libby's first day at college. When she approaches the professor to have an "add" form signed, she listens to other students to see if they address the professor as "Professor," "Dr.," "Mrs.," or by her first name, and then she does the same. This is an example of __________.

Given the role of informational and normative social influence processes in contributing to participants' willingness to shock a confederate learner , which of the following situations would yield the LEAST obedience?

When Orson Welles broadcast War of the Worlds, a fictitious program about a hostile Martian takeover of Earth, many people who heard the program eventually believed the takeover was a real threat and panicked. The power of __________ was a major cause of this widespread panic.

Many U.S. troops present at My Lai later reported that they were frightened and confused about whether people in the villages were really enemy soldiers. Others reported that they didn't know whether the rifle-fire they heard was from enemy guns or from the guns of fellow troops. Still, frightened and bewildered, many of them began setting fire to huts and shooting old men, women, and children. This tragic example illustrates that informational influence is most likely to occur when __________.