Exam 8: Conformity and Obedience: Influencing Behavior

If you wanted to alter the cleaning behavior of your roommates using a technique similar to Shultz and his colleagues (2007), you could give them feedback about injunctive norms using which of the following methods?

According to the text, what are the three things that happen to individuals who resist normative social influence?

Imagine that you are attending a new high school and would like to make friends. On the first day of school, you observe that all of the students in your homeroom are crumpling paper into balls and throwing them on the floor. You begin to do the same. You have conformed to the group's behavior due to __________.

Given the strong need for acceptance and belonging that people have, it is not surprising that they often have a difficult time saying "no" and not conforming when it may lead to social disapproval. Nonetheless, there are times when people resist normative social influence. Name the two main conditions under which someone is more likely to resist normative social influence attempts.

The authors of your text describe two types of social norms. Identify and describe these two types of norms, then state which type of norm is more effective in persuading people to conform.

The authors of your text report instances of teens taking a "polar plunge" by jumping into freezing water. Which of the following best explains such dangerous behavior?

Dr. Hammerstein is a college dean and wants to design a program to help deal with the problem of binge drinking on her campus. The technique currently in favor, and which you'd suggest, is based on the use of __________.

A social influence strategy in which first asking people for a large request will make them more likely to agree to a second, smaller request is called __________.

In a series of studies by Solomon Asch (1951, 1956), when participants judged the lengths of lines alone rather than in a group of confederates, their judgments were accurate about 99 percent of the time. Still, when other participants made judgments in a group of people who gave the wrong answers, they reported incorrect judgments. These findings suggest that __________.

Research by Baron et al. (1996) on the importance of accuracy indicates that the more important it is for people to be accurate, the __________.

In a famous social psychological experiment, participants were led to believe they were to deliver electric shocks of increasing potency to a "learner" for a memorization task. Participants were encouraged to continue even though the learner was clearly in pain, and most participants, in fact, did continue shocking the learner. What famous study is this describing?

People are especially likely to conform due to informational social influence __________.

The text discussed informational social influence and normative social influence. First, describe the two types of social influence and give a real-life example of each. Be sure to clearly explain how your example demonstrates that particular type of social influence.

According to the authors of your text, what is the most plausible explanation for why U.S. soldiers followed their lieutenant's orders to massacre the citizens of the peaceful village of My Lai during the Vietnam War?

You witness a car accident where one car runs a red light and hits another vehicle. When police arrive, they find you and two other people who witnessed the accident. What are they likely to do?

The authors of your text suggest that there are two major motivations for people to conform: __________.

When people conform in attitudes or behaviors in order to be accepted and liked by others, social psychologists say that __________ has occurred.

When it comes to informational social influence processes, we are more likely to conform with experts' ideas and behaviors than with nonexperts' because __________.

Describe a situation when you were the "odd man out." That is, you were the nonconformist. Did your experience resemble the "Johnny Rocco" study results? If so, how? If not, why not? Be sure to use vocabulary from the chapter and be specific.

Taking into account research on factors that increase informational social influence, which game contestant is most likely to yield to the informational social influence provided by teammates or the audience?