Exam 8: Conformity and Obedience: Influencing Behavior

When "Freedom Riders" conformed with their group of fellow civil rights activists, they conformed by behaving __________, but when U.S. soldiers in the Vietnamese village of My Lai conformed, they behaved __________, illustrating that conformity itself it not always simply good or bad.

Imagine that you are on the Olympics Planning Committee. Nine out of ten committee members hold the same opinion. However, one member, Laura, consistently deviates from the group's opinion. How is the group most likely to act toward Laura to bring her in line with the group's opinion?

When Steven goes to his fraternity meeting, which of the following factors will NOT increase the impact of informational social influence on him?

In what kinds of situations are people most likely to yield to normative social influence pressures?

Even though the authors point to a number of situational variables that contributed to the destructive obedience of Stanley Milgram's participants (e.g., normative and informational conformity pressures, conflicting norms), it might still be argued that people have, lurking deep within them, sadistic tendencies that can easily be elicited by situational variables. What experimental findings by Milgram call this "personal attribution" into question?

Marcia values the opinions and desires of both her parents and her close friends. When she's with her parents, she finds herself agreeing with them. When she's with her friends, she finds herself agreeing with them, even though they sometimes disagree with her parents. This change in Marcia's behavior represents the influence of Bibb Latané's (1981) concept of __________ on normative conformity.

Recall that in a study by Baron et al. (1996), participants in one condition were asked to select perpetrators after a lineup in conditions of low ambiguity, so that participants in the control condition made very few mistakes. Recall also that some participants were told that the task was one that was being designed for use by the police department and were offered $20 if they were the most accurate, while others were told that it was just a laboratory task under development. This condition of the study found that __________.

How does conformity to normative social influence differ from conformity to informational social influence?

Catherine and Gabriel are picnicking in the park. They would be LEAST likely to litter when __________.

Bill has been deprived of human contact for long periods of time. He will tend to experience __________.

According to the authors of your text, once participants in Milgram's studies delivered the first shock to the learner, this created internal pressure to obey. This dissonance made it more difficult later for participants to __________.

Informational social influence occurs because __________.

Recall that Muzafer Sherif (1936) used the autokinetic effect to measure participants' estimates of the apparent movement of a stationary spot of light. In what sense did Sherif's findings illustrate informational social influence?

In addition to the role of both informational and normative conformity pressures, participants in Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments administered escalating shocks to a confederate learner because they __________.

Recall that when Solomon Asch (1955) conducted an experiment in which six confederates gave the wrong judgment about the lengths of lines and in which a seventh confederate gave the correct judgment, participants' normative conformity dropped drastically. These findings support the importance of __________ in creating conformity.

Teenagers are often more susceptible to influence attempts from peers than from their parents. This is because peers become more important to teenagers than their parents are. This example represents the influence of Bibb Latané's (1981) concept of __________ on normative conformity.

In the nineteenth century, audience members who knew the opera intimately served as "claques," or experts who signaled others in the audience when to applaud, or as "bisseurs," who signaled when to call for encores. These experts served as a source of __________ for less sophisticated audience members.

Your niece Caitlin is deathly afraid of glass elevators. You have just read Chapter 8, and have decided to use informational social influence to convince Caitlin that there is no need to be afraid to ride in glass elevators. How would you apply the concept of informational social influence in this situation?

Research shows that conformity is not always required of group members. If a member of your group occasionally deviates from the group and the group doesn't impose negative consequences, the individual has used some of his/her __________.

In the "Johnny Rocco" studies conducted by Schachter (1951), he found that when a confederate stubbornly deviated from the opinion of the rest of the group, the confederate was then more likely to __________.