Exam 8: Conformity: Influencing Behavior

Emilio is designing an ad aimed at increasing seat belt use.He decides to incorporate slogans like, "It's great to buckle up!" rather than "35 percent of adults do not regularly wear a seat belt." Emilio is using ________ in this ad.

Explain what two conflicting norms operated in Stanley Milgram's classic obedience experiments.Also explain why one norm was more likely to be obeyed than the other.

Dr.Emile is trying to replicate Asch's study in a collectivist culture.He's not seeing the degree of conformity in the lab that Asch saw.Which of the following is the most likely reason why?

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

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

The major downside risk of informational social influence is that the more ________ the situation is, the more we rely on others who are no more likely to be knowledgeable or accurate than we ourselves are, leading us each to adopt others' mistakes and misinterpretations.

In order for Burger (2009) to conduct a study replicating Milgram's work on obedience, he had to modify Milgram's procedures.Which of the following is one of the modifications he made?

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?

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

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?

The United States has celebrated independence and rugged individualism from the time of its inception.This suggests that American attitudes toward conformity are

Informational social influence is most likely to play a significant role in which of the following situations?

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?

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 field study by Shultz and his colleagues (2007), several households in a neighborhood received weekly feedback about their level of energy consumption relative to their neighbors.Some households received only descriptive norm feedback, and some received descriptive and injunctive norm feedback.Which method of feedback was most effective in producing energy conservation?

Priscilla is on her way to a concert and has gotten lost.Which of the following people, based on information from your text about informational social influence, would she be most likely to ask for directions?

People are motivated to impose clear definitions on ambiguous situations.All of the following processes EXCEPT ________ are used to resolve ambiguity of information.

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.

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.

Explain how both normative and informational social influence worked to convince Stanley Milgram's participants to deliver powerful shocks to a hapless learner.How did replications of the original study demonstrate the role of normative and informational influence?