Sociology Deviance Social Control Exam 2 Flashcards

We often change our attitudes and behaviors to match the attitudes and behaviors of the people around us. One reason for this conformity is a concern about what other people think of us. This process was demonstrated in a classic study in which college students deliberately gave wrong https://accounting-services.net/ answers to a simple visual judgment task rather than go against the group. Another reason we conform to the norm is because other people often have information we do not, and relying on norms can be a reasonable strategy when we are uncertain about how we are supposed to act.

• Obedience is a form of public conformity which occurs when a person modifies their behavior to obey the directions of another, often in a position of authority.
• In this case, they define such behaviors as what is expected of them as a routine.
• Was a social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal.
• He set up a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford University psychology department and assigned his participants to play the roles of either prisoners or guards, with Zimbardo himself acting as the prison warden.

It is this pressure that makes people to conform (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). He found that proximity of the participant and confederate appeared to play a role. Obedience dropped to 40 percent when the participant was in the same room as the confederate, and dropped to 30 percent when the participant was required to touch the confederate to administer the shock. Although the original studies were conducted with male participants, a similar pattern was found when Milgram used women as participants. The level of obedience did not diminish when the experimenter gave his commands in a meek manner, but dropped to 20 percent when the commands were given by another confederate posing as a participant.

Embodiment of prestige or power

Upon analyzing his findings, Milgram concluded the one factor which changed results was if the confederate sat a different length from the participant. Minority social influence refers to a form of social influence in which the deviant minority rejects the group norms and influence the majority to change their behaviour. Given this change in the process, researchers have begun to explore how certain kinds of minorities can persuaded the majority to change their behaviour.

Compliance frequently occurs when a person is asked by an authority figure to meet a particular set of demands. For example, drivers comply with the directions given by traffic wardens, and students comply with the requests of their teacher, who they view as holding a position of authority. Everyday observation confirms that we often adopt the actions and attitudes of the people around us. But our views on political issues, religious questions, and lifestyles also reflect to some degree the attitudes of the people we interact with.

Why do people to conform in groups? A look at how social influence affects opinions and behavior.

Some theories have been advanced by psychologists to attempt to provide an understanding to this phenomenon. Therefore, people interact at significantly obedience refers to different levels and as a result they influence each other in one way or another through a process known as social influence.

Possible limitations of this study could be the use of a single technique, including both open ended questions and free associations, to unveil the social representations of the authority relationship. The open-ended question should ideally replace, in a short and parsimonious form, the semi-structured interview that is often adopted to uncover the representation content (Fasanelli et al., 2005). Being acquainted with psychological knowledge and theories (i.e. Milgram experiment or Freud theories) could have influenced the results. In order to overcome this limit, it is suggested to conduct further research on different samples, in order to verify the redundancy of the results.