Conformity and obedience · GCSE Psychology

Conformity

Conformity is changing behaviour or beliefs to fit in with a group.
Asch (1951) asked participants to match line lengths in a group of confederates who sometimes gave wrong answers. On these critical trials, participants conformed about a third of the time, and about three quarters conformed at least once.
Situational factors: group size, anonymity (conformity is lower when answers are private) and task difficulty (conformity rises when the task is harder).
Dispositional factors: personality, such as low self-esteem, and expertise (experts conform less).

Obedience is following orders from an authority figure.
Milgram's (1963) study: participants were told to give "electric shocks" to a learner (a confederate). 65% went all the way to the highest level, 450 volts.
Milgram's agency theory: people obey when they are in an agentic state, seeing themselves as acting for the authority, rather than an autonomous state, where they feel responsible.
Situational factors include the proximity of the authority, the location, and uniform: Bickman found people were more likely to obey someone dressed as a guard.
Dispositional factors: Adorno suggested people with an authoritarian personality, often from strict upbringings, are more obedient.

Asch and Milgram used deception, raising ethical issues, and their lab tasks were artificial.
Their findings have been important in explaining real-life behaviour.

Conformity: Changing behaviour or beliefs to fit in with a group.
Obedience: Following orders from an authority figure.
Confederate: A person who pretends to be a participant but is part of the study.
Agentic state: Seeing oneself as acting on behalf of an authority.
Autonomous state: Feeling responsible for one's own actions.
Authoritarian personality: A personality type that is very obedient to authority.
Situational factor: A feature of the situation that affects behaviour.
Dispositional factor: A feature of the person that affects behaviour.