Stanford Prison Experiment Discussion

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The Stanford Prison Experiment is discussed in Ch 13. This 29 minute video contains Philip Zimbardo, the researcher, commenting about his historical study. 

Think about and discuss: Your personal reaction to the video and the experiment. What do you think you would you have done as either a prisoner or a guard?  Talk about the ethics of such a study today. Be sure to use the Grading Criteria and cite your resources.

13
Social Psychology

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module 13.1
Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior
After studying this module, you should be able to:
Evaluate Kohlberg’s approach to moral reasoning.
Describe the prisoner’s dilemma task.
Explain how logical considerations can lead to cooperation.
Describe bystander apathy and social loafing.
List factors that correlate with aggressive behavior.

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2

Morality: Logical or Emotional?
Lawrence Kohlberg argued that we should evaluate moral reasoning on the basis of the reasons people give for a decision rather than the decision itself.
Limitations of Kohlberg’s approach:
Ordinarily, people make quick moral decisions intuitively and emotionally, rather than reasoning them out logically.
Kohlberg assumed that all moral decisions are based on seeking justice and avoiding harm to others; however, most of the world’s people also consider such matters as group loyalty, respect for authority, and spiritual purity.

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Psychologists once regarded morality as a set of arbitrary rules, like learning to stop at a red light and go at a green light. Lawrence Kohlberg proposed instead that moral reasoning is a process that matures through a series of stages, similar to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
According to Kohlberg, to evaluate people’s moral reasoning, we should ask about the reasons for their decisions, not just about the decisions themselves.
Kohlberg focused psychologists’ attention on the reasoning processes behind moral decisions, but people usually don’t deliberate about right and wrong before they act. More often, they make a quick decision and then look for reasons afterward.
In addition to the fact that most moral decisions are more emotional rather than logical, Kohlberg’s analysis falls short in another way.
Also, many people, especially in non-Western cultures, base their moral decisions on factors Kohlberg ignored, including loyalty, authority, and purity.
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Altruistic Behavior
Altruistic behavior – helping others without a benefit to ourselves
Explanations for altruistic behavior:
People want a reputation for being fair and helpful.
People who do cooperate punish those who don’t.

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While humans sometimes engage in prosocial or altruistic behavior—helping others without a benefit to ourselves—altruism is uncommon in other animal species. In almost every species, animals devote great energies and risk their lives to help their babies or other relatives. But they seldom do much to help unrelated individuals.
One explanation for altruistic behavior is that cooperating builds a reputation, and a reputation requires individuals to recognize one another. The other explanation is that people who cooperate will punish those who do not. Again, to retaliate, they need to recognize who has failed to cooperate.
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Figure 13.1
▲ Figure 13.1 In the prisoner’s dilemma, each person has an incentive to confess. But if both people confess, they suffer worse than if both had refused to confess.

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To investigate cooperation and competition, many researchers have used the prisoner’s dilemma, a situation where people choose between a cooperative act and a competitive act that benefits themselves but hurts others. Imagine that you and a partner are arrested and charged with armed robbery. The police take you into separate rooms and urge each of you to confess. If neither of you confesses, the police do not have enough evidence to convict you of robbery, but they can convict you of a lesser offense with a sentence of a year in prison. If either confesses and testifies against the other, the confessor goes free and the other gets 20 years in prison. If both confess, you each get 5 years in prison. Each of you knows that the other person has the same options. Figure 13.1 illustrates the choices.
If your partner does not confess, you can confess and go free. (Let’s assume you care only about yourself and not about your partner.) If your partner confesses, you still gain by confessing because you will get only 5 years in prison instead of 20. So you confess. Your partner, reasoning the same way, also confesses, so you both get 5 years in prison. If you had both kept quiet, you would have served only 1 year in prison. The situation trapped both people into uncooperative behavior.
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Accepting or Denying Responsibility toward Others
Bystander Helpfulness and Apathy
Diffusion of responsibility – the tendency to feel less responsibility to act when other people are equally able to act
Pluralistic ignorance – a situation in which people say nothing, and each person falsely assumes that others have a better-informed opinion
Social Loafing
Social loafing – the tendency to work less hard (“loaf”) when sharing work with other people
Most people work less hard when they are part of a group than when they work alone, except when they think they can make a unique contribution or if they think others are evaluating their contribution.

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People are less likely to help someone if other people are in an equally good position to help.
Social loafing is the tendency to “loaf” (or work less hard) when sharing work with other people.
People work hard in groups if they expect other people to notice their effort or if they think they can contribute something that other group members cannot.
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Causes of Anger and Aggression
Frustration-aggression hypothesis – theory in which the main cause of anger and aggression is an obstacle that stands in the way of doing something or obtaining something
Frustration or discomfort of any kind increases the probability of anger and aggression, especially if one perceives that others have caused their frustration intentionally.

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According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis, the main cause of anger and aggression is frustration—an obstacle that stands in the way of doing something or obtaining something. However, frustration makes you angry only when you believe the other person acted intentionally. You might feel angry if someone ran down the hall and bumped into you, but probably not if someone slipped on a wet spot and bumped into you.
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Individual Differences in Aggression
Studies show little to no relationship between aggressiveness and low self-esteem, playing video games, and mental illness.
Only mentally ill people who are also alcohol or substance abusers are more prone to violence.
Factors associated with a tendency toward violent behavior:
Growing up in a violent neighborhood
Having parents with a history of antisocial behavior
Having a mother who smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol during pregnancy
Poor nutrition or exposure to lead or other toxic chemicals early in life
A history of head injury
Not feeling guilty after hurting someone
Weaker than normal sympathetic nervous system responses
High levels of testosterone coupled with low levels of cortisol
A history of suicide attempts

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Some studies find a small relationship between aggressive behaviors and low self-esteem, but others find virtually no relationship between the two. No evidence indicates that low self-esteem causes aggressiveness. More likely, whatever life events led to low self-esteem also led to aggressiveness.
Research on the correlation between mental illness and aggressiveness shows that only those mental patients who are also alcohol or substance abusers pose an increased danger of committing a violent crime. Mentally ill people without drug or alcohol abuse are no more dangerous than anyone else.
Many people have worried that playing video games may increase aggressive behavior or decrease cooperative behavior. However, the best-designed studies show little or no effect.
Factors associated with a tendency toward violent behavior include:
Growing up in a violent neighborhood
Having parents with a history of antisocial behavior
Having a mother who smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol during pregnancy
Poor nutrition or exposure to lead or other toxic chemicals early in life
A history of head injury
Not feeling guilty after hurting someone
Weaker than normal sympathetic nervous system responses (which correlates with not feeling bad after hurting someone)
High levels of testosterone coupled with low levels of cortisol
A history of suicide attempts
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Cognitive Influences on Violence
People sometimes justify cruel or uncooperative behavior by lowering their opinion of the victims.
Deindividualization – perceiving others as anonymous, without any real personality
Dehumanization – perceiving others as less than human
People also decrease their own sense of personal responsibility.

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People often justify their acts by thinking of themselves as better than the people they are hurting. Psychologists describe this process as deindividualization (perceiving others as anonymous, without any real personality) and dehumanization (perceiving others as less than human). The result is greater acceptance of violence and injustice.
People also justify their violent behavior by decreasing their own sense of identity. For example, a solider on duty is no longer acting as an individual making his or her own decisions. A Ku Klux Klansman wearing a hood suppresses a sense of personal identity.
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Sexual Aggression
Rape – sexual activity without the consent of the partner
Characteristics of rapists:
Hostile
Distrustful
History of other acts of violence and criminality
High users of pornography, especially violent pornography
Extreme self-centeredness

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Rape is sexual activity without the consent of the partner. In one survey, about 10 percent of adult women reported that they had been forcibly raped, and another 10 percent said they had sex while incapacitated by alcohol or other drugs. However, the statistics vary considerably from one study to another.
Of all sexual assaults that legally qualify as rape, only half the victims think of the experience as rape, and far fewer report it to the police. Most women who have involuntary sex with a boyfriend or other acquaintance do not call the event rape, especially if alcohol was involved.
Rapists are not all alike. Many are hostile, distrustful men with a history of other acts of violence and criminality. Sexually aggressive men tend to be high users of pornography, and rapists are much more likely than other men to enjoy violent pornography. Another element in rape is extreme self-centeredness, or lack of concern for others.
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module 13.2
Social Perception and Cognition
After studying this module, you should be able to:
Define the primacy effect in social psychology and give an example.
Describe how the implicit association test measures prejudices.
Discuss methods of overcoming prejudice.
Distinguish among three main influences on attributions.
Describe the actor-observer effect and the fundamental attribution error.
Discuss cultural differences in attributions.

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First Impressions
Primacy effect – the tendency for the first information we learn about someone to influence us more than later information does
We form first impressions quickly and more accurately than we might guess.
Self-fulfilling prophecies – expectations that increase the probability of the predicted event

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Other things being equal, we pay more attention to the first information we learn about someone than to later information. This tendency is known as the primacy effect.
First impressions form rapidly, and some are more accurate than we might guess. However, first impressions are not always accurate.
First impressions can become self-fulfilling prophecies, expectations that increase the probability of the predicted event. Suppose a psychologist hands you a cell phone and asks you to talk with someone, while showing you a photo supposedly of that person. Unknown to the person you are talking to, the psychologist might hand you a photo of a very attractive person or a much less attractive photo. Not surprisingly, you act friendlier to someone you regard as attractive. Besides that, if you think you are talking to someone attractive, that person reacts by becoming more cheerful and talkative. In short, your first impression changes how you act and influences the other person to live up to (or down to) your expectations.
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Stereotypes and Prejudices
Stereotype – a belief or expectation about a group of people
Prejudice – an unfavorable attitude toward a group of people
Discrimination – unequal treatment of different groups of people

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Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about groups of people. A prejudice is an unfavorable stereotype. It is usually associated with discrimination, which is unequal treatment of different groups, such as minority groups, the physically disabled, people who are obese, or gays and lesbians.
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Implicit Measures of Prejudice
Implicit association test (IAT) – procedure that measures reactions to combinations of categories, such as “flowers” and “pleasant”
The implicit association test finds evidence of subtle prejudice, even among many people who deny having such prejudices.
However, most people are aware of their prejudices, even if they don’t like to admit them.

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The implicit association test (IAT) measures reactions to combinations of categories.
The IAT may reveal prejudices that people don’t want to admit, even to themselves.
However, contrary to what some theorists have assumed, it is wrong to say that the prejudices are unconscious. When people are asked about their prejudices but urged to answer honestly, their answers correlate more strongly with their IAT results. Also, if people are asked to predict their results on the IAT, they do so fairly accurately. In short, most people do know their prejudices, even if they hesitate to admit them.
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Overcoming Prejudice
People who work together for a common goal can overcome prejudices that initially divide them.

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Working together for a common goal weakens prejudices between groups.
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Decreasing Prejudice by Increasing Acceptance
A goal of treating everyone the same sometimes backfires by implying that everyone should act the same.
A goal of multiculturalism is generally a better goal.
Multiculturalism – accepting, recognizing, and enjoying the differences among people and groups and the unique contributions that each person can offer

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Most people today publicly endorse the goal of treating all people fairly, without prejudice. However, the way of expressing this goal has major effects on the result. Consider the expression, “we treat all people the same.” Although that goal sounds good, it seems to imply, “We expect all people to act the same.” What if you are not the same as everyone else? You might differ from the others in racial or ethnic background, sexual orientation, or other regards. You might be older or younger than most, or the only man or only woman in the organization. Under a policy of treating everyone the same, people are supposed to ignore the fact that you are different. When people try not to notice skin color, sexual orientation, or anything else, or try to avoid seeming prejudiced, they find the effort unpleasant and tiring. The result is often an increase in prejudice.
An alternative is multiculturalism—accepting, recognizing, and enjoying the differences among people and groups and the unique contributions that each person can offer. Research shows advantages of the multiculturalism approach. When a company or other organization endorses a multiculturalist position, members of both majority and minority groups feel more comfortable.
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Attributions (slide 1 of 3)
Attribution – the set of thought processes we use to assign causes to our own behavior and that of others
Internal versus External Causes
Internal attributions – explanations based on someone’s attitudes, personality traits, abilities, or other characteristics
External attributions – explanations based on the situation, including events that would influence almost anyone
We make an internal or external attribution based on the following:
1. Consensus information – how a person’s behavior compares with other people’s behavior
2. Consistency information – how a person’s behavior varies from one time to the next
3. Distinctiveness – how a person’s behavior varies from one situation to another

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Attribution is the set of thought processes by which we assign internal or external causes to behavior.
Fritz Heider, the founder of attribution theory, emphasized the distinction between internal and external causes of behavior. Internal attributions are explanations based on someone’s attitudes, personality traits, abilities, or other characteristics. External attributions are explanations based on the situation, including events that would influence almost anyone. An example of an internal attribution is saying that your brother walked to work this morning “because he likes the exercise.” An external attribution would be that he walked “because his car wouldn’t start.” Internal attributions are also known as dispositional (i.e., relating to the person’s disposition). External attributions are also known as situational (i.e., relating to the situation).
Harold Kelley proposed that three types of information influence us to make an internal or external attribution:
Consensus information (how the person’s behavior compares with other people’s behavior). If someone behaves the same way you believe other people would in the same situation, you make an external attribution, recognizing that the situation led to the behavior. When a behavior seems unusual, you look for an internal attribution.
Consistency information (how the person’s behavior varies from one time to the next). If someone almost always seems friendly, you make an internal attribution (“friendly person”). If someone’s friendliness varies, you make an external attribution, such as an event that elicited a good or bad mood.
Distinctiveness (how the person’s behavior varies from one situation to another). If your friend is pleasant to all but one individual, you assume that person has done something to irritate your friend (an external attribution).
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Attributions (slide 2 of 3)
The Actor-Observer Effect
Actor-observer effect – the tendency to be more likely to make internal attributions for other people’s behavior and to be more likely to make external attributions for one’s own behavior
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Fundamental attribution error – the tendency to make internal attributions for people’s behavior even when we see evidence for an external influence on behavior

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We are more likely to attribute internal causes to other people’s behavior than to our own. This tendency is called the actor-observer effect. You are an “actor” when you try to explain the causes of your own behavior and an “observer” when you try to explain someone else’s behavior.
People frequently attribute people’s behavior to internal causes, even when they see evidence of external influences. This tendency is known as the fundamental attribution error. It is also known as the correspondence bias, meaning a tendency to assume a strong similarity between someone’s current actions and his or her dispositions.
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Attributions (slide 3 of 3)
Cultural Differences in Attribution and Related Matters
People in Asian cultures are less likely than those in Western cultures to attribute behavior to consistent personality traits and more likely to attribute it to the situation.
Using Attributions to Manage Perceptions of Ourselves
Self-serving biases – attributions that people adopt to maximize credit for success and minimize blame for failure
Self-handicapping strategies – techniques for intentionally putting oneself at a disadvantage to provide an excuse for failure

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The fundamental attribution error varies by culture. People in Western cultures tend to make more internal (personality) attributions, whereas people in China and other Asian countries tend to make more external (situational) attributions. As a result, Asians expect more change and less consistency in people’s behavior from one situation to another. They are less guided by first impressions than Americans are. They are also more likely to accept contradictions and look for compromises instead of viewing one position as correct and another as incorrect.
People often try to protect their self-esteem by attributing their successes to skill and their failures to outside influences. For example, you might credit your good grades to your intelligence and hard work (an internal attribution) but blame your worst grades on unfair tests (an external attribution).
People sometimes place themselves at a disadvantage to provide an excuse for failure. Suppose you fear you will do poorly on a test. You stay out late at a party the night before. Now you can blame your low score on your lack of sleep without admitting that you might have done poorly anyway.
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module 13.3
Attitudes and Persuasion
After studying this module, you should be able to:
Explain how psychologists measure attitudes.
Define cognitive dissonance and describe an experiment that demonstrates it.
Distinguish between the peripheral and central routes to persuasion.
List some important techniques of persuasion.
Discuss the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of fear messages.
Describe why coercive persuasion leads to unreliable information.

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Attitudes and Behavior
Attitude – a like or dislike that influences behavior
Attitude Measurement
People’s reported attitudes do not always match their behaviors.
Cognitive Dissonance and Attitude Change
Cognitive dissonance – a state of unpleasant tension that people experience when they hold contradictory attitudes or when their behavior contradicts their stated attitudes, especially if the inconsistency distresses them

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An attitude is a like or dislike that influences behavior. Your attitudes include an evaluative or emotional component (how you feel about something), a cognitive component (what you know or believe), and a behavioral component (what you are likely to do).
People’s reported attitudes do not always match their behaviors. Many people say one thing and do another with regard to alcohol, safe sex, conserving natural resources, or studying hard for tests. Your attitudes are most likely to match your behavior if you have personal experience with the topic.
Cognitive dissonance is a state of unpleasant tension that arises when a behavior conflicts with an attitude. People try to reduce the inconsistency, often by changing their attitudes.
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Mechanisms of Attitude Change and Persuasion
Peripheral route to persuasion – use of superficial factors to persuade people, such as repetition of a message or prestige of the speaker
Central route to persuasion – process in which people who take a decision seriously invest enough time and effort to evaluate the evidence and reason logically

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When a decision seems unimportant, or when you have so many more serious concerns that you cannot devote much effort to a decision, you form or change an attitude by the peripheral route to persuasion that is based mostly on emotions: If for any reason you associate something with feeling happy, you form a favorable attitude toward it. For example, when you buy food items at a supermarket, such as drinks, potato chips, and pasta sauce, you probably didn’t form your attitudes toward various brands by carefully evaluating the ingredients. You might like the colorful packaging, or you saw an entertaining commercial on television, or you saw one of your friends using one of these products.
The central route of persuasion requires investing enough time and effort to evaluate the evidence and reason logically about a decision. Your emotions can still enter into the decision, but only if they are relevant. For example, if you are buying a new home, you carefully examine the quality of the house, the price, the neighborhood, and a great deal more. You might be in a better mood when you see one house than another just because of nicer weather or some other irrelevant factor, but you don’t let that kind of emotion influence your decision.
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Special Techniques of Persuasion (slide 1 of 2)
Liking and Similarity
Someone you like or consider similar to yourself is more persuasive than other people are.
Social Norms
Being told that most people favor some idea or action makes it appealing.
Reciprocation
You may feel obligated to perform a favor for someone who did a favor for you or gave you something.
Contrast Effects
An item may appear more desirable because of its contrast to something else.

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People are more successful at persuading you if you like them or see them as similar to yourself.
A powerful influence technique is to show that many other people are doing what you want them to do.
Civilization is based on the concept of reciprocation: If you do me a favor, then I owe you one.
An offer can seem good or bad, depending on how it compares to something else.
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Special Techniques of Persuasion (slide 2 of 2)
Foot in the Door
Foot-in-the-door technique – method of eliciting compliance whereby someone starts with a modest request, which you accept, and follows with a larger request
Bait and Switch
Bait-and-switch technique – method of eliciting compliance whereby a person first offers an extremely favorable deal, gets the other person to commit to the deal, and then makes additional demands
That’s Not All!
That’s-not-all technique – method of eliciting compliance whereby someone makes an offer and then improves the offer before you have a chance to reply
Fear Messages
Messages that appeal to fear are sometimes effective, unless the message is too extreme or if it suggests that the problem is hopeless.

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In the foot-in-the-door, bait-and-switch, and that’s-not-all techniques, a first request makes you more likely to accept a second request.
Some attempts at persuasion use threats. Fear messages are sometimes effective, but not always. If a message is too frightening, many people simply don’t want to listen to it, or if they do listen to it, they don’t believe it. An extreme message may suggest that the problem is hopeless.
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Delayed Influence
The Sleeper Effect
When people reject a message because of their low regard for the person who proposed it, they sometimes forget where they heard the idea and later come to accept it.
Sleeper effect – delayed persuasion by an initially rejected message
Minority Influence
Although a minority may have little influence at first, it can, through persistent repetition of its message, eventually persuade the majority to adopt its position or consider other ideas.

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Suppose you hear an idea from someone with poor qualifications. Because of what you think of the speaker, you reject the idea. Weeks later, you forget where you heard the idea (source amnesia) and remember only the idea itself. At that point, its persuasive impact may increase. Psychologists use the term sleeper effect to describe delayed persuasion by an initially rejected message.
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Differences in Resistance to Persuasion
Forewarning effect – phenomenon that informing people that they are about to hear a persuasive speech activates their resistance and weakens the persuasion
Inoculation effect – tendency for people to be less persuaded by an argument because of first hearing a weaker argument

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If people have been warned that someone will try to persuade them of something or if they have previously heard a weak version of the persuasive argument, they tend to resist the argument.
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Coercive Persuasion
Coercive techniques increase confessions by both guilty and innocent people, and therefore make the confessions unreliable evidence.

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Techniques designed to pressure a suspect into confessing decrease the reliability of the confession because, under these circumstances, many innocent people confess also.
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module 13.4
Interpersonal Attraction
After studying this module, you should be able to:
Explain theoretically why people and other animals care about physical attractiveness when choosing a mate.
List some factors that increase the probability of forming a friendship or romantic relationship.
Distinguish between passionate and companionate love.

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Establishing Relationships (slide 1 of 2)
Proximity and Familiarity
Proximity – the tendency to choose as friends people with whom we come in frequent contact
Mere exposure effect – principle that the more often we come in contact with someone or something, the more we tend to like that person or object
Physical Attractiveness
Theoretically, physical attractiveness should be a cue to someone’s health and therefore desirability as a mate.
Someone with approximately average features is attractive, presumably because average features have been associated with successful breeding in the past.

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Proximity means closeness. We are most likely to become friends with people who live or work in proximity to us. One reason proximity is important is that people who live nearby discover what they have in common. Another reason is the mere exposure effect, the principle that the more often we come in contact with someone or something, the more we tend to like that person or object.
However, familiarity does not always increase liking. Becoming familiar with someone gives you a chance to find out what you have in common, but it also lets you see the other person’s flaws.
In several bird species, females prefer colorful males that sing loudly and have long tails. Only a healthy male can afford the traits of growing bright feathers and long tails. Throughout her evolutionary history, most females who chose such partners produced healthier offspring than those who chose dull-colored, quiet, inactive males.
In humans, good-looking generally means normal. An attractive person has nearly average features and few irregularities—no crooked teeth, skim blemishes, or asymmetries, and no facial hair on women. Normal implies healthy. Thus, good appearance is evidently a reasonable cue to someone’s health.
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Establishing Relationships (slide 2 of 2)
Similarity
In the early stage of romantic attraction, physical appearance is the key factor, but similarity of interests and goals becomes more serious later.
The Equity Principle
Exchange (or equity) theories – the idea that social relationships are transactions in which partners exchange goods and services
Relationships are most likely to thrive if each person believes that he or she is getting about as good a deal as the other person is.
Dating and Modern Technology
The Internet has added a new dimension to dating.

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Most romantic partners and close friends resemble each other in age, physical attractiveness, political and religious beliefs, intelligence, education, and attitudes. As a relationship matures, people’s interests become more and more alike.
According to exchange or equity theories, social relationships are transactions in which partners exchange goods and services. As in business, a relationship is most stable if both partners believe the deal is fair. It is easiest to establish a fair deal if the partners are about equally attractive and intelligent, contribute about equally to the finances and the chores, and so forth.
The Internet has added a new dimension to dating. Internet dating services introduce couples who never would have met otherwise. They bring couples together who have at least a few important aspects in common.
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Marriage and Long-Term Commitments
Marriage and similar relationships often break up because of problems that were present from the start, such as displays of anger.
The best predictor of long-term satisfaction is much display of genuine affection between newlyweds.
Psychologists have maintained that a romantic relationship begins with passionate love and gradually develops over many years into companionate love.
Passionate love – stage in a relationship when sexual desire, romance, and friendship increase in parallel
Companionate love – stage in a relationship marked by sharing, care, and protection
For many people, love fades over a lifetime, but for a substantial number of people, it remains strong and passionate even after decades of marriage.

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Studies show that couples whose arguments escalate to greater and greater anger are likely to consider divorce later.
The best predictor of long-term satisfaction is much display of genuine affection between newlyweds.
Psychologists distinguish between passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love is marked by sexual desire and excitement, whereas companionate love is marked by sharing, care, and protection.
Love fades for many couples, but for some it remains strong for a lifetime.
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module 13.5
Interpersonal Influence
After studying this module, you should be able to:
Describe Asch’s classic experiment demonstrating conformity.
Discuss cultural differences in conformity.
Evaluate Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
Describe Milgram’s study on obedience.
Give examples of group polarization and groupthink.

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32

Social Influence
People influence our behavior by setting norms and by offering information.
We also follow others’ examples just because they suggested a possible action.

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People influence us constantly. First, people set norms that define the expectations of a situation. You watch how others dress and act in any situation, and you tend to do the same. Second, they provide us with information. For example, if you approach a building and find crowds quickly fleeing from it and screaming, they probably know something you don’t. Third, people influence us just by suggesting a possible action. Seeing people yawn makes you feel like yawning, too. Why? They haven’t given you any new information, and you don’t necessarily wish to resemble them. You copy just because seeing a yawn suggested the possibility.
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Conformity
Conformity – altering one’s behavior to match other people’s behavior or expectations
Conformity to an Obviously Wrong Majority
Many people conform to the majority view even when they are confident that the majority is wrong.
An individual is as likely to conform to a group of three as to a larger group, but an individual with an ally is less likely to conform.
Variations in Conformity
Although some cultures tend to be more collectivist or conforming than others, it is an overgeneralization to regard all Asian cultures as collectivist or to assume that all members of a society are equally collectivist.

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Conformity means altering one’s behavior to match other people’s behavior or expectations.
To find out if we conform our opinions even if we know that everyone else is wrong, Solomon Asch conducted a now-famous series of experiments. In Asch’s conformity studies, a participant was asked which of three lines matched another line. Before answering, the participant heard other people (known as confederates) answer incorrectly. To Asch’s surprise, 37 of the 50 participants conformed to the majority at least once, and 14 conformed on most of the trials. When Asch varied the number of confederates who gave incorrect answers, he found that people conformed to a group of three or four just as readily as to a larger group. However, a participant with an ally giving correct answers conformed much less.
Are people in certain cultures more prone to conformity as a general rule? In most Asian countries, the percentage of conforming answers tends to be higher than in the United States. The cultures of southern Asia, including China and Japan, are often described as “collectivist” in contrast to the “individualist” cultures of the United States, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe. According to this view, Western culture encourages originality, individualism, and uniqueness, whereas Eastern culture favors subordination of the individual to the welfare of the family or society.
Some researchers suggest that the “collectivist” notion is wrong. Others point out each country has multiple subcultures.
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Obedience to Authority
Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues performed a study in which they paid and randomly assigned college students to play the roles of guards and prisoners.
Within six days, the researchers had to cancel the study because many of the guards were physically and emotionally bullying the prisoners.
Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find out if normal people would follow orders that might hurt someone.
In the experiment, a “teacher” was asked to deliver shocks to a “learner” who made mistakes.
The result was that a majority of the people delivered shocks all the way to the maximum voltage.

© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
In the early 1970s, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues performed one of the best known studies in social psychology. They paid college students to play the roles of guards and prisoners for two weeks during a vacation period. The researchers set up the basement of a Stanford University building as a prison and randomly assigned participants to the roles of guard or prisoner. Within six days, the researchers had to cancel the study because many of the guards were physically and emotionally bullying the prisoners. Zimbardo concluded that the situation had elicited cruel behavior. Normal, well-educated, middle-class young men, when given power over others, had quickly abused that power. The implication is that we shouldn’t blame people who abuse their power, because most of us would do the same thing in that situation.
Stanley Milgram hypothesized that when an authority figure gives normal people instructions to do something that might hurt another person, some of them will obey. To test his hypothesis, he conducted a landmark experiment, known as the Milgram Experiment.
Two adult men at a time arrived at the experiment—a real participant and a confederate of the experimenter pretending to be a participant. The experimenter told them that in this study of learning, one participant would be the “teacher” and the other would be the “learner.” The teacher would read lists of words through a microphone to the learner, sitting in another room. The teacher would then test the learner’s memory for the words. Whenever the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to deliver an electric shock as punishment. However, the learner never received shocks, but the teacher was led to believe that he did.
Throughout the experiment, the learner made many mistakes. The experimenter instructed the teacher to begin by punishing the learner with the 15-volt switch for his first mistake and increase by 15 volts for each successive mistake, up to the maximum of 450 volts.
As the voltage went up, the learner in the next room cried out in pain. If the teacher asked who would take responsibility for any harm to the learner, the experimenter replied that he, the experimenter, would take responsibility but insisted, “while the shocks may be painful, they are not dangerous.” When the shocks reached 150 volts, the learner begged to be let out of the experiment, complaining that his heart was bothering him. Beginning at 270 volts, he screamed in agony. At 300 volts, he shouted that he would no longer answer any questions. After 330 volts, he made no response at all. Still, the experimenter ordered the teacher to continue asking questions and delivering shocks. Remember, the learner was not really being shocked. The screams came from a recording.
Of 40 participants, 25 delivered shocks all the way to 450 volts.
Why did so many people obey orders? One reason was that the experimenter agreed to take responsibility. Another reason is that the teachers identified with the experimenter and saw themselves as his assistant. Also, the experimenter started with a small request, a 15-volt shock, and gradually progressed to stronger shocks. It is easy to agree to the small request, and agreeing to that one makes it easier to agree to the next one. If you have already delivered many shocks you are unlikely to quit, because if you quit, you take responsibility for your actions.
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Group Decision Making
Group decisions are generally better than individual decisions, but the outcome depends on circumstances.
Groups sometimes interact in unfavorable ways that stifle dissent or rush to a judgment.
Group polarization – the tendency for people who lean in the same direction on a particular issue to become more extreme in that position after discussing it with one another
Groupthink – the tendency for people to suppress their doubts about a group’s decision for fear of making a bad impression or disrupting group harmony

© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
Groups decisions are generally better than individual decisions, but the outcome depends on circumstances. If you and someone else are equally well informed, you probably will make a better decision together than either of you would separately. However, some groups work together better than others do. One study compared many groups that were asked to make decisions about moral judgments, visual problems, ways of dividing limited resources, and so forth. In this study, decisions were best in groups that cooperated, letting everyone participate about equally rather than letting one person dominate. Groups with a high percentage of women usually outperformed groups with mostly men, who tended to argue and compete.
Groups of people who lean mostly in the same direction on a given issue often make more extreme decisions than most people would have made on their own. This phenomenon is known as group polarization.
Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group fail to express their opposition to a decision for fear of making a bad impression or harming the cohesive spirit of the group. The main elements leading to groupthink are overconfidence by the leadership, underestimation of the problems, and pressure to conform.
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