354) Conformity- Solomon

Conformity is adjusting ones behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Solomon- Line Test
Solomon Asch devised a simple test of conformity
As a participant in the study, you arrive at the experiment location in time to take a seat at a
table where five people are already seated.
An experimenter asks the 6 people which of three comparison lines is identical to a standard
line.
You see clearly that the answer is line 2 and await your turn to say so after the others
Now comes the third trial, and the correct answer seems just as clear-cut, but the first person
gives what strikes you as the wrong answer. When the second and third and fourth give the
same wrong answer, you sit up straight and squint. When the fifth person agrees with the first
fourth, you feel you heart begin to pound. Torn between the unanimity of your five fellow
respondents and the evidence or your own eyes, you feel tense and much less sure of yourself
than you were moments ago
Thousands of college students have experienced this conflict. Answering such question
alone, they erred less than 1 percent of them time. But the odds were quite different when
several others- confederates working for the experimenter- answered incorrectly. Asch repots
that more than one-third of the time, there intelligent and well-meaning college student
participants were then willing to call white black by going along with the group
Conformity increases when:
One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
The group has at least three people
The group is unanimous
One admires the groups status and attractiveness
One has prior commitment to any response
Others in the group observe ones behavior
Ones culture strongly encourages respect for social standards
We are all natural mimics- an effect Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh call the chameleon
effect
One person laughs, coughs, or yawns, and others in the group soon do the same
Unconsciously mimicking others expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us feel what
they are feeling
This helps explain why we feel happier around happy people than around depressed ones,
and why studies of groups of British nurses and accountants reveal mood linkage- sharing up
and down moods
Chameleon Effect
Chartrand and Bargh demonstrated the chameleon effect when they had students work in a
room alongside a confederate working for the experimenter. Sometimes the confederates
rubbed their face; on occasions, they shook their foot. Sure enough participants tended to rub
their own face when they were with the face rubbing person and shake their own foot when
they were with the foot shaking person

Such autonomic mimicry is part of empathy. The most empathetic people mimic- and are
liked- the most. And those most eager to fit in a group seem intuitively to know this, for they
are especially prone to non-conscious mimicry
Sociologist David Phillips and his colleagues found that suicides too, sometimes increase
fowling a highly publicized suicide. In wake of Marilyn Monroes suicide on august 6, 1962,
the number of suicides in the United States exceeded the usual August count by 200
Normative social influence
Normative social influence which is the influence resulting from a persons desire to gain
approval or avoid disapproval
Informational social influence is another reason for conforming. Informational social
influence is the influence resulting from ones willingness to accept others opinions about
reality
Conformity is adjusting ones behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
We are all natural mimics- an effect Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh call the chameleon
effect
One person laughs, coughs, or yawns, and others in the group soon do the same
Unconsciously mimicking others expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us feel what
they are feeling
Social influence
Normative social influence which is the influence resulting from a persons desire to gain
approval or avoid disapproval
Informational social influence is another reason for conforming. Informational social
influence is the influence resulting from ones willingness to accept others opinions about
reality
Adjusting ones behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
We are all natural mimics- an effect Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh call the chameleon
effect
One person laughs, coughs, or yawns, and others in the group soon do the same
Unconsciously mimicking others expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us feel what
they are feeling
Individualist cultures, conformity rates lower
357) Deindividuation
The loss of self awareness and self restraint occurring in groups situations that foster arousal
and anonymity
To be deindividuated it to be less self conscious and abandon normal restrain to the power of
the group
Deindivduation often occurs when group participation makes people feel arousal and
anonymous
Whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a ballgame, or at worship, to lose self consciousness
(to become deindividuated) is to become more responsive to other group experience
The presence of others both arouses people and diminishes their sense of responsibility
Result in uninhibited behavior ranging from a food fight in the dinning hall
KKK hides under white capes so they can torture people

358) Groupthink
Is the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision making group
overrides a realistic appraisals of alternatives
Groupthink, a term coined by Irving Janis describes the tendency for some groups to make
bad decisions
Groupthink occurs when group members suppress their reservations about the ideas
supported by the group
As a result a kind of false unanimity is encouraged, and flaws in the groups decisions may be
overlooked
Highly cohesive groups involved in making risky decision seem to be at particular risk for
groupthink
To prevent the good group feeling any dissenting views were suppressed or self-censored
Example of Groupthink
President Kennedy voiced his enthusiasm for the Cuban missile crisis
Since no one spoke strongly against the idea, everyone assumed consensus support
U.S space shuttle Challenger explosion (Esser & Lindoerfer, 1989) discovered that in this
case groupthink was fed by overconfidence, conformity, self-justification, and group
polarization.
Janis believed groupthink can be prevented when a leader welcomes various opinions