Explain conformity and obedience as forms of social influence, and describe the situational and individual factors that affect them using classic studies

What this dot point is asking

QCAA wants you to explain two key forms of social influence, conformity and obedience, and to describe what makes people more or less likely to yield to them. You must distinguish the two concepts, explain why they happen, and support your answer with named classic studies and the situational variables they revealed.

The answer

Conformity versus obedience

Conformity is a change in behaviour or belief to match those of a group, usually in response to implied or imagined group pressure rather than a direct order. Obedience is complying with a direct instruction from an authority figure. The key differences are that obedience involves an explicit order and a status difference, whereas conformity involves implicit pressure from peers of equal status.

Why people conform

Deutsch and Gerard (1955) identified two reasons.

• Normative social influence. Conforming to gain acceptance and avoid rejection. This typically produces compliance (public agreement without private belief).
• Informational social influence. Conforming because we believe the group has accurate information, especially in ambiguous situations. This typically produces internalisation (genuine private acceptance).

Asch (1951), the line study

Participants judged which of three comparison lines matched a standard line, an easy task, while seated among confederates who gave obviously wrong answers on certain trials. About 75 percent of participants conformed to the wrong answer at least once, and the overall conformity rate was around 37 percent. Asch then varied the situation and found:

• Group size. Conformity rose as the majority grew to about three or four, then levelled off.
• Unanimity. A single dissenting confederate sharply reduced conformity.
• Task difficulty. Harder, more ambiguous tasks increased conformity (informational influence).

Milgram (1963), obedience to authority

Participants were ordered by an experimenter to deliver what they believed were increasingly severe electric shocks to a learner (a confederate) for wrong answers. Despite the learner's apparent distress, 65 percent of participants continued to the maximum 450 volts. Milgram's variations showed obedience depended on situational factors:

• Proximity. Obedience dropped when the learner was in the same room or when the experimenter gave orders by telephone.
• Location. Moving from prestigious Yale to a run-down office reduced obedience.
• Legitimacy and presence of authority. Obedience fell when the experimenter was replaced by an ordinary person.

Milgram explained obedience through the agentic state, in which people see themselves as agents carrying out another's wishes and feel reduced personal responsibility.

Zimbardo (1971), the Stanford prison study

Student volunteers were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners in a mock prison. The guards quickly became abusive and the prisoners passive and distressed, and the study was stopped early. Zimbardo argued that the situation and assigned social roles, more than personality, drove the behaviour. The study is also a major ethics case study because of the harm to participants.

Putting it together for an exam

Define the form of influence, explain why it occurs (normative versus informational for conformity; the agentic state for obedience), then cite the named study and the situational variable that changes the outcome. Linking the concept to a specific manipulation is what earns marks.