How do groups and authority influence conformity, obedience and helping behaviour?
Explain social influence including conformity, obedience, group processes, prosocial and antisocial behaviour, using key studies.
A focused answer to the WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 4 dot point on social psychology. Covers Asch's conformity, Milgram's obedience, group processes such as deindividuation and groupthink, and prosocial and antisocial behaviour including the bystander effect with named studies.
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What this dot point is asking
This Unit 4 dot point asks you to explain social influence and to use named experiments as evidence.
Conformity (Asch)
Conformity is changing behaviour or beliefs to match a group. Solomon Asch's line-judgement experiments showed that about a third of responses conformed to a clearly wrong group answer, and most participants conformed at least once.
Conformity increases with group size up to about three or four, with unanimity (a single ally sharply reduces conformity), and when responses are public rather than private.
Obedience (Milgram)
Obedience is following the direct orders of an authority figure. Stanley Milgram's experiments asked participants (in the "teacher" role) to deliver what they believed were increasing electric shocks to a "learner". About 65 percent continued to the maximum 450-volt level when prompted by the experimenter.
Milgram explained high obedience through the agentic state, where people see themselves as agents carrying out an authority's wishes rather than as personally responsible. Obedience fell when the authority was less legitimate, more distant, or when the participant saw others refuse.
Group processes
- Deindividuation: the loss of self-awareness and personal responsibility in a group, which can increase antisocial behaviour (relevant to Zimbardo's Stanford prison study).
- Groupthink (Janis): the drive for consensus in cohesive groups can suppress dissent and lead to poor decisions.
- Group polarisation: group discussion tends to strengthen the average pre-existing view, making decisions more extreme.
- Social loafing: individuals exert less effort in a group than alone when individual contributions are not identifiable.
Prosocial and antisocial behaviour
Prosocial behaviour benefits others. Altruism is helping at a cost to oneself with no expectation of reward.
The bystander effect, investigated by Latane and Darley after the Kitty Genovese case, is the finding that people are less likely to help when others are present. Two mechanisms explain it:
- Diffusion of responsibility: each bystander assumes someone else will act, so responsibility is shared and diluted.
- Pluralistic ignorance: people look to others for cues, and if no one reacts, each concludes there is no emergency.
Antisocial behaviour harms or disregards others; it can be promoted by deindividuation, dehumanisation and obedience to harmful authority.
In the exam, match the named study to the concept and quote the headline figure (Asch's one-third, Milgram's 65 percent) to anchor your explanation.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SCSA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
WACE 20226 marksDistinguish between conformity and obedience, and for each name a key study and its headline finding.Show worked answer →
A 6 mark response needs the distinction plus a study and finding for each.
Conformity. Yielding to real or imagined pressure from peers of equal status, often implicit. Study: Asch's line-judgement experiment, in which about a third of critical responses conformed to a clearly wrong majority and most participants conformed at least once.
Obedience. Following a direct order from an authority figure within a hierarchy. Study: Milgram's shock experiment, in which about 65 percent of participants continued to the maximum 450 volts when ordered by the experimenter.
Markers reward the peers-versus-authority distinction and a correctly matched study and headline figure for each.
WACE 20238 marksExplain how the presence of others can either increase or decrease helping and effort, referring to social facilitation, social loafing and the bystander effect with relevant research.Show worked answer →
An 8 mark extended response needs the three effects explained with evidence.
- Social facilitation
- The presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks because arousal boosts the dominant response, but can impair performance on difficult tasks.
- Social loafing
- People exert less individual effort in a group than alone when their contributions are not identifiable, because of diffusion of responsibility.
- Bystander effect
- People are less likely to help as the number of bystanders increases. Latane and Darley showed participants who believed they were the only witness to a staged emergency helped more often and faster than those who believed others were present, through diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.
- Conclusion
- Markers reward correctly distinguishing the three effects, linking loafing and the bystander effect to diffusion of responsibility, and citing Latane and Darley.