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.