Strengths and limitations of conformity and obedience

Social influence is the influence of social factors on behaviour. This refers to the effect others have on the way people think and behave. Conformity and obedience are major aspects of social influence. Conformity and obedience have an important factor in common; both involve changes in a person’s behaviour due to social pressure. They differ in from one another in important ways. Obedience involves a direct requirement to change behaviour in response to authority whereas conformity is a change in behaviour in response to group norms. Milgram stated a person obeys when they ‘comply with authority’ they conform when they ‘go along with their peers who have no special right to direct their behaviour. These are areas of psychology which have continued to attract the attention of many psychologists, which I will discuss below.

Conformity can be categorised into two main groups, normative social influence is when one changes their private opinions to match that of others and the need to be liked and accepted. Informational influence is when people are unsure of their own judgments and have the need to be correct and behave in accordance to others. Social psychologists such as Sheif and Asch have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that through a variety of social influence, groups can change member’s thoughts and behaviour. Conformity occurs when individuals respond to peer- pressure by changing their behaviour to adapt to a group.

Muzafer Sherif (1935) devised an experiment to investigate conformity and group norms. He used an auto kinetic effect which a stationary spot of light in a darkened room appears to move around. He divided the participants into two groups, and the first group was tested individually. Each participant sat alone as was instructed to look at this stationary light and asked to estimate how far it moved. He found that their estimates varied and there was a considerable amount of differences between the estimates each participant produced. When the participants were placed in small groups, he found at first that the estimates varied and each person based this on their personal norm. Steadily their estimates came together and became more similar, finally the group reached a consensus and a group norm had developed to which the participants conformed. In a second experiment each group developed a group estimate to which each member conformed, he then tested the participants again individually and their answers mirrored those of their group. He found they continued to follow the group norm. Sherif’s experiment demonstrated how group norms form, and how individuals conform to these norms. It also shows the effect of informational social influence. The task in his experiment was ambiguous so there was no wrong or right answer. This experiment also demonstrated private acceptance as participants internalised the group norm and made it their own, even when they were tested individually they based their answers on the group norm. Solomon Asch criticised Sherif’s experiment and argued that sheriff had not demonstrated conformity and that a true test of conformity is to see if people will agree with others when the experiment task is unambiguous. Solomon Asch (1951) devised an unambiguous experiment to test if people will conform when they are sure the judgements of the majority is wrong. Participants were presented with two cards on one card was a single standard line and on the other was three comparison lines. Participants were asked to judge who of the comparison lines was equal to the standard line. The first group was a controlled group of thirty seven used for comparison with the experimental group, and the pressure to conform was removed. Participants were simply asked to judge the comparison lines without the pressure to conform to the judgements of others. Asch found that thirty five made no errors, only two made minor errors. In the experiment situation there was only one participants and the rest consisted of people who worked with Asch. The participant was unaware that he was the only participant and did not know the whole experiment was about his behaviour. To begin with the confederates gave the correct answers and the participants agreed these answers were obvious. Then on one comparison task all the confederates gave the same wrong answers and this was repeated with different participants. Asch found that only 25% gave the correct answer in every case compared to the 95% in the controlled group. Asch carried out interviews after to find out what influenced the participants to conform. He found his experiment clearly demonstrated public compliance rather than public acceptance, majority knew they were right but went along with the group majority and gave the wrong answers. The participants in his experiment displayed that people are sometimes prepared to go along with others to gain group approval, an example of normative social influence. The power of majorities influence was seen in their behaviour and many displayed signs of pressure to conform to the majorities views. In a similar experiment by Crutchfield (1955) he found similar results to Asch and that pressure to conform can happen without face to face communication.

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Criticisms of Asch’s experiment was the participants were stressed when the confederates gave the wrong answers and were put in an embarrassing situation, which can appear to be unethical. Participants did not provide informed consent as they were misled about the key aspects of the experiment. All participants were male which created a limited sample.

People tend to obey for two main reasons, first because they see the authority of others as right and lawful known as legitimate authority. Secondly they may obey because they are being forced to and may fear the consequences if they refuse to do so, this is known as illegitimate authority. Early research into obedience was based around the Nazi policies of genocide in the Second World War to find out why people obeyed orders which violated moral codes of human behaviour.

Psychologists have carried out many studies of obedience to establish why people obey and their explanations are divided between situational and dispositional. Situational is not based on the type of person you are but the situation you find yourself in shapes how you act, whereas dispositional explanations looks at the person’s personality. Milgram wanted to find out whether ordinary Americans would obey an unreasonable order from a person of authority to inflict pain on another and what factors led a person to obey. Milgram developed a series of experiments that forced participants to either violate their conscience by obeying the demand of an authority figure or to refuse those demands. Milgram designed a simple experiment to determine the degree of pain a normal human being would impose on another, simply because he or she was obeying orders of an authority figure. In one of his experiments he had two subjects, one being the “teacher” and the other the “leaner”. This experiment was rigged so that the participants would always be the teacher. The learner was then strapped to an electric chair in another room. Then the teacher was placed in front of a shock generator and told for each mistake made by the learner on a paired associate word task he must deliver a shock. With each mistake the teacher would have to increase this by 15 volts. At 300 volts the learner displayed pain and distress and after 315 volts he stopped responding to the teacher’s questions, however the teacher was instructed to continue to keep on shocking the learner even if the learner stopped responding. The teacher is a naive subject who has come for the experiment while the learner is an actor who receives no shock at all. Milgram conducted the experiment with several different types of subjects, and first sought predictions that all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. His predictions were in deniably wrong. He found that 65% of participants continued to the maximum voltage of 450 volts and obey instructions. However, many displayed signs of distress, and whenever the participant threatened to pull out of the experiment the experimenter would encourage them to continue. There were factors of this experiment which may have varied the level of obedience, with the learner in another room resulted in a physical distance between him and the participant, and could not see the suffering of the learner. It was found that people we less willing to follow orders when they could see the learner and the obedience rate fell to 30%. Milgram found that people obey depending on how they perceive the person giving the orders. Also obedience depends on individual differences in people’s personalities, experiences and backgrounds. Milgram concluded that his experiment indicated that in a certain situation ordinary people will obey orders from those in authority even if this goes against their moral beliefs. Hofling et al (1966) supported Milgrams research and carried out a similar experiment in a real life setting using nurses. The nurses in his experiment were used to the hierarchy of authority within a hospital setting, and there was no question that doctors gave orders and nurses obey. There is evidence from both of these experiments that the removal of responsibility encourages obedience.

However, critics of Milgram argue that his findings reflect flaws in his experiment, and that the behaviour of his participants does not reflect how people would normally behave in response from an authority figure. His methodology has been criticised as artificial as with all laboratory experiments. Orne & Holland claimed that the situation which the participants were put in did not resemble a real life situation so this lacks ecological validity. Milgrams experiment was viewed to be unethical as the participants were exposed to high levels of stress, the participants were deceived and there was no informed consent.

The methods used by Milgram during in the 1960’s would in today’s world raise serious ethical concerns, however his results are important and relevant into the study of obedience as he found that people will obey authority even when it goes against their values and harms others and that obedience can lead to chapters in history as the genocide of the Jews. Milgrams research into obedience to authority found that it is difficult to see how society could operate without some extent of obedience to a system of authority.