When he was a teenager, my son often enjoyed looking at photographs of me and my wife taken when we were in high school. Everyday observation confirms that we often adopt the actions and attitudes of the people around us. Trends in clothing, music, foods, and entertainment are obvious.
But our views on political issues, religious questions, and lifestyles also reflect to some degree the attitudes of the people we interact with. Similarly, decisions about behaviors such as smoking and drinking are influenced by whether the people we spend time with engage in these activities. Psychologists refer to this widespread tendency to act and think like the people around us as conformity.
What causes all this conformity? To start, humans may possess an inherent tendency to imitate the actions of others. Although we usually are not aware of it, we often mimic the gestures, body posture, language, talking speed, and many other behaviors of the people we interact with.
Beyond this automatic tendency to imitate others, psychologists have identified two primary reasons for conformity.
The first of these is normative influence. When normative influence is operating, people go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them.
Fitting in also brings rewards such as camaraderie and compliments. How powerful is normative influence? Consider a classic study conducted many years ago by Solomon Asch The participants were male college students who were asked to engage in a seemingly simple task. An experimenter standing several feet away held up a card that depicted one line on the left side and three lines on the right side.
Sixteen cards were presented one at a time, and the correct answer on each was so obvious as to make the task a little boring.
Except for one thing. The participant was not alone. In fact, there were six other people in the room who also gave their answers to the line-judgment task aloud. Moreover, although they pretended to be fellow participants, these other individuals were, in fact, confederates working with the experimenter. The mistake might have been amusing, except the second participant gave the same answer. As did the third, the fourth, and the fifth participant.
Suddenly the real participant was in a difficult situation. His eyes told him one thing, but five out of five people apparently saw something else. But, would participants intentionally give a wrong answer just to conform with the other participants? The confederates uniformly gave incorrect answers on 12 of the 16 trials, and 76 percent of the participants went along with the norm at least once and also gave the wrong answer.
In total, they conformed with the group on one-third of the 12 test trials. Although we might be impressed that the majority of the time participants answered honestly, most psychologists find it remarkable that so many college students caved in to the pressure of the group rather than do the job they had volunteered to do. In almost all cases, the participants knew they were giving an incorrect answer, but their concern for what these other people might be thinking about them overpowered their desire to do the right thing.
This last finding is consistent with the notion that participants change their answers because they are concerned about what others think of them. Compared with individualistic cultures, people who live in collectivist cultures place a higher value on the goals of the group than on individual preferences.
They also are more motivated to maintain harmony in their interpersonal relations. The other reason we sometimes go along with the crowd is that people are often a source of information. Psychologists refer to this process as informational influence. Most of us, most of the time, are motivated to do the right thing. That is, we act the way most people—or most people like us—act. This is not an unreasonable strategy. Other people often have information that we do not, especially when we find ourselves in new situations.
If you have ever been part of a conversation that went something like this,. A good example of how misperceived norms can lead to problems is found in research on binge drinking among college students. In these situations, there was virtually no shocking. These conditions show that people do not like to harm others, and when given a choice they will not. On the other hand, the social situation can create powerful, and potentially deadly, social influence.
Before moving on to the next section, it is worth noting that although we have discussed both conformity and obedience in this chapter, they are not the same thing. While both are forms of social influence, we most often tend to conform to our peers, whereas we obey those in positions of authority.
Furthermore, the pressure to conform tends to be implicit, whereas the order to obey is typically rather explicit. Can our understanding of the social psychological factors that produce obedience help us explain the events that occurred in at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison in which U. The social psychologist Philip Zimbardo thinks so. In that study, Zimbardo and his colleagues set up a mock prison.
They selected 23 student volunteers and divided them into two groups. The study was expected to run for two weeks. However, on the second day, the prisoners tried to rebel against the guards. The guards quickly moved to stop the rebellion by using both psychological punishment and physical abuse.
In the ensuing days, the guards denied the prisoners food, water, and sleep; shot them with fire-extinguisher spray; threw their blankets into the dirt; forced them to clean toilet bowls with their bare hands; and stripped them naked. At this point, a former student who was not involved with the study spoke up, declaring the treatment of the prisoners to be immoral. As a result, the researchers stopped the experiment early. Arguably, this conclusion may be applied to the research team itself, which seemingly neglected ethical principles in the pursuit of their research goals.
Zimbardo acted as an expert witness in the trial of Sergeant Chip Frederick, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Frederick was the army reservist who was put in charge of the night shift at Tier 1A, where the detainees were abused. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil.
We have to acknowledge it. Recent research by Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam suggests that this is indeed the case. The results of this study were entirely different than those found by Zimbardo. This study was also stopped early, but more because the guards felt uncomfortable in their superior position than because the prisoners were being abused.
Again, the conclusions are clear—the specifics of the social situation, more than the people themselves, are often the most important determinants of behavior. Raven identified five different types of power— reward power , coercive power , legitimate power , referent power , and expert power shown in Table 6. Understanding the types of power is important because it allows us to see more clearly the many ways that people can influence others.
Reward power occurs when one person is able to influence others by providing them with positive outcomes. The variety of rewards that can be used by the powerful is almost endless and includes verbal praise or approval, the awarding of status or prestige, and even direct financial payment.
The ability to wield reward power over those we want to influence is contingent on the needs of the person being influenced. Power is greater when the person being influenced has a strong desire to obtain the reward, and power is weaker when the individual does not need the reward.
A boss will have more influence on an employee who has no other job prospects than on one who is being sought after by other corporations, and expensive presents will be more effective in persuading those who cannot buy the items with their own money. Because the change in behavior that results from reward power is driven by the reward itself, its use is usually more likely to produce public compliance than private acceptance. Coercive power is power that is based on the ability to create negative outcomes for others, for instance by bullying, intimidating, or otherwise punishing.
Bosses have coercive power over employees if they are able and willing to punish employees by reducing their salary, demoting them to a lower position, embarrassing them, or firing them. And friends can coerce each other through teasing, humiliation, and ostracism. In many cases, power-holders use reward and coercive power at the same time—for instance, by both increasing salaries as a result of positive performance but also threatening to reduce them if the performance drops.
Because the use of coercion has such negative consequences, authorities are generally more likely to use reward than coercive power Molm, Coercion is usually more difficult to use, since it often requires energy to keep the person from avoiding the punishment by leaving the situation altogether.
And coercive power is less desirable for both the power-holder and the person being influenced because it creates an environment of negative feelings and distrust that is likely to make interactions difficult, undermine satisfaction, and lead to retaliation against the power-holder Tepper et al.
As with reward power, coercive power is more likely to produce public compliance than private acceptance. Furthermore, in both cases the effective use of the power requires that the power-holder continually monitor the behavior of the target to be sure that he or she is complying. This monitoring may itself lead to a sense of mistrust between the two individuals in the relationship. The power-holder feels perhaps unjustly that the target is only complying due to the monitoring, whereas the target feels again perhaps unjustly that the power-holder does not trust him or her.
Whereas reward and coercive power are likely to produce the desired behavior, other types of power, which are not so highly focused around reward and punishment, are more likely to create changes in attitudes private acceptance as well as behavior. In many ways, then, these sources of power are stronger because they produce real belief change.
Legitimate power is power vested in those who are appointed or elected to positions of authority , such as teachers, politicians, police officers, and judges, and their power is successful because members of the group accept it as appropriate. We accept that governments can levy taxes and that judges can decide the outcomes of court cases because we see these groups and individuals as valid parts of our society.
Individuals with legitimate power can exert substantial influence on their followers. Those with legitimate power may not only create changes in the behavior of others but also have the power to create and change the social norms of the group.
In some cases, legitimate power is given to the authority figure as a result of laws or elections, or as part of the norms, traditions, and values of the society. In other cases, legitimate power comes more informally, as a result of being a respected group member.
People who contribute to the group process and follow group norms gain status within the group and therefore earn legitimate power. In some cases, legitimate power can even be used successfully by those who do not seem to have much power. After Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans in , the people there demanded that the United States federal government help them rebuild the city.
Although these people did not have much reward or coercive power, they were nevertheless perceived as good and respected citizens of the United States. Many U. This might not always work, but to the extent that it does it represents a type of legitimate power—power that comes from a belief in the appropriateness or obligation to respond to the requests of others with legitimate standing.
People with referent power have an ability to influence others because they can lead those others to identify with them. A young child who mimics the opinions or behaviors of an older sibling or a famous sportsperson, or a religious person who follows the advice of a respected religious leader, is influenced by referent power. Referent power generally produces private acceptance rather than public compliance Kelman, The influence brought on by referent power may occur in a passive sense because the person being emulated does not necessarily attempt to influence others, and the person who is being influenced may not even realize that the influence is occurring.
In other cases, however, the person with referent power such as the leader of a cult may make full use of his or her status as the target of identification or respect to produce change.
In either case, referent power is a particularly strong source of influence because it is likely to result in the acceptance of the opinions of the important other. Experts have knowledge or information, and conforming to those whom we perceive to be experts is useful for making decisions about issues for which we have insufficient expertise.
Expert power thus represents a type of informational influence based on the fundamental desire to obtain valid and accurate information, and where the outcome is likely to be private acceptance. Conformity to the beliefs or instructions of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and computer experts is an example of expert influence; we assume that these individuals have valid information about their areas of expertise, and we accept their opinions based on this perceived expertise particularly if their advice seems to be successful in solving problems.
Expert power is increased for those who possess more information about a relevant topic than others do because the others must turn to this individual to gain the information.
You can see, then, that if you want to influence others, it can be useful to gain as much information about the topic as you can. Having power provides some benefits for those who have it.
Despite these advantages of having power, a little power goes a long way and having too much can be dangerous, for both the targets of the power and the power-holder himself or herself.
According to random assignment to experimental conditions, one half of the supervisors were able to influence the workers through legitimate power only, by sending them messages attempting to persuade them to work harder. The other half of the supervisors were given increased power. In addition to being able to persuade the workers to increase their output through the messages, they were also given both reward power the ability to give small monetary rewards and coercive power the ability to take away earlier rewards.
Although the workers who were actually preprogrammed performed equally well in both conditions, the participants who were given more power took advantage of it by more frequently contacting the workers and more frequently threatening them.
The students in this condition relied almost exclusively on coercive power rather than attempting to use their legitimate power to develop positive relations with the subordinates. At the end of the study, the supervisors who had been given extra power rated the workers more negatively, were less interested in meeting them, and felt that the only reason the workers did well was to obtain the rewards.
The conclusion of these researchers is clear: having power may lead people to use it, even though it may not be necessary, which may then lead them to believe that their subordinates are performing only because of the threats. Although using excess power may be successful in the short run, power that is based exclusively on reward and coercion is not likely to produce a positive environment for either the power-holder or the subordinate.
Although this research suggests that people may use power when it is available to them, other research has found that this is not equally true for all people—still another case of a person-situation interaction. One type of person who has power over others, in the sense that the person is able to influence them, is leaders.
Leaders are in a position in which they can exert leadership , which is the ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals Chemers, ; Hogg, Leaders have many different influence techniques at their disposal: In some cases they may give commands and enforce them with reward or coercive power, resulting in public compliance with the commands.
In other cases they may rely on well-reasoned technical arguments or inspirational appeals, making use of legitimate, referent, or expert power, with the goal of creating private acceptance and leading their followers to achieve. Leadership is a classic example of the combined effects of the person and the social situation. One approach to understanding leadership is to focus on person variables. One personality variable that is associated with effective leadership is intelligence.
Being intelligent improves leadership, as long as the leader is able to communicate in a way that is easily understood by his or her followers Simonton, , Leaders who have expertise in the area of their leadership will be more effective than those who do not. Because so many characteristics seem to be related to leadership skills, some researchers have attempted to account for leadership not in terms of individual traits but in terms of a package of traits that successful leaders seem to have.
Charismatic leaders are leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group. Charismatic leaders express views that support and validate existing group norms but that also contain a vision of what the group could or should be.
Charismatic leaders use their referent power to motivate, uplift, and inspire others. Transactional leaders are the more regular leaders who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get the job done.
Transformational leaders , on the other hand, are more like charismatic leaders—they have a vision of where the group is going and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future.
Even though there appears to be at least some personality traits that relate to leadership ability, the most important approaches to understanding leadership take into consideration both the personality characteristics of the leader and the situation in which the leader is operating.
In some cases, the situation itself is important. However, against the backdrop of the threat posed by Nazi Germany, his defiant and stubborn nature provided just the inspiration many sought.
In other cases, however, both the situation and the person are critical. The contingency model of leadership effectiveness is a model of leadership effectiveness that focuses on both person variables and situational variables. Fielder conceptualized the leadership style of the individual as a relatively stable personality variable and measured it by having people consider all the people they had ever worked with and describe the person that they least liked to work with their least preferred coworker.
Those who indicated that they only somewhat disliked their least preferred coworker were classified as relationship-oriented types of people, who were motivated to have close personal relationships with others.
However, those who indicated that they did not like this coworker very much were classified as task-oriented types, who were motivated primarily by getting the job done. Specifically, as shown in Figure 6. Furthermore, Fielder believed that these factors were ordered in terms of their importance, with leader-member relationships being more important than task structure, which was in turn more important than position power.
The most favorable relationship involves good relationships, a structured task, and strong power for the leader, whereas the least favorable relationship involves poor relationships, an unstructured task, and weak leader power.
Given that there appears to be nothing particularly unusual about Eichmann, we must face the uncomfortable possibility that his behavior was the product of the social situation in which he found himself, and that under the right circumstances we may all be capable of monstrous acts.
Following the Second World War - and in particular the Holocaust - psychologists set out to investigate the phenomenon of human obedience. Early attempts to explain the Holocaust had focused on the idea that there was something distinctive about German culture that had allowed the Holocaust to take place. Stanley Milgram set out to test the research question 'are Germans different?
In one of the most famous series of experiments in psychology Milgram demonstrated that most participants would give a helpless victim fatal electric shocks when ordered to. Milgram later ran a number of variations to the basic study, to find out more about the particular factors which might influence obedience.
Obedience occurs when you are told to do something authority , whereas conformity happens through social pressure the norms of the majority. Therefore, the person giving the order has a higher status than the person receiving the order.
McLeod, S.
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