Resistance To Social Influence

The article “Social Influence on Risk Perception during Adolescence” by Lisa j. Knoll, Lucia Magis-Weinberg, Maarten Speekenbrink, and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, explores the relationship between social influence and risk taking. The authors acknowledge that adolescence is a time in life where risk taking is more likely to occur with peers than alone. However it is not just adolescence that are victims of peer pressure. People of all ages are constantly making decisions about whether they should take such risks. But what makes people take the risk? The article say that “adolescences are unaware of potential risks and feel invulnerable”. However that does not explain why they are more likely to engage

“The Perils of Obedience” was written by Stanley Milgram in 1974. In the essay he describes his experiments on obedience to authority. I feel as though this is a great psychology essay and will be used in psychology 101 classes for generations to come. The essay describes how people are willing to do almost anything that they are told no matter how immoral the action is or how much pain it may cause.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

Conformity refers to an individual’s behavior that is performed because of group pressure, even though that pressure might not involve a direct request. Many people want to think that they are conformist enough so that they are not looked upon as strange to others and nonconformist enough to demonstrate that they are capable of thinking by themselves. For many years, psychologists have been interested in human conformity. Usually when people are in groups, they behave according to how those in the group behave. That indicates that conformity can affect a person’s behavior and make a person do things that may be against their ethics, attitudes, and morals. The study of

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

General Topic: The research and experiments done in this study were about the “role of individual differences in the general desire for control in conformity situations”. The results from all of the three experiments were interpreted as a model for the motivational part of the desire-for-control construct (Desire for control is a need to have dominance over social situations to minimize the extent of power others have.)

The acts of conforming and obeying shape us significantly, whether we are conscious of it or not. They do so in ways that psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram attempt to explain through their research. Asch touches base on the topic of conformity and discusses the ways in which group behaviors and social norms can influence the decisions an individual makes. On the other hand, Milgram’s focus is on obedience, and he studied it by measuring average, everyday people and their willingness to obey authority figures, even if it involves actions that go against their personal beliefs and morals. They have provided evidence through experiments, and with this information, it becomes easier to understand the world of politics, and how these

Conformity is a type of social influence which involves a change in behaviour and belief of a minority to fit in with the group concerning real or imagined group pressures. This behaviour could be defined as the pressure to behave in ways that are viewed as acceptable by a particular group, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked. The main factor that influences conformity are social norms. Social Norms are a pattern of expected behaviour in certain situations either implicitly or explicitly. Conformity exists in two categories, normative influence where the individual’s desire is to gain social approval and acceptance from the group to make a favourable impression. And informational social influence where a person is looking for guidance in an ambiguous situation as the individual listens to other member 's views and opinions to be guided to an answer. Conformity is distinguished in three different types; Compliance is the most superficial type of conformity. It refers to a person who conforms publicly with the views and attitudes expressed by the group but still continue to privately disagree. This temporary short term behavioural change which often results normative social influence. For example, It is a student 's first day of college, but has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of students filing off towards a corridor and

In Milgram’s study a participant was told to administer a shock to a person if they answered a question incorrectly. They were told to do this by the experimenter who was wearing a white coat and was portrayed as an authority figure. The participant therefore felt that the responsibility for his actions were being placed on to the experimenters shoulders, rather that their own. The main reason an individual will obey; will be due to the direct response from the high status of the authority figure. Many people would do something that they may not usually do if they were asked to do it by a person in a uniform such as a policeman or a doctor. It is also that they believe they will not be held responsible for their actions as they were only obeying a figure with a higher authority than themselves. Another reason that people may obey another is if there is no clear cut reason why they shouldn’t. If they are told to do something which is considered reasonable by another person, they may obey because there seems no logical reason why they shouldn’t.

Many times we are given commands or orders from a higher authority or power some of which we do not agree with or follow. This is because we use our moral values and human emotions to determine whether they were right or wrong. But there is a time where we may judge and not agree while others may not pass a judgment and be in agreement. In the study of Psychology we look to a researchers finding to prove the way we respond to emotional, environmental and societal changes. Stanley Milgram a researcher that set out on the behalf of Yale University conducted a study to determine how obedient

“In our society there are strong pressures to conform in the interest of efficiency. In fact those who conform usually move up the hierarchy to positions of increased authority. The reward system favours obedience to authority and it takes a strong person to resist.(The Social Animal pg.118)”

Why do we conform? Two basic sources of influence: normative social influence, the need to be liked, accepted by others and Informational influence: need to be correct and to behave in accordance with reality.

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

The following essay will be about understanding what is meant by and distinguishing the differences between the terms conformity and obedience. It will show the evaluation of two key psychological studies which seek to explain why people do and do not conform, also with explanations of minority influence. Whilst seeking to understand the reasons why people obey authority, it will show an evaluation of Milgram’s study of obedience, discussing the ethical issues raised from the research and

“The Positive and Negative Effects of Social Obedience”