Psyc 360 1st Edition Lecture 15 Outline of Last Lecture I Social Influence a Conformity i Public ii Private Outline of Current Lecture I Social Influence Continued II Conformity III Obedience Current Lecture Choosing the number one rated burger place on the Yelp app is conformity because you chose to eat there based on other people s opinions Considered private conformity Public conformity thinking in your mind one thing but announcing an answer everyone chose Your actions don t agree with what you are thinking Private Conformity Thinking something in your mind because of social influence and choosing what you ve been thinking So your public actions those seen by people agree with what you are thinking and with social influence MAKES SENSE There is generally wisdom in crowds However can have negative consequences Public and private conformity is on a continuum with public on one end and private on the other Perfect example of public conformity is the asch line judgment study Perfect example of private conformity is looking up because you see a group of people looking up These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute In the middle of the continuum would be a teenager drinking their first beer at a party with friends Drinking the beer and thinking it s awful and deciding they don t want to drink anymore is in between public and private The more powerful form of social influence is obedience Obedience obeying commands from an authority figure Stanley Milgram study 1960 s study of German psyche and why everyone was so obedient to Hitler He wanted to know what caused them to be this way Looked at just the German people Set up study in US at Yale And then do same exact study in Germany but never went to Germany Participants had to engage in actions that made them believe they were killing someone else Realized it may not have been the German psyche and a human condition Dateline Video Subjects of milgram study were told they would give another man a confederate electric shocks for every wrong answer given by the confederate the shock machine was not real after being asked a series of memory questions While a man in a lab coat looking professional tells the participant he has to continue administering the shocks The confederate screamed and wanted out of the electric shock chair and had told them of a heart condition he had The participant would look at the man in the lab coat and be told to keep giving shocks Some only stopped after the man being shocked quit yelling not knowing if he was conscious or not 65 of people administered all the shocks possible All the way up to 450 volts and every person made it to about 300 volts and if they made it to 375 volts they went all the way Only 35 of people stopped giving shocks by 450 volts Most people are obedient even if it harms others Milgram study retested in today s society Replicated study very well One man stopped at 120 volts Same behaviors shown People did not want to continue but because they were being told to continue they did anyways WHY 2 possibilities 65 of humans are monster who want to hurt people OR It has something to do with the situation that was set up How can study change Don t have a person demanding them to continue Allow them to stop when they want to No person demanding them to administer shocks was set up and only 3 went all the way 1 out of 30 people administered all shocks without being demanded to do so Standard version of this study Obedience 65 Non expert experimenter another person off the street demanding Obedience 20 The only difference in these studies was whether the experimenter man in lab coat in standard study was a professional of not Implications We obey authorities we believe to be experts Private conformity What if there are 2 people administering shocks 1 confederate 1 is reluctant Obedience 10 Implications we turn to others in our predicament Obedience involves conformity