Whenever we change our behavior, views, and attitudes in response to the real or imagined presence of others, we are experiencing conformity. Why we conform is a topic of great interest to social psychologists. In particular, the classic studies of Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif have shed light on the determinants of conformity. Their research and that of others (Morton Deutsch and Hal Gerard) has demonstrated two main types of conformity: informational and normative. Informative conformity often occurs in situations in which there is high uncertainty and ambiguity. In an unfamiliar situation, we are likely to shape our behavior to match that of others. The actions of others inform us of the customs and accepted practices in a situation. Others inform us of what is right to do, how to behave in new situations.In addition to conforming to the group norms due to lack of knowledge, we also conform when we want to be liked by the group. This type of conformity, called normative conformity, is the dominant form of social conformity when we are concerned about making a good impression in front of a group. Though we may disagree secretly with the group opinion, we may verbally adopt the group stance so that we seem like a team player rather than a deviant.Both of these pressures impact us everyday, for good or for worse. A staple of a functioning society is that people follow social norms such as obeying traffic laws, respecting others’ property, and diffusing aggression in non-violent ways. However, conformity can have deleterious effects if one conforms automatically without questioning of the validity of social norms. In Nazi Germany, many ordinary people did not dissent to the ongoing atrocities because few other people resisted. Similarly, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the subjects who were randomly assigned as guards gradually adopted the behavior of cruel and demanding prison guards because that became the behavioral norm in an alien situation.In our daily decisions, we should also examine whether our reasons justify our actions. In an unfamiliar situation, first ask yourself whether the actions you observe others performing is rational, warranted, and consistent with your own principles before thoughtlessly and automatically adopting them.Similarly, in a situation in which you want to impress and be accepted by others, ask yourself whether the action conflicts with your moral code, and consider whether you would be willing to compromise your own opinion of yourself just so others would have a higher one of you. Ultimately, you are the only one who has to live with your actions. Also take a time out to find out the correct information.To resist the powers of group conformity: know what you stand for; determine how really important it is that these other people like you, especially when they are strangers; recognize that there are other groups who would be delighted to have you as a member; take a future perspective to imagine what you will think of your current conforming action at some time in the future.
This week's guestI interview social psychologist and author Philip Zimbardo about two of his books, The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox. The first book covers the phenomena of social influence upon the individual, while the second shows how our time perspectives affect our thoughts and actions, and how we can change our time perspectives for a more fulfilling life.
To resist the powers of group conformity: know what you stand for; determine how really important it is that these other people like you, especially when they are strangers; recognize that there are other groups who would be delighted to have you as a member; take a future perspective to imagine what you will think of your current conforming action at some time in the future.
“I’m ashamed of my school,” the seventh-grader said quietly. Since 12 year-olds are prone to finding fault with anything and everything having to do with school, you might under normal circumstances dismiss this statement as normal griping. But, these were not normal circumstances. The school in question was A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas, California. A.E. Wright is regarded as one of the top middle schools in the area. Some families live within the boundaries of the Las Virgenes School District just so that their children can attend A.E. Wright. As an A.E. Wright parent, I can say that I have found it to be an excellent school. But, on Friday, November 20, A.E. Wright became the object of some very undesirable publicity. Some A.E. Wright students were assaulted that day by classmates. The victims of these assaults all had one characteristic in common: they were redheads. Although no serious injuries resulted, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is treating the incidents as possible felony assaults. The most serious incident (at least the most serious incident reported so far) involved a redheaded boy who was punched and kicked when he arrived at school Friday morning. Why redheads and why this particular Friday? Well, as the facts begin to accumulate, it seems that something got organized on Facebook called “Kick A Ginger Day.” Kick A Ginger Day was apparently inspired by an episode of the popular animated series South Park in which a redheaded boy ( the derogatory term applied to redheads was “ginger”) was subjected to harassment because of his hair color. The irony here is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, were attempting to satirize racial prejudice in that episode by basing discrimination on something as inconsequential as hair color. Instead, South Park unwittingly inspired the very prejudice and violence that it attempted to ridicule. Or . . . maybe it’s going a little too far to say that South Park “inspired” the anti-redhead violence at A.E. Wright. Perhaps a more fair assessment is that South Park provided an excuse for the kind of hazing and harassment that goes on way too often among middle schoolers. What is the response to this inconceivably senseless string of assaults? The details are still a bit murky. Reports indicate that as many as fourteen students at A.E. Wright might have participated, to one degree or another, in Kick A Ginger Day. The first obvious response is to investigate the incidents thoroughly, identify each of the assailants and the degree of participation, and take appropriate disciplinary action. With the Sheriff’s Department involved, criminal charges are certainly within the realm of possibility. But . . . what is the long-term response?
One of the most powerful forms of influence is self-persuasion, where conditions are set up that encourage individuals to engage in personal thought and decision processes. Obviously we tend to know our strengths and weaknesses better than do others, so we can tailor self-generated persuasive messages likely to be effective. One tactic for inducing self-persuasion comes from role-playing positions that are contrary to one’s beliefs and values. Also when we are resolving a commitment we have made to engage in public behavior that does not follow from our personal beliefs, cognitive dissonance is created. To the extent that we come to believe we made that commitment freely, without (awareness of) external situational pressures, we start to rationalize it and come to convince ourselves that it was the right action and the right position to hold.
You don’t need me to tell you about Scientology: you either know nothing about it (in which case I suggest you stay that way), or you know so much that I am unlikely to change your mind. You, do, though, need me to tell you about Robber’s Cave.In 1954, twenty-two 11-year-olds headed off for summer camp at Robber’s Cave State Park near Wilburton, Oklahoma. They were not to know that they were actually experimental subjects, nor that the counselors were psychology graduate students and the kindly janitor was really the lead professor, Muzafer Sherif. All they knew was that they were going to meet a bunch of new kids and that it might be fun or it might not.Sherif divided the campers randomly into two groups, initially kept well apart from each other. They chose their own group names (one was the Eagles, the other the Rattlers), designed their group flags, and went out on activities within their units; they made friends. At that point, the researchers arranged a series of games between the groups, with desirable prizes. Almost immediately, a bad-tempered rivalry arose between Rattlers and Eagles; there were accusations of cheating, surreptitious shoving, refusal to eat together. Things escalated when the Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag and the Rattlers raided the Eagles’ cabin, stealing their prizes. Shared pleasurable events, like cookouts, failed bring the groups together: these simply became an occasion for more posturing, insults, and food-throwing.The point is that humans are compulsive tribe-joiners; even when chosen at random, we naturally believe our bunch is the best. Moreover, we don’t just feel loyalty to a group, we feel loyalty against others; we easily come to believe that outsiders are morally inferior and inherently inimical to us, the chosen ones. Of course we throw jell-o at them – they were just about to do it to us.L. Ron Hubbard, the struggling science fiction writer whose Church of Scientology in California was founded today in 1954, had an almost limitless appetite for loyalty: “All men are your slaves,” appears in one of his notebooks; in another, “You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right to be merciless.” Driven by hopes of “smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form,” he was, in the late 1940s, oppressed by a sense of failure, by money and marital troubles, and by suicidal thoughts. At the same time, he knew he had talents: a relentless capacity to turn out prose, a knack for hypnotism, and a power to impose his personality on others – charming, inspiring, and bullying weaker natures into an unquestioning devotion. He lacked only a vehicle: he tried black magic in the manner of Aleister Crowley; he tried the pseudo-science of “dianetics” (which, though a publishing success, left him open to the scorn of real scientists) – and then he hit on it: a religion. The same “path to mental health” that he claimed to have discovered could be now a matter of faith, not reason – which is how most people prefer to believe things, anyway.Scientology has many aspects that make it almost the perfect tribe. It isolates and objectifies the self-doubts of those who come to it, and offers a structured (if very expensive) way to overcome them. It has a different phrase, structure, and procedure for everything: Hubbard spent the last 36 years of his life in the tireless production of new jargon and arcana. The life of “staff members” becomes fully absorbed by their membership: as one said, “my social activities, my spiritual growth, my involvement in the community, the camaraderie, the parties — the church integrates itself into all aspects of your life.” There are uniforms, compounds, celebrities – and what better faith for an actor, with the profession’s deep insecurities, than one advocating that all affluence is deserved through one’s own hard-bought mental superiority? Best of all, there is the excitement of permanent hatreds and battles: with psychiatry, the IRS, “renegade” members, journalists – all subject to Hubbard’s doctrine of Fair Game, in which enemies “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” The Rattlers and Eagles would have signed up immediately.
The Robbers Cave experiment is one of social psychology's most cited studies dealing with differentiation, showing how easily opposing in-groups and group hostilities can form. At the same time, it is one of the best examples of conflict resolution brought about by finding super-ordinate needs that transcend intergroup conflict.
Can modern science help us to create heroes? That's the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Phil Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. The goal of the project is simple: to put decades of experimental research to use in training the next generation of exemplary Americans, churning out good guys with the same efficiency that gangs and terrorist groups produce bad guys.... more...One day, though, Mr. Zimbardo hopes to have a hero project in every city. "One of the problems with our culture is that we've replaced heroes with celebrities," Mr. Zimbardo says. "We worship people who haven't done anything. It's time to get back to focusing on what matters, because we need real heroes more than ever."
IN ADDITION TO ME AS GUEST, WE WILL HAVE SEVERAL OF THE STUDENTS PRESENT TO TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY HAVE LEARNED AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN CHANGED PERSONALLY BY OUR HIP SPECIAL COURSE IN THEIR SCHOOL. IT IS A PROGRAM DEVELOPED BY OUR EDUCATIONAL DIRECTOR, CLINT WILKINS, ABLY ASSISTED BY BRYAN DICKERSON, AS A PILOT PROGRAM TO TEST OUT OUR IDEAS ABOUT HOW BEST TO APPLY SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE IN CHALLENGING, ENGAGING AND FUN COURSE PROJECTS.
Circumstances can force almost anyone to be a bystander to evil, but they can also bring out our own inner hero. Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo show how we’re all capable of everyday heroism.
....But because evil is so fascinating, we have been obsessed with focusing upon and analyzing evildoers. Perhaps because of the tragic experiences of the Second World War, we have neglected to consider the flip side of the banality of evil: Is it also possible that heroic acts are something that anyone can perform, given the right mind-set and conditions? Could there also be a “banality of heroism”?The banality of heroism concept suggests that we are all potential heroes waiting for a moment in life to perform a heroic deed. The decision to act heroically is a choice that many of us will be called upon to make at some point in time. By conceiving of heroism as a universal attribute of human nature, not as a rare feature of the few “heroic elect,” heroism becomes something that seems in the range of possibilities for every person, perhaps inspiring more of us to answer that call.
This article is the transcript of the Inaugural Professorial Lecture delivered by the author at the University of Glamorgan on 9th December 2008.AbstractInfluence amongst human beings is ubiquitous: It is literally everywhere—in the words we use, the things we see, even the air we breathe. Some of this influence is profoundly beneficial—the influence of education, of parents, or of loved ones. Other forms of influence can be ethically and morally questionable. At the other end of this “continuum” are types of influence that are terribly harmful: The dead of the Japanese, Madrid, and London transport systems are vivid casualties of undue influence at its extreme. Empirical evidence will be presented in this paper for the mindset that is established in extremist groups, with implications for how more benign forms of influence can be better protected, monitored, and promoted.
In Behind the Shock Machine, noted psychologist and author Gina Perry unearths for the first time the full story of this controversial experiment and its startling repercussions. Interviewing the original participants and delving deep into the Yale archives and Milgram’s unpublished files and notebooks, she pieces together a more complex picture of this flawed experiment: volunteers were not as obedient as later claimed; they were subjected to more intense and sustained pressure; some left unaware that the shocks had been faked; and, most significantly, many participants remain haunted by what they had done. Fleshed out with dramatic transcripts of the tests themselves, Perry puts a human face on the statistics and offers a gripping, unforgettable tale of one man’s ambition and an experiment that defined a generation.
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Topic: Resisting influence (Read 14026 times)