Conformity and Obedience

What is a group? How might an individual’s behaviour be affected by a group? Explain, giving examples, the concept of Groupthink.

A group is a collection of individual’s who gather together, groups are formed in various ways, for example socially between friends a group can be formed but also in the workplace where people are forced together to form a group. These are classed in two categories formal and informal, formal groups are created to achieve specific organisational objectives and are concerned with the co-ordination of work activities. Informal are based on more personal relationships and agreement of group members than on a defined role relationships. (P469, Mullins, 2002) An individual’s behaviour can be greatly affected when part of a group, when we are part of a group we generally conform with other members of the group, conformity can be defined in many ways one definition from Zimbardo & Leippe (1991) defines it as: ‘…a change in belief or behaviour in response to real or imagined group pressure when there is no direct request to comply with the group nor any reason to justify the behaviour change’. (P380, Gross, 2001) When we are part of a group, there is always group pressure where other members feel comfortable doing certain things, you may not but you do them to feel accepted, be a part of the group. There is the need for acceptance, when being part of a group you do not want to be unpopular, so you may dress the same, act the same. You can be mindless, hereby conforming automatically, without actually thinking about it. A prime example is university life where standard dress code is jeans, trainers, t-shirts, if you ask students they will deny they are conforming but really they are without thinking about it, you generally don’t see students dressed up in shirt and tie, with trousers of even suits. Another example is football hooligans, what starts out for many as following your team on a Saturday, as a result of ‘peer pressure’ conforming to others around you in the crowd, groups of fans turn into hate filled mobs, intent on causing trouble. These people are respected professionals, many of them accountants, civil servants, respected members of the community, but in the atmosphere of football matches and as a part of these mobs their behaviour completely changes for the worse.

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Groupthink (Janis 1971, 1982) is an example of how group decisions may become very extreme. It is defined as a mode of thinking, in which the desire to reach unanimous agreement over-rides the motivation to adopt proper, rational, decision making procedures. (P389, Gross, 2002) There are a number of specific symptoms of groupthink, including an illusion of invulnerability, an unquestioned belief in the inherent morality of the group which can lead to the ignorance of ethical and moral issues. Also there is strong pressure on individual’s to conform and reach consensus. (P511, Mullins, 2002) There are many example of groupthink, a prime example is the Klu Klux Klan, they believed they were above the law, they terrorised blacks and in many cases killed them. They did not worry about the consequences of their actions, they ignored all moral and ethical issues effecting people’s lives. Another example was the US invasion of Vietnam, and the escalation of the war there. The US thought they would invade Vietnam and win the war, but they got it wrong, many lives were lost, they eventually pulled out and withdrew all political support. This can be used an example of groupthink as the US believed they would just have to turn up, with their vast resources of soldiers, and over power the smaller Vietnam nation.

In the context of obedience and conformity evaluate the idea of (a) entrapment and (b) deindividuation.

Entrapment can be defined as a gradual process in which individuals escalate their commitment to a cause of action to justify their investment of time, money or effort. () Another theory it can be explained as is the ‘foot in the door’ theory, whereby a person first agrees to a small request, then gradually over time agrees to larger ones, entrapment tends to run hand in hand with obedience, in general it is used by sales people who may entice customers with smaller products before bringing out more expensive products, like their gaining the trust of the client before the big sell. This is because they are more likely to comply with a small request that costs little time, money, effort or convenience. Once they comply, they tend to feel part of the cause, feel more obliged to spend more money, time or effort. An example that will combine both entrapment and obedience is Milgram’s obedience experiment where by he carried out a series of experiments using volunteers from the general public, in an experiment concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. Every time a mistake was made an electric shock was delivered and each successive mistake was punished by a shock 15volts higher than the last. In this experiment Milgram advertised for participants in a local newspaper, but he only said it was for a study of memory, and they would be paid $4.00 for an hours work. He effectively got the members of public in using this harmless advert, but by the end of the experiment had them delivering lethal electric shocks to another person, he used the ‘foot in the door’ theory to get them in, then once they were there they felt almost obliged to carry out the instructions they were being given, the participants were obedient, but Milgram used entrapment to get them into that position first.

Deindividuation explains aggression in terms of the reduction of inhibition against antisocial behaviour when individuals are part of a group. (P432, Gross, 2002) It can be associated more with conformity, where by the individual loses his/her individual identity. They feel that being part of a larger group they are anonymous and thus their own actions won’t be identified, there is a diffusion of responsibility. According to Diener (1980), deindividuation is produced through decreased self-awareness, and leads to the following effects: poor monitoring of one’s own behaviour and reduced capacity to think rationally. A prime example that can be used is football hooligans, where as an individual may not carry out these actions that they carry out as part of the group, deindividuation allows them to behave very differently than they would usually, without standing out in the crowd, but still in effect conforming with the others around them.

How have the following studies increased our understanding of conformity and obedience: (a) Zimbardo (b) Milgram (c) Asch?

Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment was set up to demonstrate the power of social situations on people’s behaviour. Zimbardo recruited 24 emotionally stable, physically healthy and ‘normal to average’ based on personality tests, they had no psychiatric problems and had never been in trouble with the police. Participants were randomly selected to become either guards or prisoners, the study was supposed to last 14 days but had to be stopped after 6days because severe violence and disorder took place, and the fake prisoners became subdued and distressed whilst the wardens began to enjoy the power they had been given. (P568, Eysenck, 2000) Social power had become the major aspect of the experiment, the prisoners after an initial rebellion started to act passively whilst the guards increased aggression. (P389, Gross, 2002) The prisoners obeyed the guards, whilst the guards conformed to the rules that were set. Whilst obeying the overpowering guards, the prisoners became emotionally unstable, on the other hand the guards started to enjoy the power they were exercising over the prisoners. Overall the experiment demonstrated the power of social situations to make people act in uncharacteristic ways. A brutalising atmosphere, like a prison can induce brutality in people who aren’t usually brutal. (P400, Gross, 2002)

Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment as shown in the last question can be a good example of obedience. Obedience is the most important factor in Milgram’s experiments, mainly because our experience has taught us that authorities are generally trustworthy and legitimate, also due to the incremental stages from reasonable to unreasonable, the participants found it difficult to notice they were behaving in an unreasonable way, and lastly the participants were put in an ‘agentic’ state, they were ordered to it, thus not accepting responsibility for their actions. The individuals involved in the experiments merely carried out what they were told to do, they were obedient, but also it shows us that anyone put into a situation like this can carry out these sadistic and cruel methods. (P562, Eysenck, 2000) The individuals effectively suffered from a diffusion of responsibility, they were ordered to carry out the electric shocks and they obeyed.

Solomon Asch carried out conformity experiments; His experiment identified the strong effects of conformity on individuals. At first he conducted a pilot study in which only three mistakes were made in 720 trials, the test was simple but in the actual test he put in accomplices who deliberately gave wrong answers, as a result of this 25% of Asch’s participants gave the correct answer on all the trials despite the incorrect answers of their fellow participants. (P557, Eysenck, 2000) Therefore a high level of conformity was indicated even though the task was simple an unambiguous. Van Avermaet (1996) remarked: ‘the results reveal the tremendous impact of an obviously incorrect but unanimous majority on the judgements of a lone individual’. (P382, Gross, 2002) The experiments show how people conform to others when they are in a group.