To what are conformity and obedience likely outcomes of human behaviour and can individuals avoid these social influences?

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To what are conformity and obedience likely outcomes of human behaviour and can individuals avoid these social influences?

Both conformity and obedience can be seen in everyday life, from young children to grown adults. They both are to a great extent likely outcomes of human behaviour, this can be seen in everyday life for example following the recent fashion to obeying people of an authority figure.

Asch’s line experiment conducted in 1951 showed to a great extent how people conform, with the minority behaving like the majority with thinking about the point of view. Even when the participants knew they were right, they still gave the wrong answer they felt they had to comply with the rest of the group, as they did not want to seen as an outcast and wanted to fit in with the rest of the group. When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar"..() As humans we rely on social companionship and fear rejection. This type of conformity is call compliance and can be seen as normative influence, recent everyday example would be dressing the same as your friends to fit in and avoid bullying.

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Informative Influence  is where others go along with individuals as they believe them to know the answer, as they feel they are better informed. This can be seen in Moscovici study where he has disagreed with Asch and said that minority can influence the majority.  “Moscovici (1976, 1980) argued along different lines.  He claimed that (1951) and others had put too much emphasis on the notion that the majority in a group has a large influence on the minority.”( ) the study showed that having more than one person sticking together and giving constantly the same answer influenced the majority of the ...

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