Essay: Conformity & Obedience

There are many forms of Social influences, this indicates a change in behaviour affected by others and shows the way opinions are formed, establishes actions and effects everyday lives, this happens even with out being aware of it as people have a strong desire to be liked by others.
Conformity is a social influence which increases the act of changing a belief or behaviour to fit in with surroundings then soon as a certain way of doing things is recognised as a norm people begin to conform and give the impression of the `right` thing to do.
One study on conformity by Sherief  in 1930s, the aim was to determine weather a person would conform to group or social norms whilst put in ambiguous situations.
Sherif put members within a dark room showing a small spot light projected onto a screen appearing to move even though it was not, it was found people alone in the room made different judgments on the movement. Sherif then manipulated part of the group by joining three together having two with similar results plus one with very different results first time round, this time though they had to say an answer out loud on how much the light moved, after a numerous of times it showed all the results got more similar each time.
Results found in ambiguous situations, less previous experience a person had of this situation more powerful the influence was. Their was no right or wrong answer in this experience as the light was an illusion anyway.
Asch also done a study in 1950s on conformity, though that whilst the studies of Sherif showed aspects on conformity they did not show how social or group pressure would effect were their was no right or wrong answer, Asch wanted to determine weather people would conform the same even though something’s obviously wrong.
Asch carried out a pilot study with naïve male members including seven associates showing them a paper with three lines on with different lengths asking them to match it to a line they previously got shown being obvious, associates purposely give the wrong answer, it turned out the members agreed and this shows people will conform even though the answer is incorrect. After 12 trials on this study 75% conformed.
Both of these studies lacked ecological validity as it was not within a real life situation and was done with in a laboratory setting, also these are gender bias all males were used so would no apply and lack population validity.
Obedience is another type of social influence, this has negative and positive sides, positive side, people obey laws, authority, figures and sensible instructions. On the negative side it can be destructive causing crime, Example.. From history one group of people killed another Nazi in ordering German soldiers to kill millions of Jews in the second world war.
Milgram is also well known for social influence studies, his experiment he wanted to find out how far humans would go when a authority orders to hurt another, members agreed to take part and pretend to have an electric but the associates giving the shocks really though these were getting hurt, this means they were deceived and also baldy stressed, this experiment does breach the code of ethics by the British psychologist society and would not be measured ethical now. Ethical issues from this were these members were deceived they were led to believe they had really given high voltage shocks, although suggestions were made members may have known the study was a deception but carried on knowing no harm was made, this would mean the research would not measure obedience.
Fledman & Scheihe was another obedience study taken in the 1970s this was to see what factors caused a person to rebel against an authority, college students were asked to fill in a personal embarrassing questionnaire in front of others , these were actually associates. First state members showed willingly filling in the questionnaire, in another they refused and said they were leaving,. Results showed members in the first state were more likely to complete than the others.
This means people are more likely to refuse authority requests that are not good and social support is their from others. It was taken away from others refusing to fill in the questionnaire in this experiment.
Obedience is necessary to authority, society or system, imagine what it would be like if soldiers in the army refused their orders by their commander.
All these studies were ethical and lack validity over time and woukd be interesting to see the difference in time.
Ethical issues are very important, psychologists need these to take part in research and would want members to feel safe. People whom more likely to show independent behaviour resolve higher in a social responsibility scale than a person who conform or obey.
Websites
http://www.psychteacher.co.uk
http://newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/stanley_milgram
Text books
Gross, R. D. (2010) Psychology; The science of Mind and Behaviour. 6th edn. London: Oxford University Press. (Gross, 2010, pp. 400-407)
Boswell, Karen, Dave Robertson, Liz Dancer, Donald C. Pennington, and Julie McLaughlin. 2002. Introducing Psychology: Approaches, Topics and Methods. London: Hodder & Stoughton. (Boswell et al. 2002: 159-172)
Class notes: Social influence
Moodle power point.