Differences Between Conformity Compliance And Obedience

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What are similarities and differences between conformity, compliance and obedience? Student number - 1311397 Word count - 1473 Abstract The purpose of this research is to identify the similarities and differences between three forms of social influence: conformity, compliance and obedience. In society, people generally tend to follow social norms, in other words, are inclined towards conformity. Conformity was first studied by Asch (1951); his research found that many people will submit to a social pressure when the group is unanimous. Sometimes, we are made requests, accommodating to these requests exhibits compliance. Cialdini (1994, 2008) accumulated a list of six factors that impact compliance rate: authority, social validation,…show more content…
282, 283). Conformity can be described as an “automatic” response, one that we perform unconsciously. This is supported by Aarts & Dijkersterhuis (2003) experiment, which found that mental representations of situational norms (e.g. behaving quietly in libraries) and consequent explicit behaviours are capable of being automatically activated. This is an example of informational social influence, which is the tendency to depend on others as a source of information, based on the desire to be correct (Baron & Branscombe, 2009, p.262). Public compliance, on the other hand, does not necessarily believe private attitudes and beliefs. Conformity, therefore involves outwardly (change in behaviour) and inwardly (thoughts and emotion) agreeing, while compliance involves merely outwardly agreeing but maintaining your own personal views. Since conformity involves agreeing to a crowd, and compliance involves agreeing to an expected standard, it can be said that there is more choice to conform than there is to…show more content…
Freedman and Fraser (1966) asked participants to either sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked by a second person to put a large sign advocating safe driving in their front yard. Many people who agreed to the first request now complied with the second, far more intrusive request. This tendency is mirrored in Milgram’s (1963) experiment on obedience; Milgram recruited 40 male participants and allocated them to the role of either teacher or learner. The task was to match and pair words from a list of four. The learner was attached to electrodes and the teacher was instructed to administer shocks each time an incorrect answer was given. The shocks started off at 15 volts and incremented in 15 volt stages up to 450 volts. When the teacher refused to administer a shock he was prodded by the experimenter. The findings show that around 65% of teachers continued to the highest level of 450 volts, all the participants continued to 300 volts. The high levels of obedience in Milgram’s study may be because the shock levels increased in increments. In essence, Milgram’s obedience experiment is a textbook

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