Module 75 Conformity and Obedience

LEARNING TARGETS

• 75-1 Describe social contagion, and explain how conformity experiments reveal the power of social influence.
• 75-2 Explain what Milgram’s obedience experiments teach us about the power of social influence.
• 75-3 Discuss what the social influence studies teach us about ourselves and the power we have as individuals.

Social psychology’s great lesson is the enormous power of social influence. This influence stems in part from social norms—rules for expected and acceptable behavior. At high school, jeans are the norm; on New York’s Wall Street or London’s Bond Street, business attire is expected. When we know how to act, how to groom, how to talk, life functions smoothly.

norms

understood rules for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe “proper” behavior.

But sometimes social pressure moves people in dreadful directions. Isolated with others who share their grievances, dissenters may gradually become rebels, and rebels may become terrorists. Suicides, bomb threats, airplane hijackings, and mass shootings all have a curious tendency to come in clusters. After a mass killing, the probability of another such attack increases for the ensuing 13 days (Towers et al., 2015). Let’s examine the pull of these social strings. How strong are they? How do they operate? When do we break them?