L8 Social Psychology - Obedience

Obeience- Conformity is one way that people influence us. - Another way is obedience, when people change their behaviour because someone tells them to. - Obedience can lead to people violating their own principles e.g. Nazi death camps- People with high authoritarian personalities are most likely to be obediant.- Prejudiced against various minority groups- They believe that the world is best governed by a system of power  and dominance in which each of us must submit to those above us and show harshness to those below. Motivated Social Cognition - People respond to threat and uncertainty by expressing beliefs that help them manage their concerns. Situations and Obedience- In the Nazi death camps the some of the Nazis following Hitlers commands were just normal people with no hate in them, they were simply obiding by the rules. What makes a situation influential? How coercive does a situation have to be to elicit monstrous acts?- Milgram example showed that is takes very little to get people to obey extreme and inhumane commands. - Some participants may have felt that it was the experimenter who was in control of the situations and the shocks not the participants themselves. - With 2 teacher roles one a confederate issuing the shock and the other reading out the words to be repeated 90% of participants went to the limit of shocks.- Dehumanization of the victims helped making the teachers job easier, also reducing the guilt. - There are two reasons that participants give to let themselves off the moral hook 1) They weren't doing the shocking 2) They only perceived the victims as objects not a person. Compliance- When we conform we change our behaviors because of pressures form a group or commands from authority.- Compliance is a third type of social influence and occurs when people change their behaviour because someone merely asks them to.- We feel most compelled to comply when the person asking us to comply has done something for us and we are indebted to them (Cialdini (1993). That's not all technique- Produces compliance by starting with a modest offer and then improving on it making people want to conform/agree to the plan.Norm of reciprocity - Simply feeling the need to conform to something someone wants you to do because you are indebted to the person, Cupcake example- Someone selling cupcakes but then offer cookies as well with the purchase people were nearly teice as more likely to purchase the cupcakes. Burger (1986).

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