ABSTRACT
<target id="page_278" target-type="page">278</target>Chapter summary
There is a moderately strong conformity effect in the Asch situation, especially when participants perceive other group members as similar to themselves.
Conformity in the Asch situation depends on normative influence (desire to be liked or respected) and informational influence (accepting that other group members have superior knowledge). Normative influence is typically greater than informational influence.
It is arguable that most participants in the Asch situation behave appropriately in that they show respect for other group members and also exhibit accurate visual perception.
Majorities often influence minorities through compliance, whereas minorities influence majorities through conversion. However, the specific impact that minorities have on majorities may vary between active and victimised minorities.
In Milgram’s research on obedience to authority, the percentage of fully obedient participants went down when the obviousness of the learner’s plight increased and/or the experimenter’s authority was reduced.
Milgram exaggerated the extent to which participants entered into a passive agentic state. In fact, may were positively engaged followers of the experimenter and believed their behaviour was appropriate.
Milgram downplayed evidence indicating that a significant proportion of participants did not believe that the learner was actually receiving electric shocks.
Group polarisation is influenced by social comparison, persuasive arguments, and group members’ desire to distinguish their group from other groups.
Groupthink is often associated with very poor decision-making. However, it is hard to establish that groupthink actually causes bad decisions, and groupthink is almost as common in successful groups as in unsuccessful ones.
The Stanford prison experiment suggested that brutality in American prisons was due to the power structure within prisons. However, the experiment was heavily biased in favour of the reported findings, and those findings were not replicated in the BBC study.
It is often assumed that crowds are spontaneous, destructive, irrational, highly emotional, and suggestible and that some of these features are due to deindividuation within crowds. In fact, deindividuation increases adherence to group norms, and seldom leads to antisocial behaviour.
It is often assumed that crowds confronted by a serious emergency will tend to panic. In fact, what is much more common is that crowds react calmly, develop a shared social identity, and engage in mutual help.
