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Conformity and Obedience · Acedra
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Conformity and Obedience
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0:10
This is lecture eight. In this lecture we'll be talking about conformity and obedience. And we already made a little start on these topics in Lecture seven when we talked about the various ways in which we can be influenced and influencing tactics. So then we already saw that we are really prone to being influenced by other people, by mimicking their behavior and also by an authority figure telling us what to do. So we'll continue talking about these two topics,
0:39
specifically conformity and obedience in this lecture, because they are fascinating to begin with and they are also very, very powerful and key topics in social psychology. So we'll talk first in this first part of the lecture about conformity. And specifically we're going to be talking about informational social influence. So let's start by giving you a definition what is conformity exactly? Well, conformity is when our behavior changes under the real or imagined influence of other people.
1:11
So we change, we adapt our behavior based on what other people around us are doing. So there's many real life examples of moments when we conform to others behaviors. And oftentimes this happens even without us considering it very automatically. And you see that in the examples given here. I think you've all have had the experience in your life that you see someone yawning and then automatically you start yawning yourself. It's something that happens automatically.
1:47
Also, when we see a person smiling, smiling is also contagious. So if a person smiles at you our automatic response is to smile back. It's actually often effortful, not to smile back. And also when it comes to our body postures, we mimic others. So if you're talking to someone and his or her hand is near the head, then it's quite likely that we mimic this behavior as well. And we do so especially if we like a person. So, for example, if you're on a date with someone
2:19
and that person starts mimicking your body posture, this is actually quite a strong sign that this person is into you or at least interested in you. So when these type of bodily imitation occurs, this is called mimicry and it's actually also visible in the brain. So if you put people in a scanner and you see, for example, what happens if they've been shown certain behaviors like yawning or smiling, you see that actually the areas in the brain light up that are also involved
2:51
in performing that type of movement themselves. So this is called automatic motor action. So just even seeing a person behaving in a certain way or even thinking about that behavior activates these areas in the brain that are related to a conformity. So we are really hardwired to conform to others. It's also something that I see all the time with my kids. I have three kids and especially the youngest one who is only one and a half at the moment. He's just like a mimicry machine.
3:22
He's just copying what we're doing all the time, which is something that can also be quite challenging. For example, when you're bumping your head and you want to say something that's not really a good word or a good role model behavior for my young children to be exposed to.
3:41
So it's how we learn. It's really how human beings learn. So it's great that we do so. It's great that we conform. It teaches us a lot of things. And that's also because other people just give us information on what is appropriate behavior. And if we don't imitate others, the whole world will be a chaos. So think, for example, about how we tend to behave in public spaces, like going up an escalator or waiting in line. You decide what to do by looking at the instructions you see,
4:11
for example, walking or standing, but especially how other people are behaving in that certain situation. So if you see a queue in front of, for example a museum, you do not, you know, I hope you do not ignore the queue and just go right to the entrance. No you see a signal, this is apparently what I'm supposed to be doing and you're going in line as well. So if other people are doing something, we assume that there's a good reason for them to do so and we follow along.
4:42
And this even happens when this behavior of other people initially make very little sense to us. And you can see that in a following film clip.
4:53
To answer that question. We set up a hidden camera experiment to see if this woman would stand up at the sound of this tone simply because everyone else is. You might be thinking you'd never go along with this. Or would you?
5:16
After just three beeps and without knowing why she's doing it, this woman is now conforming perfectly to the group.
5:27
But what happens if we take the group away?
5:31
Elaine please.
5:54
Okay, now she's alone. The crowd is gone, and nobody is watching her except our hidden cameras. What do you think she'll do?
6:07
She's now conforming to the rules of the group without them even being there. Now watch what happens when we introduce another outsider who doesn't know the rules. Have a seat and they'll be out in just a couple of minutes, thanks so much.
6:38
My mistake everybody was doing, so I thought I was supposed to. Think she'll teach the new guy what to
6:52
do.
7:00
We kept the cameras rolling as more unsuspecting patients arrived.
7:17
And slowly but surely, what began as a random rule for this woman has now become the social norm for everyone in this waiting room.
7:30
Here to explain what's going on in their brains is Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania. This sort of internalized form of herd behavior is part of what we call social learning, starting at a very early age, when we see members of our group perform a task, our brains literally reward us for following in their footsteps. When I saw everybody stand up, I felt like I needed to join them. Otherwise, I'm like, excluded. Once I decided to go with it, then I felt much more comfortable.
8:02
Conformity is how we become socialized, but it can also cause us to develop bad habits or repeat past wrongs. And it's why even this rebel who wasn't standing for any of this nonsense eventually joined the ranks.
8:20
And the only thing more shocking than seeing how easily conformity affects the way you act.
8:27
Is that similar forces are subconsciously shaping the way you think right now. Okay, So now we've seen that other people give us information about how we're supposed to behave. And if this happens, this is called informational social influence, and that is if we rely on others to give us information on what to do. And this especially happens when the situation is a bit ambiguous to us. We don't really understand what's going on. So that's also what we saw in the waiting room in the film clip.
8:58
Also, when we feel incompetent, we feel like we are new. We don't really know what to do or we feel like other people have more information than us or are more competent. So you see examples of this. For example, if you enter a situation that's new for you. So let's imagine you are a tourist in a foreign country, a country that you do not know the social rules of exactly and it's a different culture. It's really different language. You don't really know what to do.
9:25
Then you look for cues in other people's behavior to know how to behave, what is appropriate behavior, or for example, at your first day in a new school. So you just entered a new university. You're probably also on the lookout of what is normal behavior. How do people behave in new situations like sitting in a huge classroom with three or four hundred other students? Then you look for cues at how other people are behaving.
9:53
And finally, if something is happening, for example, you have a certain party. It's a big event, it's a big deal, and there's a certain dress code that you really are confused about. You're like, I don't know what this dress code means. It's casual chic summer vibe, and you have no idea what that means. Then you might be very confused and calling your friends, asking them, What are you wearing? I'm really confused and I want to fit in. So I want to do what is appropriate.
10:20
I want to behave in a correct way. So if we rely on others for information, so if we use information or social influence, where most of the time accepting the message that they're sending out. So we are conforming because we generally believe that what others are doing is right. So they are showing the correct behavior. So this is called private acceptance. So you conform your behavior to others because you really believe that this is what you should be doing.
10:48
You accept the message and you just go follow the herd, basically. And this is something that's so powerful and so intuitive that you can do a lot of fun experiments with it. We already saw an example, but there's been tons of research on conformity. One study conducted in 1969 by Stanley Milgram in which actors were looking up at a window, and the question was, are people going to follow this behavior? Are they going to mimic this behavior? And they had two different groups.
11:23
They had one part of the experiment in which only one person stood still on the street and started looking up. And then you saw that from all the passerby's, so from all the people passing this person on the street, almost half of the people also gazed up, even if it was just a very short while.
11:45
So only one person already affects the behavior of people like ignorant people that don't know what's going on. And if you have a big group of people, so 15 actors all standing still on the street looking up, then you see that this is almost inevitable for people to not conform. So you really you see that this is something that almost everyone just adds to the group and starts looking up, even though there's nothing going on, there's nothing to see, there's no sound, there's nothing
12:12
weird just because other people are looking up. We we think that they are onto something, that they are something that we might be missing if we don't follow along, so we join them in their behavior.
12:25
So this is actually pretty funny, right? And also harmless. You know, it doesn't matter. You can do some fun experiments with it, but social contagion or mimicry or conformity can sometimes actually be very, very dangerous. Conforming to the group can actually even be life threatening. And this is something that's also been studied in research. And I think there's one particular study in which the evidence of this is really overwhelming.
12:52
And I would like to invite you to look at the video right now. It's obvious that we don't intervene in many kind of emergency situation because there's too great a risk risking our life or limb. But now what happens when you're in a situation where if you don't act, there could be a risk to your life? Imagine you're in a room and a smoke alarm goes off, Smoke is pouring out from under the door. And if you don't leave that room quickly, the fire could could erupt
13:19
and you could be suffocated or burned to death.
13:24
It's obvious what you do. But now again, what happens if you're in that same room and there are ten other people and all of them do nothing. Do you take action when other people define the situation as do nothing rather than do something?
13:41
When your life is at stake by following the herd.
13:46
Behaving differently from your group can make you an outcast. But what would you do if you knew your group was entirely wrong? Would you, for example, sit in a burning room just because everyone else does? This hotel conference suite has been prepared for a focus group discussion on Internet shopping, but all is not as it seems. We've been busy. The place is rigged with four hidden cameras and six concealed microphones. And psychology professor Dominic Abrams is watching from our control room,
14:33
which we've built in an adjoining suite. Now it's just a question of sitting and waiting. Right, so this is a questionnaire all about kind of shopping habits and everything else. Just move out of your chair. Our first participant is Mary Mizuno, a London student who thinks she's arrived early. What she doesn't know is that behind this door. There's about to be a serious fire in the hotel kitchen, or at least the illusion of one created by a smoke machine and some sound effects. What will she do?
15:10
She's now noticed the smoke and is concerned.
15:18
At this point she decides to investigate to find out what's going on.
15:23
She's immediately taken responsibility for figuring out what to do.
15:35
Mary does the sensible thing and evacuates quickly. She even leaves her bag and coat.
15:42
As I've never been in a fire situation before. I tried to remember the kind of things that you're supposed to do. So I left my stuff and and just went out. But Mary was on her own. This time we've planted seven actors who were all in on the experiment. We've said to them, When you see the smoke, do nothing. Our second participant is Lauren Heffernan, also a student. What will she do. In this situation? She'll be following a script. The script is partly written in her mind.
16:10
It's a script which is borrowed from things like sitting exams. Most situations like this have some element of expected or scripted behavior.
16:20
But what will happen to her script when we make a slightly unusual situation, very unusual. Nothing to start with. So we get her attention. Now, how long before she dashes out of the room?
16:46
She's checking increasingly to see what the other people are thinking. But who can she appeal to? The answer is nobody. She turns to the norm of the group ignore the smoke. In a real fire the people in this group would be in very serious danger by now.
17:04
I was looking for some sort of reaction from someone else, even just the slightest little thing that they'd recognize that there was something, you know, going on here for me to kind of react on that and then do something about it. I kind of needed prodding.
17:21
She's waiting for someone else to react. Why isn't anyone else reacting? She feels uncomfortable. She doesn't want to embarrass herself by taking the lead, taking action. But something is definitely wrong. Lauren stayed in the room for 20 minutes after spotting the smoke concerned, but immobile. The fire brigade say that if this fire had been real, even if flames hadn't burnt through the door, she would have died of asphyxiation in this time. In the end, we had to ask her to leave.
17:47
I was surprised that I didn't do anything at all. I was just literally waiting. I just thought that someone else is surely going to say something soon. And because no one else did, I just didn't react at all.
18:06
We tried the experiment ten times and the same thing happened over and over again. If the person was on their own, they left quickly. If they were in a group of three or more they stayed rooted to the spot. The average length of time, they stayed 13 minutes.
18:23
In real fires, people die because of behavior like this.
18:30
In 1979, a blaze at Woolworths in Manchester killed ten people.
18:35
The fire occurred during the day when the store was occupied by hundreds of people. Most of those people managed to get out quite safely. The people that died in fire were actually using the restaurant at the time. But why so many fatalities in the restaurant? Investigators eventually realized that people simply hadn't evacuated. They'd waited to pay their bills. That was their routine. We go into a restaurant, we we sit down, the waiter comes over,
19:03
we choose a meal, we eat the meal, we pay for the meal, and then we leave the building. That's our script, if you like, for eating a meal.
19:11
Worse still, everyone was following the same script and no one wanted to be the only one to stray. One of the main reasons why people died in the wars fire is because they didn't want to be the first to react. They didn't want to stand out for the crowd and went along with the crowd behavior.
19:31
Only one person in our experiment didn't go along with the crowd behavior. Artist James McKechnie. What's that coming out from under the table?
19:46
It's a
19:56
fire. That's fine.
20:00
You should just wait till she comes back. Yeah. Think what. She said just to wait here. What was that?
20:12
She said just to wait here, didn't she?
20:15
Well, she's coming right down now. James isn't going to sit in a dangerous room just because everyone else does. Or is he? The power of the group proves irresistible. The reassurances of the rest of the group that somebody else is responsible seemed to be sufficient to pull him back into place. Instead of leaving the room and calling for help, he sits back down again and waits.
20:45
Now everybody is looking at the smoke, but in some ways that gives the group even more influence. After all, if everybody can see the smoke and no one's panicking. Well, it would be crazy for him to do it to.
20:59
James stays in the room for another 10 minutes before finally leaving in a real fire. He wouldn't have been able. He'd have been unconscious and close to suffocation.
21:11
So in this experiment we saw that this meme is actually not far from the truth. So sometimes we just sit in a burning room not moving because nobody else is moving and we have the idea like nobody else is doing something. So this is probably fine. I can just sit here and wait because nobody is taking action. And the scary thing is that our urge to conform is actually stronger if there's a crisis. So if the situation is dangerous, we are more likely to conform
21:46
and this can actually increase the danger of the situation. And this is another example of this is also very powerful example is herding behavior. And that means that if you are in a certain room, in a certain space, for example, if you're going out and you're sending in a big club and the fire alarm goes off and there's an actual fire, what we see is that people also form herds and they all get together and try to go to the same exit, to the same emergency
22:14
exits, even though there might be other exits that are open as well. We don't want to take the risk of running to a certain exit that might have a closed door. So what we do to prevent that is that we all get together and follow the herd, follow the crowd, and try to squeeze ourselves through one exit. And this is actually one of the causes that if there's an actual fire in a big room, like a restaurant or a club, that more people die of suffocation or of burning
22:43
because they try to exit and use the same exit as everybody else is doing, well, there's oftentimes many more exits. So here we see that it's really important and this is sort of the key message that I've been sending throughout this course I think, is that our urge to follow social rules is super, super strong. And that's because it's usually helpful, but it can also be really harmful. So in situations like these, especially if there's a crisis
23:12
and you see that everybody is looking at each other to figure out what to do, please think for yourself, because we also know that it only takes one person to show other behavior in order to change the whole situation. And we're going to see plenty more examples of this in the remainder of the lecture.
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