12.4 Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience — Why 65% Follow Dangerous Orders | Psychology 2e
After this lesson you will be able to…
- Learn about Asch's classic experiment on how individuals conform to group pressure.
- Understand how the desire to fit in drives conformity to group norms.
- Discover how believing the group has better information leads to conformity.
- Explore how group size, dissenters, and privacy impact conformity levels.
- Understand compliance as publicly agreeing with a request despite private disagreement.
- Learn about Milgram's controversial study on obedience to authority figures.
- Discover how authority's power and victim's humanity influence obedience.
- See how Milgram's findings are still relevant through a 2008 midwife study.
- Learn about groupthink, where harmony is prioritized over rational decision-making.
- Identify groupthink symptoms and strategies to prevent it in decision-making.
- Understand how group discussions can lead to more extreme initial attitudes.
- Learn about social traps where individual short-term gains cause long-term collective harm.
- Understand social loafing, where individuals exert less effort in group tasks.
- Explore methods to prevent social loafing and how groups can enhance performance on difficult tasks.
- Learn about deindividuation, the loss of self-awareness and accountability in a crowd.
- Ponder how social influence will evolve with remote work and online anonymity.
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(0)How much control do you really have over your own behavior? This lesson from Section 12.4 of Psychology 2e digs into the powerful social forces behind...
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Quiz: Social Influence, Conformity, and Group Behavior
FundamentalsAnswer each question based only on what was presented in the video lesson. No outside knowledge is needed — all answers can be found in the video.
Practice: Social Influence, Conformity, and Group Behavior
PracticeAnswer each question using what you learned in the video lesson. For short-answer questions, write 2–4 complete sentences. Questions increase in difficulty from recall to application.