Social Influence: Crash Course Psychology #38

Summary

This script delves into the power of social influence and conformity, highlighting the chilling Milgram experiment which revealed that most people would obey authority even to the point of causing harm. It also discusses Solomon Asch's conformity study and explores group dynamics such as social facilitation, loafing, deindividuation, polarization, and groupthink, emphasizing the balance between individual choice and group influence.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The Milgram experiment demonstrated the chilling extent to which people can obey authority, even to the point of administering what they believe are harmful electric shocks to others.
• 👥 Conformity is a powerful social force, influencing individuals to adjust their behavior to align with group norms, as shown in Solomon Ash's line-judgment experiment.
• 🤔 Social influence can lead to both positive and negative outcomes, with individuals potentially conforming to harmful group behaviors or beneficial collective actions.
• 👀 The presence of an authority figure and the depersonalization of the victim can significantly increase obedience to authority, as observed in Milgram's variations of his experiment.
• 🤷‍♂️ People are more likely to conform when they feel insecure or incompetent, especially in larger groups where uniform agreement exists.
• 🏅 The desire for approval and belonging can drive individuals to comply with group norms, a concept known as normative social influence.
• 🏃‍♂️ Social facilitation can enhance performance in the presence of an audience, but it can also lead to increased anxiety and decreased performance.
• 🌾 Social loafing occurs when individuals exert less effort in a group setting, knowing that their individual contributions are less noticeable.
• 👥 Deindividuation can lead to a loss of self-awareness and restraint in group situations, contributing to behaviors such as riots or online trolling.
• 📈 Group polarization refers to the strengthening of attitudes and beliefs within a group, often resulting in an 'us vs. them' mentality.
• 💻 The internet facilitates group polarization by connecting like-minded individuals and amplifying their views, which can be both constructive and destructive.
• 🤯 Groupthink can lead to poor decision-making within a group that values consensus over critical evaluation of alternatives.

Q & A

What was the main purpose of Stanley Milgram's experiment?

Stanley Milgram's experiment aimed to investigate the extent to which average people might be capable of inflicting harm on others when under orders from an authority figure.

What was the defense of Adolf Eichmann and other Nazis during their trials?

Adolf Eichmann and other Nazis defended themselves by claiming that they were simply following the orders of their superiors, which led to Milgram's interest in obedience to authority.

How was the 'shock generator' in Milgram's experiment designed to influence participants?

The 'shock generator' was a phony device with switches labeled from 'slight shock' to 'dangerous shock' and 'XXX', designed to test participants' obedience to administering increasing levels of shock to a 'learner'.

What role did Milgram's colleague play in the experiment?

Milgram's colleague posed as a research subject, acting as the 'learner' in the experiment, who was supposedly receiving the shocks from the 'teacher' participants.

What were the 'prods' used by the researcher in Milgram's experiment to encourage participants to continue?

The 'prods' were a series of prompts starting with 'Please continue', escalating to 'The experiment requires you to continue', 'It's absolutely essential that you continue', and finally 'You have no choice but to continue'.

What surprising result did Milgram find in the first round of his experiments?

Milgram was surprised to find that about two-thirds of the participants delivered the maximum 450-volt shock, and all continued to at least 300 volts, showing a high level of obedience.

What factors did Milgram discover influenced the level of obedience in his experiments?

Factors that increased obedience included the proximity and perceived authority of the person giving orders, depersonalization or distance of the victim, and the absence of others disobeying.

What is the concept of conformity in social psychology?

Conformity in social psychology refers to the adjustment of one's behavior or thinking to align with the norms or rules of the group they belong to.

What was Solomon Ash's experiment on conformity about?

Solomon Ash's experiment on conformity involved a group of people, including actors, who would unanimously give the wrong answer to a simple visual perception question, testing the real participant's adherence to their own perception or the group's incorrect consensus.

What is 'normative social influence' and how does it relate to conformity?

Normative social influence is the idea that individuals comply with group norms to fulfill their need to be liked or to belong, which is a key driver of conformity.

What is 'social loafing' and how does it manifest in group settings?

Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when they are part of a group and not individually accountable for the outcome, leading to a decrease in personal contribution.

What is 'deindividuation' and how can it lead to negative group behaviors?

Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and restraint that can occur in group situations, often leading to individuals engaging in more dangerous or extreme behaviors due to the sense of anonymity and arousal.

What is 'group polarization' and how does it affect group dynamics?

Group polarization is the process by which the attitudes and beliefs of a group become more extreme when group members discuss their shared views, often leading to a stronger 'us' vs 'them' dynamic.

What is 'groupthink' and how can it lead to poor decision-making?

Groupthink is a phenomenon where a group makes bad decisions due to a desire for consensus and an avoidance of dissenting opinions, leading to a lack of critical evaluation of alternatives.

What role does the internet play in group polarization and conformity?

The internet facilitates the connection of like-minded individuals, amplifying their inclinations and potentially leading to increased polarization and conformity within online communities.

Outlines

00:00

🔬 The Milgram Experiment on Obedience

The Milgram Experiment, conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, aimed to understand the extent to which individuals would obey authority figures even when instructed to perform acts that conflict with their personal morals. The experiment involved a 'shock generator' and a staged scenario where participants, believing they were administering electric shocks to a 'learner,' were pressured by an authority figure to continue increasing the shock levels despite the learner's apparent distress. The results were shocking, with a majority of participants complying with the orders to administer the maximum shock. The experiment highlighted the power of authority and the influence of situational factors on obedience, such as proximity, perceived authority of the order giver, and the depersonalization of the victim.

05:03

👥 Social Conformity and Group Dynamics

This paragraph delves into the concept of social conformity and the power of group dynamics to influence individual behavior. It discusses Solomon Asch's experiment on visual perception, which demonstrated the pressure to conform to a group's incorrect answers despite clear evidence to the contrary. The paragraph explores factors that increase conformity, such as feelings of incompetence, group size, and admiration for the group. It also touches on other aspects of group influence, including social facilitation, social loafing, deindividuation, group polarization, and groupthink. The internet's role in amplifying group polarization is highlighted, as well as the potential for group dynamics to affect both personal and large-scale decisions. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the importance of balancing individual and group factors in decision-making and recognizing the strength of individual choice.

Keywords

💡Authority

Authority refers to the power or right to give orders, make decisions, or enforce obedience. In the context of the video, it is highlighted by the obedience to orders in Milgram's experiment, where participants were influenced by the perceived authority of the researcher to administer shocks to a 'learner'. This demonstrates the significant role authority plays in shaping behavior, even when it involves potentially harmful actions.

💡Conformity

Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. The video discusses Solomon Asch's experiment to illustrate conformity, where participants would often choose the wrong line to match the majority, despite knowing the correct answer. This concept is central to understanding how individuals adjust their actions to fit in with a group, which can sometimes lead to the suppression of personal beliefs or actions.

💡Social Influence

Social influence is the process by which an individual's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are affected by the presence or actions of others. The video's theme revolves around the power of social influence, as seen in both Milgram's and Asch's experiments, where participants' actions were significantly swayed by the influence of an authority figure or the group, respectively.

💡Milgram's Experiment

Milgram's Experiment is a historical social psychology study conducted by Stanley Milgram, which aimed to measure the willingness of individuals to obey an authority figure despite causing harm to others. The video uses this experiment to explore the depths of obedience and the potential for harm under social influence, with two-thirds of participants administering the maximum shock as an example of extreme compliance.

💡Obedience

Obedience is the act of following orders, commands, or requests. In the video, obedience is a key concept, particularly in relation to the orders given by the researcher in Milgram's experiment, where participants continued to administer shocks due to the perceived obligation to follow orders, even when it conflicted with their personal morals.

💡Deindividuation

Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness in group situations, leading to a decrease in personal restraint and an increase in impulsive behavior. The video mentions deindividuation as a phenomenon that can occur when individuals feel less identifiable as part of a crowd, which can contribute to extreme behaviors such as riots or online trolling.

💡Group Polarization

Group polarization is the phenomenon where discussions within a group that shares similar attitudes can lead to more extreme views on that attitude. The video describes how the internet facilitates group polarization by connecting like-minded individuals and magnifying their inclinations, which can result in a more pronounced 'us' versus 'them' dynamic.

💡Groupthink

Groupthink is a term coined by Irving Janis to describe the phenomenon where a group makes poor decisions due to a collective desire for consensus and the suppression of dissenting opinions. The video cites historical examples such as the Watergate cover-up and the Bay of Pigs invasion as consequences of groupthink, emphasizing the danger of a lack of diverse perspectives in decision-making.

💡Social Facilitation

Social facilitation is the effect where the presence of others can either enhance or impair performance. The video explains that social facilitation can lead to improved performance, such as sprinting faster with a crowd cheering, but it can also cause nervousness and hinder performance, such as forgetting poetry in front of an audience.

💡Social Loafing

Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to put in less effort when working as part of a group than when working individually, especially when their individual contributions are not identifiable. The video uses an example of a tug-of-war game where blindfolded students pulled less hard when they believed they were part of a team, illustrating the concept of social loafing.

Highlights

The Milgram experiment, conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, investigated the extent to which people would obey authority figures even to the point of causing harm to others.

Milgram's work was influenced by the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who claimed he was just following orders.

The experiment involved a fake 'shock generator' with voltage levels increasing from 30 to 450 volts, labeled with escalating severity.

Volunteers were paired with a confederate posing as a participant, with the volunteer always being the 'teacher' and the confederate the 'learner'.

The 'learner' was made to appear as if receiving electric shocks for wrong answers, with the 'teacher' administering the shocks based on incorrect responses.

Researchers used a series of prompts to encourage participants to continue shocking the 'learner', even when they hesitated.

Surprisingly, about two-thirds of participants delivered the maximum 450-volt shock, and all continued to at least 300 volts.

Obedience was found to be higher when the authority figure was nearby and perceived as coming from a prestigious institution.

Depersonalizing the victim or placing them at a distance increased the likelihood of obedience.

Conformity is the adjustment of behavior or thinking to align with group norms, often facilitated by non-conscious mimicry.

Solomon Ash's conformity experiment demonstrated the power of group influence on perception, even when the correct answer was clear.

People are more likely to conform when they feel insecure or are in a group where everyone agrees, especially if they admire the group.

Social facilitation refers to the impact of a group on an individual's performance, which can either enhance or hinder it.

Social loafing is the tendency to exert less effort when part of a group, especially when individual accountability is low.

Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and restraint in group situations, which can lead to extreme behaviors such as riots or online trolling.

Group polarization is the process where shared attitudes and beliefs within a group become more extreme through discussion.

Groupthink is the phenomenon where a group makes poor decisions due to a lack of dissenting opinions and an overemphasis on group harmony.

The internet has amplified group polarization, connecting like-minded individuals and reinforcing their views, which can have both positive and negative effects.

Despite the power of group behavior, individual choice remains significant, as demonstrated by the one-third of participants in Milgram's experiment who refused to administer the maximum shock.

Transcripts

If someone in a position of authority told you to like, stop walking on the grass, you

would stop walking on the grass, right? And if they told you to help someone's grandma

cross the street, or pick up your dog's poop, or put your shoes on before you go into a

store, you'd probably comply.

But what if they ordered you to physically hurt another person? You're probably thinking

"No way! I could never do something like that." But there's a good chance you're wrong.

In the early 1960s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram began what would become one

of social psychology's most famed and chilling experiments.

Milgram began his work during the widely publicized trial of World War II Nazi war criminal Adolf

Eichmann. Eichmann's defense, along with other Nazis', for sending millions of people to

their deaths, was that he was simply following the orders of his superiors. And while that

may have been true, it didn't fly in court and Eichmann was ultimately executed for his

crimes. But the question got Milgram to thinking, what might the average person be capable of

when under orders?

So, for his initial experiment, Milgram recruited forty male volunteers using newspaper ads.

He built a phony "shock generator" with a scale of thirty switches that could supposedly

deliver shocks in increments from 30 volts up to 450 volts, labeled with terms like "slight

shock" to "dangerous shock" up to simply "XXX." He then paired each volunteer participant

with someone who was also apparently a participant, but was in fact one of Milgram's colleagues,

posing as a research subject. He had them draw straws to see who would be the "learner"

and who would be the "teacher." The volunteers didn't realize that the draw was fixed so

that they'd always be the teacher, while Milgram's buddy would be the learner. So the fake learner

was put into a room, strapped to a chair, and wired up with electrodes. The teacher,

the person who was being studied, and a researcher who was played by an actor, went into another

room with a shock generator that the teacher had no idea was fake.

The learner was asked to memorize a list of word pairs, and the participant was told that he'd

be testing the learner's recall of those words and should administer an electric shock for

every wrong answer, increasing the shock level a little bit each time. From here, the pretend learner

purposely gave mainly wrong answers, eliciting shocks from the participant. If a participant

hesitated, perhaps swayed by the learner's yelps of pain, the researcher gave orders

to make sure he continued. These orders were delivered in a series of four prods.

The first was just "Please continue," and if the participant didn't comply, the researcher

issued other prods until he did. He'd say "The experiment requires you to continue"

and then "It's absolutely essential that you continue" and finally "You have no choice but to continue."

Even Milgram was surprised by the first round of experiments. About two-thirds of the participants

ended up delivering the maximum 450 volt shock. All of the volunteers continued to at least

300 volts. Over years, Milgram kept conducting this experiment, changing the situation in

different ways to see if it had any effect on people's obedience. What he repeatedly

found was that obedience was highest when the person giving the orders was nearby and

was perceived as an authority figure, especially if they were from a prestigious institution.

This was also true if the victim was depersonalized, or placed at a distance such as in another

room. Plus, subjects were more likely to comply with the orders if they didn't see anyone

else disobeying, if there were no role models of defiance.

In the end, Milgram's path-breaking work sheds some seriously harsh light on the enormous

power of two of the key cornerstone topics of social psychology: social influence and

We all conform to some sort of social norms, like following traffic laws or even obeying

the dress codes for different roles and environments. When we know how to act in a certain group

or setting, life just seems to go more smoothly. Some of this conformity is non-conscious automatic

mimicry, like how you're likely to laugh if you see someone else laughing or nod your

head when they're nodding. In this way, group behavior can be contagious.

But overall, conformity describes how we adjust our behavior or thinking to follow the behavior

or rules of the group we belong to. Social psychologists have always been curious about

the degree to which a person might follow or rebel against their group's social norms.

During the early 1950s, Polish-American psychologist Solomon Ash expressed the power of conformity

through a simple test.

In this experiment, the volunteer is told that they're participating in a study on visual

perception and is seated at a table with five other people. The experimenter shows the group

a picture of a standard line and three comparison lines of various lengths, and then asked the

people to say which of the three lines matches the comparison line. It's clear to anyone

with any kind of good vision that the second line is the right answer, but the thing is,

most, if not all of the other people in the group start choosing the wrong line. The participant

doesn't know that those other people are all actors, a common deception used in social-psychological

research, and they're intentionally giving the wrong answer. This causes the real participant

to struggle with trusting their own eyes or going with the group.

In the end most subjects still gave what they knew was the correct answer, but more than

a third were essentially just willing to give the wrong answer to mesh with the group. Ash,

and subsequent researchers, found that people are more likely to conform to a group if they're

made to feel incompetent or insecure and are in a group of three or more people, especially

if all those people agree. It also certainly doesn't hurt if the person admires the group

because of maybe their status or their attractiveness, and if they feel that others are watching their behavior.

We also tend to conform more if we're from a culture that puts particular emphasis on

respect for social standards. This might sound a little bit familiar, like, all of high school,

fraternities or sororities, the big company you work for, or any other group that you've ever been a part of.

The classic experiments of Milgram and Ash showed us that people conform for lots of

different reasons, but they both underscored the power of situation in conformity - whether

that situation elicits respect for authority, fear of being different, fear of rejection,

or simply a desire for approval. This is known as normative social influence, the idea that

we comply in order to fuel our need to be liked or belong.

But, of course, groups influence our behavior in more ways than just conformity and obedience.

For example, we may perform better or worse in front of a group. This is called social

facilitation and it's what might, say, help you sprint the last hundred meters of a race

if people are cheering you on, but it's also what can make you nervous enough to forget

the words to that poetry you were supposed to be slamming in front of a crowd.

But that's what can happen in front of a group, what happens when you're actually part of

a group? Do you work harder or start slacking? One study found that if you blindfold students,

hand them a rope and tell them to pull as hard as they can in a game of tug-of-war,

the subjects will put in less work if they think they're part of the team instead of

pulling by themselves. About 20% less, it turns out. This tendency to exert less effort

when you're not individually accountable is called social loafing. That's pretty good.

You can now add the word "loafing" to your scientific vocabulary.

But a group's ability to either arouse or lessen our feelings of personal responsibility

can make us do more dangerous things than just phone in some group homework assignment.

It can also lead to deindividuation, the loss of self-awareness and restraint that can occur

in group situations. Being part of a crowd can create a powerful combination of arousal

and anonymity; it's part of what fuels riots and lynch mobs and online trolling. The less

individual we feel, the more we're at the mercy of the experience of our group, whether

it's good or bad.

And it should come as no surprise that the attitudes and beliefs we bring to a group

grow stronger when we talk with others who share them. This is a process psychologists

know as group polarization, and it often translates into a nasty "us" vs "them" dynamic.

And you know what is great at polarizing groups? The internet. The internet has made it easier

than ever to connect like-minded people and magnify their inclinations. This can of course

breed haters, like racists may become more racist in the absence of conflicting viewpoints,

but it can, and often does, work for good, promoting education, crowd-sourcing things

like fundraising, and organizing people to fight all kinds of worldsuck.

And group dynamics can not only affect our personal decisions, they can also influence

really big decisions on a larger, even national scale. Groupthink is a term coined by social

psychologist Irving Janis, to describe what happens when a group makes bad decisions because

they're too caught up in the unique internal logic of their group. When a group gets wrapped

up in itself and everyone agrees with each other, no one stops to think about other perspectives.

As a result, you get some big and bad ideas, including some enormous historical fiascoes,

like the Watergate cover-up and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Chernobyl nuclear reactor

accident. So while two heads may often be better than one, it's important to make sure

those heads are still open to different opinions or they could do some really dumb stuff.

In the end, it's best to understand ourselves and our decisions as informed simultaneously

by both individual and group factors, personality, and situation. And don't get too freaked out

about what people are capable of; I mean, just think back to Milgram's experiment. For

the two-thirds of us who would shock someone to death in the right circumstance, there's

another third who wouldn't, reminding us that while group behavior is powerful, so is individual choice.

Today you learned about the power of social influence, conformity, and authority. We looked

at the shocking results of the famous Milgram experiment, the concept of automatic mimicry,

and how Solomon Ash proved the power of conformity in situation. You also learned how normative

social influence sways us, how social facilitation can make or break your performance and how

social loafing makes people lazy in a group. And finally, we discussed how harmful deindividuation,

group polarization, and groupthink can be.

Thank you for watching, especially to all of our Subbable subscribers who make Crash

Course possible for themselves, and for everyone else. To find out how you can become a supporter,

just go to subbable.com

This episode was written by Kathleen Yale, edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant

is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins, the script supervisor

is Michael Aranda, who is also our sound designer, and the graphics team is Thought Cafe.