Exam 8: Conformity: Influencing Behavior

When participants were first placed in a dark room alone and asked to estimate the apparent movement of a point of light,individuals were consistent in their own estimates,and these estimates differed greatly from participant to participant.When participants made the same estimates in a group setting,their estimates converged.According to Muzafer Sherif (1936),why did this happen? Conformity occurs when people

In which of the following does the role of informational rather than normative social influence most predominate?

Despite public outcry and rigorous ethical guidelines on research,Burger (2009)recently did a replication of Milgram's studies on obedience.How was Burger able to conduct these studies?

Milgram found that about ____ percent of his participants went all the way to 450 volts in his original experiment.

Suppose you wanted your friend Nick to agree to join the "Save the Seals" campaign,a campaign that most of your other friends support.You should invite Nick to a meeting of

What is the moral or the take-home message of Solomon Asch's (1951,1956,1957)series of experiments in which participants were asked to judge the lengths of lines? People will go to great lengths

People are motivated to impose clear definitions on ambiguous situations.All of the following processes except ____ are used to resolve ambiguity of information.

The United States has celebrated independence and rugged individualism from the time of its inception.This suggests that American attitudes toward conformity are

Amanda is assigned to a group to take a quiz (which actually doesn't count towards the course grade).For one of the questions,she is certain the correct answer is C,but the rest of her group all says the answer is A.Based on information about the Asch line studies,how would Amanda be likely to respond?

In a variation on his original experiment,Milgram had the experimenter leave the room after telling participants that they could deliver whatever level of shock they chose.After the experimenter left,a confederate suggested that the participant increase the shock by one level each time the learner made a mistake.In this variation,only about 20 percent of participants went to the highest shock level.The fact that the authority figure's presence made much more of a difference than that of a peer suggests the role of

The major downside risk of informational social influence is that the more ____ the situation is,the more we rely on others who are no more likely to be knowledgeable or accurate than we ourselves are,leading us each to adopt others' mistakes and misinterpretations.

Which type of conformity is most at odds with our cultural ethos of individualism and independence and most closely matches the negative stereotypes of those who conform as "weaklings"?

Injunctive norms tend to be more powerful than descriptive norms because they are based on