PSYCO105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Stanley Milgram, Murder Of Kitty Genovese, Group Cohesiveness
7 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
As a general rule, humans experience stress when they stick out. We have a tendency to conform with group behaviour, even if we think it is silly: reasons for conformity. People may conform with group behaviour because they want to avoid ridicule/persecution. They may also conform because they genuinely accept the group a/beliefs. Participants would be seated in a room with multiple participants (actually confederates). Standard line, three comparison lines, and would be instructed to say which comparison line was the same length as the standard line. Some confederates would provide answers first: manipulation. On some trials, confederates were instructed to provide obviously incorrect answers: results. Most participants conformed to wrong answers on at least one trial. Some conformed in as many as 12 out of 12 trials. In addition to manipulating confederate answers, group sizes also ranged between 1 and 14 confederates. Participants are more likely to conform in larger groups.
