CAS PS 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Social Proof, Collectivism, Prosocial Behavior

• School: Boston University
• Department: Psychological & Brain Sciences
• Course: CAS PS 101
• Professor: Martha Tompson

Document Summary

Conformity is a tendency to adjust one"s behavior, attitude, or beliefs to fit society"s norm because of a real or imagined pressure. Group pressure: simple task, demonstrated factors in conformity. Reasons for conforming: normative social influence want to be liked/considered normal, informational social influence when situation is ambiguous, people are much more likely to conform or look to the group for confirmation. Culture: general decrease in conformity in america, collectivism vs individualistic cultures. Obedience paradigm: teacher actual subject, learner undercover researcher, word-pair memory task, wrong answer led to increasing shocks, you have no other choice, you must continue . Influences on obedience: previously established framework to obey, situation/context, gradual, repetitive escalation of questionable behavior, experimenters" behavior/reassurance, physical and psychological separation from the learner. Undermining destructive obedience: reduce buffers between teacher and learner, increase distance between experimenter and teacher. Altruism and prosocial behavior: altruism helping without expectation of a reward, prosocial behavior being good or kind to others.