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How society changes amid the coronavirus outbreak

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How society changes amid the coronavirus outbreak

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The Covid-19 pandemic is putting a major strain on Europe's healthcare systems and economies: hospitals are having to turn away patients, schools and cultural institutions are being closed and entire business sectors are crippled, posing a challenge for the population as a whole. Commentators examine how the virus is changing how politicians, entrepreneurs and citizens think and act.

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Me or us - how is the virus changing society?

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The Covid-19 pandemic is putting a major strain on Europe's healthcare systems and economies: hospitals are having to turn away patients, schools and cultural institutions are being closed and entire business sectors are crippled, posing a challenge for the population as a whole.

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Minority influence is a type of social influence which results in a change of views amongst the majority of members within a group. It involves an individual or minority of a population persuading other members to accept their argument, even if this contradicts the more popular view held by the majority.

This form of influence has been used effectively by civil rights movements throughout the 20th Century to shape public opinion.

During the 1910s, the suffragette movement challenged the status quo, which restricted the right to vote to male citizens. A minority group, led by Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, eventually persuaded the majority that this was unfair, and enfranchisement was extended to women in 1918, overturning accepted views regarding women's rights.

Whilst minority influence involves a challenge to popular opinion and group norms, it can serve the interests of the wider population in the long term. Groups in which members are obedient to accepted norms tend to engage in groupthink, whereby long-held views are upheld without question. Critical thinking is discouraged, with dissenters being ostracised by the majority.

For example, employees at a factory which uses dated practises to produce its wares may be reluctant to change their habits. They may even be suspicious of a new manager who suggests that they update their manufacturing methods. In this instance, groupthink can lead to the factory becoming uncompetitive, whilst its competitors adopt more efficient practices.

The minority influence of the manager challenges those majority-held views, and results in the questioning of dated practices. This might, over time, lead the employees to reconsider their reluctance to change, leading to the majority overcoming a groupthink mentality and gradually changing its opinion.

Minority vs majority influence

Social influence can take numerous forms. Majority influence, for instance, is a normative influence, leading to individuals complying with the norms of the majority. But whilst peer pressure leads to public compliance (e.g. embracing the attitudes of the crowd), it does not always result in conversion - a change in a person's unexpressed, private views. A person subjected to majority influence will try to gain the acceptance of a group by complying with its norms, but may retain their private views contravening those of the majority.

Minority influence affects group members differently. When a minority expresses a view that contradicts the majority, other group members will be unlikely to gain the acceptance of the wider group if they adopt this minority opinion. Therefore, the minority is unable to exert a normative influence on other members.

Instead, minority views tend to be adopted when they exert informative influence: the unusual nature or novelty of the minority's argument means that other members of a group pay close attention to it. They consider the argument based on its merits, rather than to comply with group norms. Members begin to question the validity of their existing views, and whether the minority view is in fact a more informed opinion than that held by the majority.

Over time, as members evaluate a minority view, they may internalize it - adopting it as their own opinion through a process known as conversion. This change in private opinion prompts a shift in behavior, and a member may promote his or her newly-acquired view to other members of the group. What began as a minority view becomes a majority view as more people adopt it.

Unlike compliance, where a person changes his or her outward behavior but not their private opinions, minority influence can have a lasting effect on an individual's views and behavior even when they leave the group.

Charlan Nemeth, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argues a further difference between minority and majority influence. She suggests that the result of minority influence, when compared to majority influence, is that the former nurtures divergent thinking, whereas compliance with the demands of the majority reduces differences in opinion amongst a group's members ( Nemeth, 1986).

Moscovici et al (1969)

Early research into the ability of minority influence to affect a group's attitudes and behavior was conducted by social psychologist, Serge Moscovici.

In a 1969 study, participants were presented with a number of slides, and were asked to identify the color shown in each slide in the company of other participants. In the group, confederates were instructed to misidentify the slides as being green, contrary to participants' own observations.

Moscovici found that the minority view expressed by the confederates influenced the participants' opinions, particularly when the minority was consistent in its opinion ( Moscovici et al, 1969).

Examples of minority influence

Real-life examples where minority influence affects the majority within a group include:

The suffragette movement, which sought to gain the right to vote for women in the UK in the early 20th Century. Leading figures within the movement, such as Emmeline Pankhurst, founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) to change the majority-held views on the role of women in society.

The civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 60s used minority influence to gain support for the equal rights of citizens, irrespective of race. Even though it promoted the rights of a minority of the population, the movement helped to end public segregation based on race with the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

In government, lobbyists representing a minority such as a company, charity or trade body seek to influence the views of legislators by publishing research which supports the interests of that minority.

Factors affecting minority influence

Variables which affect the efficacy of minority influence include:

Consistency

Moscovici found that members of a group are more likely to accept the opinion of a minority if the view is expressed with consistency. Inconsistency, or a difference of opinion amongst members of a minority, can result in other individuals rejecting the view.

For instance, a politician who alters his or her stance on an issue may be less effective in convincing the electorate than a candidate who expresses just one view consistently.

Confidence

The confidence of a minority can also affect its ability to influence other members.

Nemeth and Wachtler (1974) conducted an experiment in which a group of participants (including a confederate) were asked to decide the amount of compensation that ought to be awarded to a person who had been injured.

Participants were instructed to sit around a table to discuss the compensation amount, either in seats which were grouped, or in a solitary seat at the head of the table.

The researchers found that when the confederate seated themselves, without guidance, at the head seat, other participants were more likely to agree with their suggestion of an amount of compensation than if they followed the experimenter's directions.

The findings suggest that the perceived confidence of a minority to make decisions independently of the group can lead to other individuals giving more consideration to its views.

Perceived Motives

The motives of a minority, as perceived by other individuals, can also affect the influence it is able to exert on the majority.

Maass et al (1982) found that, when a minority is seen as acting in its own self-interests or an individual's attempts at persuasion are perceived as being motivated by personal gain, other members are more likely to dismiss their opinions. However, if a minority is thought to be acting selflessly and in the interests of the majority of the group, other members are more likely to consider and be influenced by the opinions it expresses.

Majority Size

Clark and Maass (1990) found that the size of the majority within a group can affect the ability of a minority to influence members. In an experiment in which participants were asked to debate issues such as abortion, they found a negative correlation between the number of members holding a majority view and the sway held by minority views. As a majority view gained the support of more members, individuals holding an opposite viewpoint were less able to influence the group.

Minority Size

The number of members within a group expressing a minority opinion also affects the level of influence that they are able to exert on the remaining members. Gordijn et al (2002) found that a minority was less influential when the number of members expressing an opinion remained constant or decreased, compared to when members perceived the minority to be increasing in numbers.

This may explain the snowball effect of minority influence, whereby individuals are attracted to a viewpoint on the basis that they believe it is becoming more acceptable, and is gaining popularity amongst other members.

Social Cryptomnesia

A final observation regarding minority influence is that, after being successfully persuaded by a minority, people tend to forget the origins of their new views. This phenomenon, known as social cryptomnesia, often occurs when a person held negative views of the minority whose views they adopted. Instead of identifying with the minority group, individuals will dissociate the minority views from the people who promoted them.

An example of this would be when a 'green' group promotes responsible behavior, such as recycling, as a way of protecting wildlife. An individual who associates the group with 'hippies' and protests may find it difficult to identify with the group at the time, but over many years, the group's views become mainstream and the person becomes more environmentally conscientious. Whilst minority influence has led to their internalisation of environmentalist ideas, they reject the notion that the group was responsible for their new recycling routine and maintain a negative view of the minority group.

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Minority Influence: How Eccentric Opinions Can Influence Entire Groups

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Minority influence is a type of social influence which results in a change of views amongst the majority of members within a group. It involves an individual or minority of a population persuading other members to accept their argument, even if this contradicts the more popular view held by the majority.

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Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win

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Today, a single email can launch a worldwide movement. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci suggests, even though online activism is easy to grow, it often doesn't last. Why? She compares modern movements -- Gezi, Ukraine, Hong Kong -- to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and uncovers a surprising benefit of organizing protest movements the way it happened before Twitter.

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Derek Abbott: Should you trust unanimous decisions?

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Imagine a police lineup where ten witnesses are asked to identify a bank robber they glimpsed fleeing the scene. If six of them pick the same person, there's a good chance that's the culprit. And if all ten do, you might think the case is rock solid.

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Pakistani educator Ziauddin Yousafzai reminds the world of a simple truth that many don't want to hear: Women and men deserve equal opportunities for education, autonomy, an independent identity. He tells stories from his own life and the life of his daughter, Malala, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 simply for daring to go to school.

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Martin Sixsmith investigates how psychology is used in shaping our behaviour and desires through advertising, information campaigns and propaganda. From May 2014.

Martin Sixsmith looks at how psychology is used in shaping our behaviour and desires through advertising, information campaigns and propaganda.

He talks to Professor David Welch about the history of propaganda, particularly in war and times of social change, and examines the impact of advertising and the retail environment on our choices with the help of consumer behaviourist Nancy Puccinelli from Oxford University's Said Business School - and uncovers some surprising influences.

Produced by Sara Parker
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - In Search of Ourselves: A History of Psychology and the Mind, Power and Persuasion

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Martin Sixsmith investigates how psychology is used in shaping our behaviour and desires through advertising, information campaigns and propaganda. From May 2014. Martin Sixsmith looks at how psychology is used in shaping our behaviour and desires through advertising, information campaigns and propaganda.

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Attempts to understand how the Holocaust occurred led to the creation of a new science - social psychology

How attempts to understand the Holocaust created a science - social psychology. This Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27th) marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Attempts to understand racism, antisemitism and the horrors of Nazi ideology led to the creation of a new field of science. Social psychology is the investigation of how our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by others. This Archive On Four is about the science of evil and five of its pioneers: Kurt Lewin, Solomon Asch, Henri Tajfel, Serge Moscovici and Stanley Milgram. They were all Jewish. They all lost family in the Holocaust. They were all driven by one question. How could it have happened? David Edmonds speaks to among others, Moscovici's son, Milgram's daughter and two of Tajfel's former students.
Producer: Mark Savage

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BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The Science of Evil

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Attempts to understand how the Holocaust occurred led to the creation of a new science - social psychology How attempts to understand the Holocaust created a science - social psychology. This Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27th) marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

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Philip Zimbardo knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares insights and graphic unseen photos from the Abu Ghraib trials. Then he talks about the flip side: how easy it is to be a hero, and how we can rise to the challenge.

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Inside the Minds of Hardcore Trump Supporters - Pacific Standard

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(Photo: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr)

Given the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, and the ill-defined phenomenon known as Trumpism, it's vital that we understand the psychology that attracted Americans to the real estate mogul in the first place. Research suggests such voters are driven by a combination of racial resentment and authoritarianism.

Sociologist David Norman Smith cited both in a just-published paper, in which he argues hardcore Trump supporters "target minorities and women" and "favor domineering and intolerant leaders who are uninhibited about their biases."

And yet, there's something puzzling about that equation. If authoritarians, by definition, revere authority, why would they support an anti-establishment candidate like Trump? And why are they OK with his administration slandering bedrock American institutions as the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

A second recently published study provides an answer: There are different strains of authoritarian thinking. And support for Trump is associated with what is arguably the most toxic type: authoritarian aggression.

The study suggests the bulk of his supporters, at least in the Republican primaries, were not old-fashioned conservatives who preach obedience and respect for authority. Rather, they were people who take a belligerent, combative approach toward people they find threatening.

The notion that there are different types of authoritarians was proposed in the 1980s by University of Manitoba psychologist Robert Altemeyer, and refined in 2010 by a research team led by John Duckitt of the University of Auckland. In the journal Political Psychology, that team defined right-wing authoritarianism as "a set of three related ideological attitude dimensions."

They are:

"Conventionalism," a.k.a. "traditionalism," which is defined as "favoring traditional, old-fashioned social norms, values, and morality."

Authoritarian submission," defined as "favoring uncritical, respectful, obedient, submissive support for existing authorities and institutions."

"Authoritarian aggression," defined as "favoring the use of strict, tough, harsh, punitive, coercive social control."

Duckitt and his colleagues created a survey designed to measure each of these three facets. It was measured by participants' responses to statements such as "The old-fashioned ways, and old-fashioned values, still show the best way to live" (traditionalism); "Our country would be great if we show respect for authority and obey our leaders" (submission); and "The way things are going in this country, it's going to take a lot of 'strong medicine' to straighten out the troublemakers, criminals, and perverts" (aggression).

A research team led by psychologist Steven Ludeke of the University of Southern Denmark used those scales to try to tease out why some studies link Trump support to authoritarianism, while others do not.

It discovered the problem with the latter is they tend to either heavily or exclusively focus on the "submission" dimension, which has traditionally been studied in the context of child-rearing (as in, "Do you expect your children to unquestioningly obey their elders?").

As it turns out, that's the facet of authoritarianism that has the least to do with support for Trump.

Ludeke's study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, featured 1,444 participants recruited online in April of 2016. They responded to 18 authoritarianism-focused statements-six for each facet-and indicated who, among the presidential candidates remaining in the race at that point, they supported.

"Consistent with Trump's representation of the world as a dangerous place requiring harsh treatment of deviant minorities," they write, "Trump supporters were high on authoritarian aggression."

Strong support for conventionalism/traditionalism was also linked to support for Trump, but high scores on the submission category-that is, respect for authority, and obedience to superiors-was not.

THE EMOTIONAL ROOTS OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION: New research argues feelings of disillusionment prompt people to take more extreme positions.

Smith's analysis of data from the American National Election Study reaches a similar conclusion. He reports "enthusiastic Trump voters are also enthusiastic about domineering leaders, and that they are not especially enthusiastic about respectful children."

Authoritarianism in the Trump era "is not the wish to follow any and every authority but, rather, the wish to support a strong and determined authority who will 'crush evil and take us back to our true path,'" Smith and his co-author, Eric Hanley, conclude.

Participants in Ludeke's study also completed surveys measuring Social Dominance Orientation-the belief that one group has the right to dominate others. Replicating previous research, they found this philosophy, which often accompanies authoritarianism, correlated with support for Trump.

So the very things a majority of Americans find disconcerting, if not disqualifying, about Trump-his need to dominate, his thinly veiled white supremacism, and his blunt, bullying language-is precisely what appeals to his hardcore fans. They are very likely stand to by their man, whatever scandals might emerge.

That said, these results suggest Democrats have a decent chance of peeling away a different slice of the Republican-leaning electorate-if they can defend liberal policies while embodying a more traditional respect for authority. Those "submission"-oriented voters don't have a natural affinity for Trump. They may prefer candidates who embody a traditional sense of dignity-people they can feel comfortable looking up to.

That possibility aside, the picture painted in both of these studies is pretty bleak from a progressive perspective. Smith's paper, the lead article in the March 2018 issue of Critical Sociology, concludes this way:
Most Trump voters cast their ballots for him with their eyes open, not despite his prejudices but because of them. Their partisanship, whether positive (toward Trump and the Republicans) or negative (against Clinton and the Democrats), is intense. This partisanship is anchored in anger and resentment among mild as well as strong Trump voters. Anger, not fear, was the emotional key to the Tea Party, and that seems to be true for Trumpism as well. If so, the challenge for progressives is greater than many people have imagined. Hostility to minorities and women cannot be wished away; nor can the wish for domineering leaders.

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Inside the Minds of Hardcore Trump Supporters

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Given the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, and the ill-defined phenomenon known as Trumpism, it's vital that we understand the psychology that attracted Americans to the real estate mogul in the first place. Research suggests such voters are driven by a combination of racial resentment and authoritarianism.

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Review of twelve angry men

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Civil rights documentary

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Martin Luther King Jr  and the Civil Rights Movement

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-Scale

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The Fscale: test of fascist receptivity at a personality level (T.W. Adorno et al., 1949)

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"Five Steps To Tyranny."The bbc documentary(full)

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Power of the uniform - Obedience (Milgram situational variables)

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Power of the uniform - Obedience (Milgram situational variables)

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Documentary with Zimbardo

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Thousands of shoppers rushed out of Bluewater Shopping Centre this afternoon (November 4) after a menu board fell over in the food court causing a loud bang.

Customers can be seen in scary footage flocking out of the shopping centre near Greenhithe just after 2pm today amid fears of the worst eventuality.

Some diners at the shopping centre even abandoned their meals amid the commotion, which thankfully wasn't as serious as some initially predicted.

However, those caught up in the panic appeared distressed as many rushed out the building to the sound of alarms ringing, with eyewitnesses reporting children in tears due to the whole ordeal.

Bluewater calmed the fears of their customers by tweeting out: "A false alarm was caused by the noise of a menu board falling over in the Wintergarden earlier this afternoon. Bluewater remains open as usual."

It is believed that the board was stood up outside the Giraffe restaurant.

A police spokesman confirmed to Kent Live that the cause of the loud bangs resulted from a sign that fell down and that there was no evacuation.

They also reassured that no one was injured and that there is "nothing to worry about".

You can follow our live blog on this incident for all the latest by clicking here .

Like the North Kent News Facebook page

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Fallen menu board in Bluewater's food court causes thousands to flee in terror

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The loud bang occurred in the Winter Garden

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The unstoppable rise of veganism: how a fringe movement went mainstream

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Health, climate change, animal welfare... what's driving more people and brands to embrace a plant-based lifestyle? We investigate, and, below, four vegans explain their choice

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Dictators, Tyrants, Authoritarian Government: "Despotism" 1946 Encyclopaedia Britannica Films

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What Happened at the Nuremberg Trials? | History

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Full Film

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The BBC Prison Study explores the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. It examines when people accept inequality and when they challenge it.

Findings from the study were first broadcast by the BBC in 2002. They have since been published in leading scientific journals and textbooks and have also entered the core student syllabus. They have changed our basic understanding of how groups and power work.

More recently, insights gained from the study have also provided the basis for a radical reinterpretation of Stanley Milgam's 'Obedience to Authority' research.

In this website we tell the story of what happened in . We explain the scientific implications of our findings. We answer frequently asked questions about the study. We also provide a series of activities and resources that allow for deeper insights into the implications of the study for a range significant issues - from the nature of leadership to the origins of tyranny.

Whether you are a student, a teacher or an interested member of the public, we hope that you find the material here both interesting and useful. We also welcome comments and insights that will help us to improve the site for visitors who come after you.

Alex Haslam Steve Reicher

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The BBC Prison Study explores the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. It examines when people accept inequality and when they challenge it. Findings from the study were first broadcast by the BBC in 2002.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment Documentary

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The Stanford Prison Experiment Documentary

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BBC The Experiment - Prison Study - Podcast from Open University website

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An important study in human behavior, used in psychology lessons around the world. This was party funded by the UK TV Licence payers (myself included). I'm disgusted that this series isn't available to watch somewhere on the internet. At the very least, the BBC should put it on the iplayer, or repeat the series on one of their channels.

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

"How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please read the story of what happened and what it tells us about the nature of human nature."
- Professor Philip G. Zimbardo

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE? DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH? THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. "How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you.

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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Behavior Lab Conformity

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Use the interactive quiz below to determine your current locus of control:

Understanding Your Own Locus of Control

Instructions:

For each pair of statements, choose the one that you believe to be the most accurate, not the one you wish was most true. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. Click the "Calculate My Total" button to add up your score and check your result using the scoring table underneath.

Note:

This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is patterned after the Locus of Control Scale developed and presented in Rotter, J.B. (1966), "Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement," Psychological Monographs, 80 (Whole No. 609).

Internal Locus of Control (strong)

If you have a strong internal locus of control, you will likely feel that you're in full control of the events in your life. You are self-motivated and focused on achieving the goals you have set for yourself. For these reasons, people with a strong internal locus of control often make good leaders.

However, there is a potential downside to having a very strong internal locus of control. Your powerful self-belief may mean that you find it difficult to take direction, so be careful to avoid seeming arrogant or "walking over" other people in pursuit of your objectives. And be sure to manage risks properly - random events do occur for all sorts of reasons.

A very strong internal drive may lead you to believe that you can control everything, and if your plans don't work out you may feel responsible for their failure - even when events were genuinely beyond your control. This can lead to frustration, anxiety and, in extreme cases, stress or depression.

Internal Locus of Control (moderate)

You likely see your future as being in your own hands. As a result, you engage in activities that will improve your situation: you work hard to develop your knowledge, skills and abilities, and you take note of information that you can use to create positive outcomes.

However, few people have a wholly internal or external locus of control: most of us fall somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. Your locus of control may vary in different situations - at work and at home, for example - and it may change over time. People often tend toward a more internal locus of control as they grow older and their ability to influence the events in their lives increases.

Having a moderate, rather than strong, internal locus of control may make you more able to accept situations that you can't influence, and to manage them effectively when they arise.

External Locus of Control

If you have an external locus of control, you likely believe that what happens to you is the result of luck or fate, or is determined by people in authority. You may tend to give up when life doesn't "go your way," because you don't feel that you have the power to change it.

To overcome this, pay attention to your self-talk. When you hear yourself saying things like "I have no choice," or "There's nothing I can do," step back and remind yourself that you can always make choices. Set goals for yourself and note how you are making positive changes in your life by working toward and achieving these goals. You'll find that your self-confidence quickly builds.

You may find it useful to develop your decision making and problem-solving skills. These tools can enable you to take greater ownership of situations, rather than blaming circumstances or forces "beyond your control" when things go wrong.

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Locus of Control - Are You in Charge of Your Destiny?

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Power turns good soldiers into bad apples

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Power turns good soldiers into bad apples

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Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / Power turns good soldiers into 'bad apples'

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Those responsible should suffer severe sanctions if found guilty. However, we must separate guilt from blame. Should these few Army reservists be blamed as the "bad apples" in a good barrel of American soldiers, as our leaders have characterized them? Or are they the once-good apples soured and corrupted by an evil barrel?

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One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on " obedience" - that they were just following orders from their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:

Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.

The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the 'learner' and who would be the 'teacher.' The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram's confederates (pretending to be a real participant).

The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

Milgram's Experiment

Aim:

Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.

Procedure:

Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating "learning" (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.

At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who was a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).

They drew straws to determine their roles - learner or teacher - although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an "experimenter" dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.

The "learner" (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.

The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger - severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.

There were four prods and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.

Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.

Results:

65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

Milgram did more than one experiment - he carried out 18 variations of his study. All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).

Conclusion:

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.

People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.

Milgram summed up in the article "The Perils of Obedience" (Milgram 1974), writing:

'The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.

I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.

Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.

The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.'

Milgrams' Agency Theory

Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people have two states of behavior when they are in a social situation:

The autonomous state - people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those actions.

The agentic state - people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person's will.

Milgram suggested that two things must be in place for a person to enter the agentic state:

1. The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people's behavior. That is, they are seen as legitimate.

2. The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

Agency theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram's evidence.

For example, when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey. In contrast, many participants who were refusing to go on did so if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.

Milgram Experiment Variations

The Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby Milgram (1965) varied the basic procedure (changed the IV). By doing this Milgram could identify which factors affected obedience (the DV).

Obedience was measured by how many participants shocked to the maximum 450 volts (65% in the original study). In total 636 participants have been tested in 18 different variation studies.

Critical Evaluation

The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory type conditions, and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations. We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military context.

Orne & Holland (1968) accused Milgram's study of lacking 'experimental realism,'' i.e.,' participants might not have believed the experimental set-up they found themselves in and knew the learner wasn't receiving electric shocks.

Milgram's sample was biased:

The participants in Milgram's study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?

Milgram's study cannot be seen as representative of the American population as his sample was self-selected. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves). They may also have a typical "volunteer personality" - not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so.

Yet a total of 636 participants were tested in 18 separate experiments across the New Haven area, which was seen as being reasonably representative of a typical American town.

Milgram's findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions as Milgram's original study and in some cases see higher obedience rates.

However, Smith & Bond (1998) point out that with the exception of Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978), the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialized Western cultures and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behavior has been identified.

Ethical Issues

Deception - the participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram's.

However, Milgram argued that "illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths."

Milgram also interviewed participants afterward to find out the effect of the deception. Apparently, 83.7% said that they were "glad to be in the experiment," and 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved.

Protection of participants - Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.

Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.

In his defense, Milgram argued that these effects were only short-term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK) their stress levels decreased. Milgram also interviewed the participants one year after the event and concluded that most were happy that they had taken part.

However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.

Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment. Participants were assured that their behavior was common and Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found that there were no signs of any long-term psychological harm. In fact, the majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were pleased that they had participated.

Right to Withdrawal - The BPS states that researchers should make it plain to participants that they are free to withdraw at any time (regardless of payment).

Did Milgram give participants an opportunity to withdraw? The experimenter gave four verbal prods which mostly discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:

1. Please continue.

2. The experiment requires that you continue.

3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.

4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Milgram argued that they are justified as the study was about obedience so orders were necessary. Milgram pointed out that although the right to withdraw was made partially difficult, it was possible as 35% of participants had chosen to withdraw.

Milgram (1963) Audio Clips

Below you can also hear some of the audio clips taken from the video that was made of the experiment. Just click on the clips below. You will be asked to decide if you want to open the files from their current location or save them to disk. Choose to open them from their current location. Then press play and sit back and listen!

Clip 1: This is a long audio clip of the 3rd participant administering shocks to the confederate. You can hear the confederate's pleas to be released and the experimenter's instructions to continue.

Clip 2: A short clip of the confederate refusing to continue with the experiment.

Clip 3: The confederate begins to complain of heart trouble.

Clip 4: Listen to the confederate get a shock: "Let me out of here. Let me out, let me out, let me out" And so on!

Clip 5: The experimenter tells the participant that they must continue.

References

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human relations, 18(1), 57-76.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harpercollins.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6(4), 282-293.

Shanab, M. E., & Yahya, K. A. (1978). A cross-cultural study of obedience. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society.

Smith, P. B., & Bond, M. H. (1998). Social psychology across cultures (2nd Edition). Prentice Hall.

How to reference this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram experiment. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

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One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials.

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Matt Jarvis discusses ways to evaluate psychology studies

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"TheraminTrees" is a YouTube channel devoted to encouraging critical thinking.

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Julian Rotter and Locus of Control, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4

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Claudia meets Julian Rotter, who promoted personality theory in clinical psychology.

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Replicating Milgram

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ETHICS ROUNDS: A classic study, revisited

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Themes that emerge from these articles involve attention to ethical issues, the relationship between ethics and methodology, and the role of institutional review boards in regulating social science research.

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30 min bbc programme

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The Stanford Prison Experiment, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4

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When Philip Zimbardo set up a mock prison, he had no idea what he would witness.

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podcast

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Solomon Asch - Conformity, Mind Changers - BBC Radio 4

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Claudia Hammond looks at the conformity experiments of social psychologist, Solomon Asch.

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The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

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In the years before World War II, the members of the Nazi regime became intent on cultivating a sense of loyalty and entitlement in the German youth. It would be too late, they thought, to wait for adulthood; the Nazi mentality must be inscribed on children if it was to take hold and grow to support the cause. With such an intention, the Hitler Youth was born.

Though available to girls and boys (girls could join the Bund Deutsche Madel), the Hitler Youth was primarily interested in procuring control of Germany's young males. Boys between the ages of 10 and 14 joined the Deutsches Jungvolk (German Young People) and those between 14 and 18 joined the Hitler Jugend, or Hitler Youth. At its peak, membership in the group totaled about 90 percent of the country's eligible youth and was the world's largest youth organization.

Both boys and girls were members of the Cologne resistance.

The explanation for such a large enrollment percentage becomes clear when one considers that the Reich not only outlawed all other youth organizations, but also mandated Hitler Youth enrollment and even went so far as to threaten parents, telling them their children would be placed in orphanages if enrollment were denied. By the time the Nazis were done imposing restrictions, any youth group found together outside of a Hitler Youth association was considered criminal.

Initially, the Hitler Youth functioned much like any organization for young boys would. The boys played sports and games, hiked and went camping, all the while enjoying their small allowance of independence away from their families. With time, however, the Hitler Youth became more a method of recruitment and the organization increased its military training, leaving a great number of its members bored with their lack of freedom (they were supervised by older members who were divided into police squads), and dissatisfied with their activities, which once consisted of athletic games, but now included such enterprises as marching, drilling on the proper use of bayonets, grenades, and pistols, and maneuvering through dugouts, trenches and barbed wire. Pursuits also included stealing, vandalizing, fighting and bullying. (Because of a rule that disallowed police from arresting members of the Hitler Youth Patrol Service for their criminal activity, all was done without the fear of consequence.) Soon, these organizational changes led to an awakening regarding the actual motives behind the formation of the Hitler Youth.

Cologne Navajos, around 1937

Dissatisfied with the increasingly transparent purpose of the Hitler Youth and the loss of any freedom or fun which membership originally offered, a number of young boys and girls began looking for a way in which they could avoid association with the group altogether. Some did so by leaving school, which was permissible (and often the norm among children of working-class families) at the age of 14, or dropping out of the Hitler Youth, which, it must be remembered, was compulsory. If found they faced severe consequences. Nevertheless, in the period just before World War II, small groups (between 10 and 15 members), consisting primarily of boys between the ages of 14 and 18, began seeking each others' company outside of the Hitler Youth.

Such groups began forming in the larger cities of Nazi Germany like Hamburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt and especially in Cologne, and identifying themselves with titles like 'swings,' 'packs,' 'cliques,' or 'pirates'. The Farhtenstenze, or Traveling Dudes, for instance, came from Essen, the Kittelbach Pirates from Oberhaussen and Dusseldorf, and the Navajos from Cologne. Together, the members of these groups are thought to have totaled more than 5,000, about 3,000 in Cologne alone, and although each group maintained a separate identity due to its location, all considered themselves Edelweiss Pirates.

Named for the metal Edelweiss pins and badges members wore on their collars or hats, these working-class teens became "one of the largest youth groups who refused to participate in Nazi youth activities," says Sally Rogow, docent of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In addition to their identifying pins, their long hair, style of clothing (usually colorful, checkered travel shirts and short, dark trousers or Lederhosen, white stockings and neck scarves), and the songs they played and sang (most contrasted greatly from the German Volkish music approved by the Nazis, were by Jewish composers or were anti-Nazi in theme), were all disallowed in the Hitler Youth and served to further distance them from the group. Individual groups of Edelweiss Pirates got together in cafes, parks, or street corners in the evenings or weekends, took hikes, rode bicycles into the country for camping trips, or traveled into neighboring towns to visit fellow Pirates. It must not be forgotten that such pastimes, when taken out of context, seem exceptionally harmless. Outside of the Hitler Youth, however, they were considered criminal activities and often resulted in serious ramifications.

The Pirates usually held jobs in mills or factories, but were eventually branded as being lazy in their work ethic and as nothing more than social outcasts. Due to their similar backgrounds and common environments, and because of their small numbers, they did feel a great loyalty toward each other and often had no friends outside of their Pirate comrades. The small percentage of teens who did not join the Hitler Youth were ostracized by Hitler Youth members, however, so it was not as if the cause for the Pirates' perceived anti-social behavior was solely one-sided. Further, they must not be mistaken for "deprived children or delinquents," Rogow is careful to note. "They were simply the sons and daughters of working class parents" and too young for the military. They did have rough pasts though; a number were without parents who, because of their communist views, had been either arrested or murdered. Others were left without fathers who were away fighting in the war.

Jean Jülich (right, with guitar) and his fellow Edelweiss Pirates

As the war progressed, so did the seriousness of the activities in which the Edelweiss Pirates participated. Pirates in Cologne "offered shelter to German army deserters, escaped prisoners from concentration camps and escapees from forced labor camps," says Rogow, while others "made armed raids on military depots and deliberately sabotaged war production." Still others played pranks on the Nazis. Julich recalls how he and his friends threw bricks through munitions factories and poured sugar water into the petrol tanks of Nazis' cars. Other Pirates vandalized city walls, spray painting them with lines such as "Down with Hitler" or "Down with Nazi Brutality." Some stole, looting food and supplies from stores or freight trains, or derailed train cars full of ammunition and supplied adult resistance groups with explosives. Pirates from different towns would "meet in the countryside, to swap information gained from illegally listening to the BBC World Service, or to plan leaflet drops in each other's towns so the local police would not recognize them," Hannah Cleaver of The Daily Telegraph (London) says. Leaflets contained allied propaganda or encouraged German soldiers to quit their fighting and return to their families.

In an interview, Walter Mayer, a member of the Edelweiss Pirates at the age of 16, recalled getting together with fellow Pirates at a cafe in Duesseldorf and playing pool. A member would ask, "'What are we going to do next?' and maybe one would say, 'You know the Hitler Youths? They all store their equipment at such-and-such a place. Let's make it disappear.' 'Okay, when are we going to meet?' Such-and-such a time. And that's what we did...You know we started maybe by deflating the tires. Then we made the whole bicycle disappear, so it came to the point where [there were] too many complaints."

Jean Jülich

Edelweiss Pirates usually did their best to avoid the Hitler Youth Patrol, who were continually on the lookout for Pirate members, but some did provoke fights (one motto, after all, was "Eternal War on the Hitler Youth"), attacking their enemies (guns were used on several occasions), and taking pride in their wins, which were not uncommon. "We were not against the Hitler Youth," Pagaard cites one Pirate as saying, however. "We only wanted the Hitler Youth to leave us alone." This was a viewpoint echoed by more than a few members.

Pirates who were caught could expect to face any number of various consequences. At the least, captured Pirates were threatened, beaten, or subjected to a head shaving, one of the most popular methods of humiliation. Pirates were also put in jail, sent to reform schools, psychiatric hospitals, or labor, reeducation or concentration camps. Some others were simply killed.

Jean Jülich (center) survived the Nazi purge on the Pirates.

At the age of 15, Pirate Julich was arrested with a number of others, tortured and imprisoned for four months. Julich's friend and fellow prisoner and Pirate, Bartholomaeus (Barthel) Schink, a member of the Ehrenfelder Navajo Group, was publicly hanged on the gallows in Ehrenfeld, Cologne on the morning of November 10, 1944. "The cause of Barthel Shink's hanging was his membership in the Edelweiss Pirates," Julich explains. "And it is true that he planned to blow up a Gestapo building in Cologne with Hans Steinbruck." But Schink, he adds, never killed anyone. Schink was hanged, without trial, as a criminal along with seven adults and five other teens and Pirates, of which, he was the youngest.

In 1988, the Edelweiss Pirates were recognized as "Righteous among the Nations" by Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, but it was not until 2005, at the continued urging of Julich and Pirate Gertrud Koch that the group was "politically rehabilitated," the criminal status deemed them by the Gestapo was dropped and they were officially recognized as "resistance fighters" and heroes. "We were from the working classes. That is the main reason why we have only now been recognized," Koch, 81, told reporter Cleaver. "After the war there were no judges in Germany so the old Nazi judges were used and they upheld the criminalisation [sic] of what we did and who we were." Koch, incidentally, "still goes by her Edelweiss codename of Mucki," reported Cleaver and is noted as mentioning of the Pirates, "There are only five of us left in Cologne. Four of the boys and me."

The story of the Edelweiss Pirates is slowly gaining its due acknowledgement. Julich has published his memoirs and contributes to various means of affording the Edelweiss Pirates their earned recognition. He supported the release of the 2005 German film, Edelweiss Pirates, which was dedicated to Schink and two other teens, hailing them as "true heroes," and his beautiful voice can be heard in a recent recording of "Es War in Shanghai," a popular Pirate song. "'Es war in Shanghai'" was a romantic song the Pirates sang at campfires," Julich explains. "It was not a political song, but it addresses the desire for foreign countries, fellowship and independence. The Nazis did not sing this song because it was not consistent with their ideology."

The very fact that the Pirates had cultivated their own ideology was meaningful enough to spur them to action and strong enough to support them in withstanding the cruelties it entailed, is more than impressive. Perhaps it was because of their youth that the atrocities of the Nazi regime were so clear and the choice to oppose it so absolute. Their decision was one of resistance and, consequently, was not without hardship, but it was also one of liberty, for, as one of their songs contends, "Our song is freedom, love and life, / We're the Pirates of the Edelweiss."

References

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The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life

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In the years before World War II, the members of the Nazi regime became intent on cultivating a sense of loyalty and entitlement in the German youth.

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Social Influence (Crash Course Psychology)

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Social Influence: Crash Course Psychology #38

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A QUIET SUNDAY MORNING...

On a quiet Sunday morning in August, a Palo Alto, California, police car swept through the town picking up college students as part of a mass arrest for violation of Penal Codes 211, Armed Robbery, and Burglary, a 459 PC. The suspect was picked up at his home, charged, warned of his legal rights, spread-eagled against the police car, searched, and handcuffed - often as surprised and curious neighbors looked on.

The suspect was then put in the rear of the police car and carried off to the police station, the sirens wailing.

The car arrived at the station, the suspect was brought inside, formally booked, again warned of his Miranda rights, finger printed, and a complete identification was made. The suspect was then taken to a holding cell where he was left blindfolded to ponder his fate and wonder what he had done to get himself into this mess.

DISCUSSION
Consider the police procedures which make arrestees feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized. Note that this policeman is wearing sunglasses just like those we had our "guards" wear and as did the head of the National Guard at Attica Prison during its bloody 1971 riot!

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The Story: An Overview of the Experiment - Stanford Prison Experiment

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On a quiet Sunday morning in August, a Palo Alto, California, police car swept through the town picking up college students as part of a mass arrest for violation of Penal Codes 211, Armed Robbery, and Burglary, a 459 PC.

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Stanford Prison Experiment

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Main image credit

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

The individual has always had
to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you
try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price
is too high to pay for the privilege
of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

In most Western cultures, there is a prevalent notion that one should stand strong in the face of pressures to conform. Doing so is seen as an act of courage and personal strength, while going along with the majority is considered a sign of weakness - what cowards and weak-willed people do. Indeed, as the above two quotes indicate, some novelists and philosophers have argued that we should worry if we find ourselves in the majority: by definition, being truly in charge of one's own destiny means standing clear from the crowd.

Perhaps there is so much admiration for those who are able to resist conformity precisely because it is so difficult not to go along with the crowd. At least, this is the message that comes across from classic social psychological theorising. The so-called 'line-experiment studies' by Solomon Asch have been particularly important in demonstrating the power of conformity in a group. These studies have often been interpreted as showing how quickly people give in to conformity pressures and how easy it is to get them to uncritically adopt the majority point of view; this to such an extent that we conform to a majority when it is obvious that the majority is wrong and we are right. Let us discuss these studies in greater detail.

The line-judgement studies
Imagine that you were a participant in one of these studies. After arriving at the laboratory, you meet six other participants and you are told that you are taking part in a psychological study on visual judgements. The experimenter informs you that you will be comparing the length of lines. You are shown two white cards (see Figure 1). One card has a reference line on it and on the other card, three comparison lines are drawn (labelled A, B, and C). The experimenter tells you that it is your task is to say out loud which of the three comparison lines is similar in length to the reference line. This looks like an easy task.

Participants sit around a table and on each trial they are asked to call out their answers in the order in which they are seated. You are seated in the sixth position, where all but one of the others will have to call out their response before you. The study starts uneventfully and on the first couple of trials everyone agrees which comparison line is similar in length to the reference line. You start to get bored. But then, suddenly, something unexpected happens: the first participant calls out the wrong answer. That is strange... is there something wrong with the person's vision? It must be. But then, the second and third person give the same answer as the first person. Participants four and five also call out the line that so clearly fails to match the reference line. What is happening? Are they all blind? Then it is your turn. This is tricky! What should you say? Should you go along with the majority (even though you know they are wrong), or should you stand out by calling out the obviously correct answer?

There are two things the experimenter has not told you about this study. First, the other participants are not participants like you but assistants of the experimenter ('confederates') who are instructed to call out wrong answers on about half of the trials (so called 'critical' trials). Second, even though the study was introduced as a study on visual perception, the actual aim of the study is to examine conformity. More specifically, the goal is to examine conformity to a majority when that majority is clearly wrong.

Results showed that when all people before you clearly give the wrong answer it is difficult to withstand conforming. Asch found that 76 per cent of participants conformed at least once to the wrong majority answer. This is a high percentage, particularly when considering that when people had to make these judgements on their own they made mistakes less than 1 per cent of the time (Asch, 1955, pp.32-33). More than four in 10 participants conformed four or more times in the 12 critical trials, with almost 11 per cent going along with the clearly wrong judgement 10 times or more.

Videos of the experiments show participants' bewilderment when they hear others call out the wrong line. Participants squint and look at the lines from different angles, just to be able to see what the majority appeared to be seeing. Asch describes the non-verbal behaviour of his participants:
After the first one or two disagreements he would note certain changes in the manner and posture of this person. He would see a look of perplexity and bewilderment come over this subject's face at the contradicting judgements of the entire group. Often he becomes more active; he fidgets in his seat and changes the position of his head to look at the lines from different angles. He may turn around and whisper to his neighbour seriously or smile sheepishly. He may suddenly stand up to look more closely at the card. At other times he may become especially quiet and immobile (Asch, 1952, p.454).

The background of the line-judgement studies
Asch's interest in conformity began when he became aware of classic research on hypnosis and suggestion. In these studies, people are typically asked to give their opinion on a topic, after which they are confronted with an authority or group of people saying the opposite. When people are again asked for their opinion, they shift their views and attitudes and start to agree with the majority/authority. Asch and many others were puzzled by this finding: why would people change their mind when the authority or majority did not even present arguments to support their views? Conformity not only seemed the irrational thing to do, but also potentially dangerous: people could easily fall in the trap of conforming to others who are not only wrong, but might have evil intentions.

It was the latter danger that many ordinary Americans in the 1950s were most fearful of. With the horrors of WWII fresh in their minds, people had not forgotten the ease with which ordinary soldiers seemed to be capable of extreme atrocities because they were only doing what the majority was doing... just 'following orders'. This fear of conformity was fuelled when, at the height of the Cold War, reports emerged that suggested that American prisoners of war were brainwashed by the communists - they denounced American capitalism and appeared to fully embrace the communist cause. It was particularly troubling that it did not appear to take all that much for these soldiers to take the side of their captors.

The impact of the studies
It is not difficult to understand why the Asch studies attracted so much attention. The findings bothered people because they suggest that people appeared to be going along with the majority in a sheep-like fashion. Asch-style conformity has been argued to underlie behaviours as diverse as war crimes, eating disorders, and football hooliganism. The Asch studies appear to show that individuals are unable to resist group pressure and that they become slaves of immediate influences. On a lighter note, the insights that emerged from Asch's insights have been used to design all sorts of pranks. Best known are the elevator pranks whereby naive participants enter an elevator filled with confederates who all behave in a similar but illogical way. For example, in one prank, all confederates face the rear as soon as they enter an elevator. Very quickly the naive participants conform and turn to face the rear.

Moscovici commented in 1985 that: 'the Asch studies are one of the most dramatic illustrations of conformity, of blindly going along with the group, even when the individual realizes that by doing so he turns his back on reality and truth' (p.349). However, after closely engaging with Asch's work, we wondered whether this is really the key point to take away from the studies (see Jetten & Hornsey, 2012). Do the data really show the prevalence of conformity? Is the behaviour that Asch's participants show evidence of mindless and sheep-like behaviour? Or did people engage in sensible behaviour given the enormous conformity pressure they were facing? In what follows, we unpack these issues in greater detail.

Resistance
There is another way to interpret the results. In Asch's own words, 'about one quarter of the subjects were completely independent and never agreed with the erroneous judgement of the majority' (Asch, 1955, p.33). It is also clear that only approximately 11 per cent of participants conformed on almost all trials. When looking at the results in this way, it appears that the studies do not just show evidence of conformity, they also provide evidence of significant levels of resistance and non-conformity. In fact, every one time participants conformed, they also dissented twice. In other words, participants were more likely to resist going along with the majority than to conform to it. Given this, it is ironic that the Asch line-judgement studies have become known as the 'conformity studies' when the dominant response appeared to be non-conformity and dissent.

The relatively high level of dissent found in Asch's studies is particularly striking given that the paradigm was almost uniquely designed to elicit conformity. In the line-judgement task, the potential costs of standing out were immediate (i.e. ridicule or negative attention from other people in the room). In contrast, the cost of violating what you think to be true was minimal. It doesn't matter whether you call out A or B because it doesn't involve betraying a belief that is important to you. So in this case, an analysis of pros and cons would lean the participant toward conformity. Subsequent research has shown that if people find themselves in a minority on a social issue that is important to them - a social justice issue for example - then conformity is negligible, and in fact counter-conformity is more apparent (e.g. Hornsey et al., 2003).

It is also instructive to consider what it is that those who resisted conformity pressure said. Asch reports two types of responses. First, some resisted going along with the majority because they were confident of their own judgement and responded without much comparison to the majority. Second, some resisted because they believed that the majority might be correct, but could not help themselves and had to call out what they saw. In other words, those who resisted were more concerned about being correct and being true to their own perceptions than about not fitting in.

It thus appears that Asch's line-judgement studies shed light on the conditions and experience of conformity, but also on the ability of people to go against the majority despite enormous pressure to conform. Indeed, Asch was just as much convinced of the vitality and realness of independence as he was of the power of conformity. He states that 'we should be skeptical, however, of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it: Independence and the capacity to rise above group passion are also open to human beings' (1955, p.32). He finishes his article by saying: 'anyone inclined to draw too pessimistic conclusions from this report would do to remind her/himself that the capacities for independence are not to be underestimated'.

Blind conformity?
We also asked the question of whether Asch's findings really provide evidence that conformity is a reflection of 'blind' or passive responding. In this respect, it is revealing to read what participants said when asked after the study to elaborate on what informed their responses. Many of those who conformed spontaneously mentioned that they went along with the group because, even though they did not think the majority was right, they did not want to appear foolish or like the odd-one -out. Some mentioned they did not want to 'spoil the study results' (Asch, 1955, p.33) and believed they acted in everyone's interest by not rocking the boat. Others believed that they themselves were victims of optical illusions, and that the majority was actually right - simply because it was inconceivable that so many people could be wrong. They convinced themselves that 'I must be wrong and they must be right'.

These accounts provide a number of important insights. In particular, it becomes clear that people were actively trying to make sense of the situation by developing different theories on why the majority was giving these obviously wrong responses. Accounts that people were blindly and passively following the majority do not do justice to what the experience must have been like. Participants did not sit back and let the majority overwhelm them. Rather, they engaged and actively tried to read the context in order to develop a strategy for how to resolve the disagreement between what they saw and the majority response.

The results also provide insights into how participants may have resolved this conflict. The majority of participants conformed on some trials and resisted conformity on other trials. It thus appears that most participants engaged both in conformity and in non-conformity. This is an interesting strategy because it allows participants to not only stay true to their own judgement, but also to signal to the others that one is mindful of the majority and does not desire to completely break their connection with them. Interestingly, this is a strategy that many people use intuitively when confronted with others that have a different opinion: before we put points of disagreement on the table, we highlight and explicitly acknowledge where we agree with the other.

Asch was certainly very aware of the power of the situation. He emphasises that, once we find ourselves in the midst of a group, we are not indifferent to it and individuals are concerned about what others around them think. To take note of what others say and do is the only sensible thing to do. He says:
The individual comes to experience a world that (s)he shares with others. (S)he perceives that the surroundings include him/her, as well as others, and that (s)he is in the same relation to the surroundings as others. (S)he notes that (S)he, as well as others, is converging upon the same object and responding to its identical properties. Joint action and mutual understanding require this relation of intelligibility and structural simplicity. In these terms, the 'pull' toward the group becomes understandable (Ash, 1952, p.484).

In other words, going along with the majority - even though you know they are wrong - is not necessarily a sign of 'blind conformity'. Such conformity can actually be motivated by a very different concern: to show others that you are sensitive to their opinions, that you listen to them and, more generally, that you are interested in maintaining harmony within the group. Who hasn't found themselves in meetings where one decided to not speak up or express dissent and to go along with the majority (even though they were so obviously wrong) just so the group harmony would be maintained? In Asch's words, even if we find that people conform:
we should be skeptical...of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it. (1955, p.32)

Putting dissent back on the agenda
What is it, then, that we should conclude from Asch's findings? We suggest that there are two points that emerge when engaging more closely with his studies and his work. The first conclusion is that there is a disconnect between the way Asch talked about his results and how his results have later been reported in social psychological textbooks. While textbooks and popular accounts present the line-judgment studies as providing evidence for the prevalence of conformity, Asch not only found more evidence for non-conformity than conformity, his findings also provide important (but often ignored) insight into dissent - of going against the majority despite enormous pressure. It seems timely to put the study of dissent back on the agenda and to engage more closely with these insights.

Second, the Asch studies have come to symbolise the often sheep-like nature of individuals. Reading his original reports of the studies, however, shows that there is so much more that is going on in these studies. Furthermore, Asch provides a much more nuanced view of what he aimed to do, and also what he felt the implications were of his work. It is not just rational to listen to what these other people have to say and at times to go along with them, it is sometimes the cleverest thing to do.

Jolanda Jetten and Matthew J. Hornsey are Professors of Social Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia
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The line between conformity and resistance

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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened.