Assignment Conformity
Running Head: CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE
Hitler’s silent advantage? – Control of people in a totalitarian regime
Laura Frei
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
Psychology 130-001
January 21, 2015
Bev Lenihan, Instructor
Camosun College
Hitler’s silent advantage? – Control of people in a totalitarian regime
People tend to follow social norms when eating and watching TV. It lies in the nature of a human being to focus on the actions of others and act in groups. This orientation on the society sets trends but can also generate the evil when it’s used to manipulate people.
This phenomenon of social uniformity is called conformity. Individuals orientate on their environment and adjust the behavior. Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to group norms. As seen in the Asch’s experiment, where probands had to collate a given line to another line of three with the same length, most of the participants picked the same answer as its group members. Even though the correct answer seemed obvious, the probands acted conform. The tendency to conform occurs in small groups and in society as a whole. It can occur in the presence of others, or when an individual is alone. It later showed up that this psychological incident occurred most often when we feel insecure or incompetent, know that others in the group will observe our behavior and admire the group’s status and attractiveness. Frequently, we conform to avoid rejection or to gain social approval. In such cases, we are responding to normative social influence. We are sensitive to understand rules for accepted and expected behavior. (Myers, 2014)
Related to conformity in groups is obedience to the leader of a group. People tend to act the way they are told by somebody else. In this connection they give up their own responsibility for the action and relate on others. The psychologist Stanley Milgram invented an experiment on obedience which became psychology’s most famous and
Hitler’s silent advantage? – Control of people in a totalitarian regime
Laura Frei
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
Psychology 130-001
January 21, 2015
Bev Lenihan, Instructor
Camosun College
Hitler’s silent advantage? – Control of people in a totalitarian regime
People tend to follow social norms when eating and watching TV. It lies in the nature of a human being to focus on the actions of others and act in groups. This orientation on the society sets trends but can also generate the evil when it’s used to manipulate people.
This phenomenon of social uniformity is called conformity. Individuals orientate on their environment and adjust the behavior. Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to group norms. As seen in the Asch’s experiment, where probands had to collate a given line to another line of three with the same length, most of the participants picked the same answer as its group members. Even though the correct answer seemed obvious, the probands acted conform. The tendency to conform occurs in small groups and in society as a whole. It can occur in the presence of others, or when an individual is alone. It later showed up that this psychological incident occurred most often when we feel insecure or incompetent, know that others in the group will observe our behavior and admire the group’s status and attractiveness. Frequently, we conform to avoid rejection or to gain social approval. In such cases, we are responding to normative social influence. We are sensitive to understand rules for accepted and expected behavior. (Myers, 2014)
Related to conformity in groups is obedience to the leader of a group. People tend to act the way they are told by somebody else. In this connection they give up their own responsibility for the action and relate on others. The psychologist Stanley Milgram invented an experiment on obedience which became psychology’s most famous and