PSY 301 – 2 Discussion Questions

PSY 301 – 2 Discussion Questions
Digital Vision/Thinkstock Learning Objectives By the end of the chapter you should be able to: • Explain Solomon Asch’s study of conformity • Differentiate injunctive norms from descriptive norms and normative influence from informa- tional influence • Describe how conformity may result in either acceptance or compliance • Explain the power of minorities • Describe Milgram’s study of obedience and the factors that make obedience more or less likely to occur • Explain factors that predict disobedience Conformity and Obedience 8 Chapter Outline 8.1 Conformity • Norms • Normative and Informational Influence • Minority Influence 8.2 Obedience to Authority • What Predicts Obedience? • Disobedience • Ethics of Obedience Research 8.3 Leadership Chapter Summary • Describe the ethical issues with Milgram’s study and Milgram’s response to those concerns • Define leadership and differentiate the three main types of leadership • Define implicit leadership theories fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 171 7/16/13 10:02 AM Section 8.1 Conformity In 1956, Jim Jones, an untrained but charismatic pastor, started the “People’s Temple,” a racially integrated, socially minded church in Indiana. Ten years later, he and his congregation moved to California and grew in size and power. Here, pressures toward conformity helped align individuals’ behavior with group expec- tations. Jones used social influence in services to punish members for u ndesirable behavior, bringing members up during gatherings and publicly shaming them for their actions. Church members were expected to obey Jones’ edicts without ques – tion. Feeling persecuted for the good work he was doing Jones moved his entire church to Guyana, in South America, to a settlement he named Jonestown. He dreamed of creating a utopian community, where young and old were treated with dignity and respect and the color of one’s skin did not matter. But Jones became increasingly paranoid and controlling. Members worked long days, often listen – ing to Jones speak over the loudspeaker, and were not allowed to leave. Concerned families back home asked U.S. Representative Leo Ryan to check out the situation. In November 1978, Ryan, some of his staff, and a news crew traveled to Guyana to meet with Jones and members of the People’s Temple. Some of the Jonestown resi – dents decided to leave with the congressman and as they waited for the planes to be readied other members of Jonestown attacked the group, killing the congressman and several others. Fearing retaliation Jones asked his followers to commit suicide in what he called a revolutionary act. They mixed up vats of flavored drink laced with cyanide and gave it to the children first, then the adults. Those who refused were encouraged by guards with guns. In the end, 918 people died, either in the attack at the airport or in the mass suicide. Jones died of a gunshot to the head (Hall, 1987). The People’s Temple relied on pressure from the group and obedi- ence to authority to do its work and to grow. The story of Jonestown is a dramatic example of the power of conformity and obedience, forces we will explore in greater depth in this chapter. 8.1 Conformity Y ou have been invited to be a participant in a research study. When you show up, you find that seven other participants have already arrived. All of you are seated around a table and are asked to be part of a study that, at least by appearances, is investigating visual perception. You are shown a line, called the stimulus line, and are asked which of three other lines the stimulus line matches. This looks to be a simple task ; you expect to be a little bored. For the first couple of rounds, the study goes as expected, with each person around the table choosing the line that obviously matches the stimulus line. Then something odd happens. The first person chooses the wrong line. You are sur – prised; the line the person chooses is obviously not the right one. You wait for the second person to choose the right line. But the second person agrees with the first person. The third and fourth also agree. The fifth person chooses the same wrong line and then the sixth. Finally, it is your turn. You need to decide whether to go along with the group, a group that is unanimous, or trust your eyes and choose what you perceive is the right line. What do you do? fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 172 7/16/13 10:02 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity This scenario was experienced by partici- pants in Solomon Asch’s (1958) study of conformity. Conformity can be defined as going along with a group’s actions or beliefs. The study was designed to pit individuals against a unanimous group to see whether people would go along with the group or stick with what their senses were telling them was right. In this study, one third of judgments made by partici – pants went along with the majority opin – ion. Looking at how likely individual participants were to conform, Asch found that one quarter of all participants never went along with the majority. On the other side, one third of participants conformed 50% of the time or more. The rest of the participants showed at least occasional conformity. Altogether, three quarters of participants conformed to the group judg – ment at least once. See Figures 8.1 and 8.2 for more on the specific test Asch used and the results. Participants who did not go along with the group were not unaffected by the fact that their judgments were going against the group. Some seemed confused or hesitant in their answers, but persevered anyway. Even those who were more certain of their judgments were chagrined at their own deviance. Of those who went along with the group, some thought that the answers they and the group were giving were wrong, but nevertheless went along with the group. Others came to believe that the group was right. Asch followed up his original study with a few variations. When he varied the size of the group, he found that a unanimous group of one or two others was not as persuasive as three, but there were only minimal gains after adding the third person. He also had a variation in which another person in the group gave an accurate judgment. The presence of another person who went against the group and gave the right answer decreased con – formity. Even when it goes against the majority opinion, having one other perso n around who agrees with us gives us more confidence to express what we believe is right. Figure 8.1: Visual perception test Asch used this visual perception test. Participants were asked which comparison line was the same length as the standard line. The participants were unknowingly mixed with confederates. The confederates purposefully agreed on the wrong answer. Asch measured how many participants agreed with the confederates (even though they were wrong) and how many did not. From Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193, 31–35. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican1155-31 Standard Comparison fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 173 7/16/13 10:02 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity Conformity occurs in all cultures, although rates may be slightly different. In independent cultures, we generally find less conformity than in interdepen- dent cultures (Bond & Smith, 1996). One caveat to this is the rates of conformity in Japan. In a study using a similar confor – mity task to Asch’s, rates of conformity were lower in Japan than in the United States, a surprising finding given that Japanese culture is more interdependent than U.S. culture (Frager, 1970). Later researchers found that in Japan, when the group was made up of friends, con – formity was much higher (Williams & Sogon, 1984). It seems that in an interde- pendent culture, people conform more to the ingroup but less to the outgroup. Conformity has declined slightly since Asch did his study in the early 1950s, perhaps because of a cultural shift increasingly emphasizing individuality and the questioning of authority (Bond & Smith, 1996). Test Yourself • Did all of the participants in Asch’s study go along with the group? No. About a quarter of the participants never went along with the group. The rest con – formed at least once . • What effect did the presence of someone else who went against the group have on the participants in Asch’s study? When there was another person who did not conform, conformity of the participant declined as well. Norms Even though most of us do not find ourselves in a room with a group of people answer – ing targeted questions, we can still develop ideas based on what the collective group is thinking or doing. For example, you might believe that the majority of p eople brush their teeth at least twice a day, and that most people are against removing educational services Figure 8.2: Participant conformity rates with confederate(s) When participants were grouped with a single confederate in Asch’s study, they were generally as accurate as if they had been alone. When they were grouped with four confederates, they agreed with the incorrect confederates more than 30% of the time. Adapted from Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193, 31–35. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican1155-31 Pe rcent who conformed and ans wered incorrectly One confederat eFour confederates 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 174 7/16/13 10:02 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity for children with disabilities. These beliefs about what the group is thinking or doing are called norms. Two types of norms may influence our behavior. Norms for what is approved or disap- proved of are called injunctive norms. Norms describing what most people do are descriptive norms (Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991). Sometimes these two types of norms are in conflict; for example, a high school student may believe that the m ajority of people are not in favor of underage drinking (injunctive norm) but may also bel ieve that the majority of teens engage in underage drinking (descriptive norm). Ofte n the injunctive and descriptive norms are similar. Most people agree that we should not steal from one another (injunctive norm) and that most people do not steal (descript ive norm). We can also be wrong about one or both of these norms. The high school student may be right that most people disapprove of underage drinking but wrong that most students engage in it (Borsari & Carey, 2003). One place we get information about norms is the environment itself. For example, if you are in a public place and see trash all around, the descrip – tive norm the environment is provid- ing is that everyone litters. This may lead you to litter as well (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). If the injunc – tive norm against littering were more prominent, for example, if there were signs asking you not to litter and eas – ily accessible trash cans were avail – able, you may not litter (Cialdini et al., 1990; Reno, Cialdini, & Kallgren, 1993). Norms that come from the environment will differ from place to place and culture to culture. Telling people about descriptive norms can be helpful in encouraging posi tive behaviors. In a study of energy consumption, households that used more than the average amount of energy reduced energy consumption when informed of the descriptive norm. How – ever, households that were below the average for energy consumption actually increased consumption when told about the descriptive norm, creating a boomerang effect. This can be moderated by including the injunctive norm along with the descriptive norm. House – holds that were told they were lower than average in energy consumption (told of the descriptive norm) and then praised for their conservation (indicating an injunctive norm) maintained their low rate of energy consumption (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007). An advertising campaign in Montana that targeted drinking and driv – ing among 21-to-34-year-olds used information about social norms to encourage this age group to reduce drinking and driving, and encourage the use designated drivers (P erkins, Linkenbach, Lewis, & Neighbors, 2010). General descriptive norms about positive behaviors are helpful for encouraging those behaviors, but more specific norms are even more helpful. If you have stayed in a hotel recently, you have probably seen a sign about towel reuse. The hotel will replace your ©2008 Getty Images/Chris Clinton/Lifesize/Thinkstock If recycling is a norm in your neighborhood, you might be more likely to recycle. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 175 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity Social Psychology in Depth: Drinking Norms Drinking on college campuses is an epidemic. Nearly 80% of college students report drink- ing. Despite a minimum legal drinking age in the United States of 21, almost 60% of stu- dents aged 18 to 20 report drinking. Much of this drinking is binge drinking, which involves consuming at least four drinks (for women) or five drinks (for men) in a 2-hour period. More than 40% of college students report binge drinking at least once in a 2-week period (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2011). In addition to alcohol poison – ing, such behavior contributes to injuries, assaults, unsafe sex and sexual assault, academic problems, and vandalism (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010; National Insti- tute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2011). Alcohol use for college students depends, in part, on perceived injunctive and descriptive norms (Park, Klein, Smith, & Martell, 2009). Approval of drinking is an injunctive norm; the perception of how much drinking is being done is a descriptive norm. Not all norms are created equal. Researchers have found that people closer to a student are more likely to influence that student’s behavior. Perceived approval for drinking (injunctive norm) by close friends and parents is more important than the approval for drinking of typical students, even same-sex students (Lee, Geisner, Lewis, Neighbors, & Larimer, 2007; Neighbors et al., 2008). Similarly, students’ beliefs about how much their friends drink has more of an impact than the perceived behaviors of others (Cho, 2006; Lee et al., 2007). Descriptive norms seen on social media (Facebook) predicted alcohol-related thinking patterns that are related to alcohol use (Litt & Stock, 2011). In other words, believing that others in one’s social network are drinking makes you more willing to drink, have more positive attitudes toward drinking, and perceive your own use of alcohol as more likely. Norms involve what we believe others approve of or are doing, but beliefs are not always accurate. In the case of norms about drinking, U.S. and Canadian students overestimate the quantity and frequency of drinking by other students. Along with this, personal alcohol use is more influenced by the inaccurate norm than by the real norm for drinking on campus (Perkins, 2007; Perkins, Haines, & Rice, 2005). Does correcting these misperceptions reduce drinking? Overall, yes. At schools where the perceived norm is more in line with the lower actual norm, there is less problematic drinking (Perkins et al., 2005). Campaigns to change social norms tend to change perceived norms and bring down problematic drinking behaviors (Perkins et al., 2010). For binge drinkers, the descriptive norms for friends influence behavior more than descriptive campus norms or injunctive norms. People who were not binge drinkers were more influenced by campus descriptive norms (Cho, 2006). Unfortunately, interventions with those most at risk, high binge drinkers, can backfire if students perceive the messages as restricting their freedom to do as they like (Jung, Shim, & Mantaro, 2010). towel but, if you want to save water and electricity, you can choose to reuse your towel. Does it matter if you know what others do in this situation? When told t hat the majority of other guests in the hotel reuse their towels, guests were more likely to reuse their towels. But this can be strengthened with greater specificity. When told that 75% of people who stayed in their specific room (e.g., Room 201) reused their towels, guests were more likely to reuse their towels than if they were told 75% of people staying in the hotel reused their towels (Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008). Greater specificity of a norm leads to greater conformity to that norm. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 176 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity Normative and Informational Influence Why do we conform? Conformity may occur because we believe that a group has some knowledge we do not. Imagine yourself at the zoo. You walk up to the lion enclosure and notice there are a lot of people standing over on the right side, and no one is on the left. If you want to see the lion, where do you go? Your best bet is to the right, where all the people are. It’s likely that no one is on the left because the lion not there. The crowd knows something you do not—where the lion is—and so by following the crowd you are more likely to see the lion. When we conform because we believe the crowd knows something, we are experiencing informational influence (Castelli, Vanzetto, Sherman, & Luciano, 2001). Conformity may also occur because we want to be liked and accept ed by the group. In high school, you might have worn a certain style of clothing or acted in a particular way not because you believed it was the right thing to do but because you wa nted to be liked and accepted. When we conform because we want to be liked and accepted b y others, we are experiencing normative influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).These different forms of influence can lead to different types of persua- sion. If you believed the group knew information, you would likely act as the group does, as well as come to believe as the group does. If you were in a theater and suddenly everyone started running for the exits yelling “Fire!,” you may follow the crowd, truly believing there is a fire some – where, even if you have not seen any evidence of it. When we both behave and believe as the group does we have experienced acceptance of the social norm. We more often find acceptance in the case of informa – tional influence. On the other hand, if you were in that theater following iStockphoto/Thinkstock Informational influence might compel you to join a crowd of onlookers—these people may know something you don’t. Test Yourself • When a friend tells you everyone is doing it so you should too, that friend is talking about what kind of norm? Descriptive norm. Descriptive norms are norms that describe what most people are doing . • What is the difference between an injunctive and a descriptive norm? Injunctive norms focus on what people think you should do—what is approved of, while descriptive norms focus on what most people are actually doing. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 177 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity everyone as they rushed toward the exits but you did not believe there was a fire, you would be acting in a way that goes along with the group norms while privately disagree- ing. Such action without belief is called compliance. We find more compliance in the case of normative influence. In the case of the tragedy at Jonestown it seems both of these were at work. Based on recordings made during the mass suicide in Jonestown it appears many of Jim Jones’ followers truly believed in him and in his dire predictions, readily and willingly drinking the poisoned beverage. These people accepted the soci al norm. Others seem to have drunk the cyanide while not truly believing that such an act was necessary (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1978). Advertisers use conformity to their advantage. By telling us how many people switched their car insurance, an insurance company is suggesting that these other people know something we do not. If everyone else discovered cheaper insurance, perhaps we should join them and switch too; informational influence is at work. Another advertiser might show us a lot of happy people wearing a particular brand of jeans, sugge sting that if we want to fit in we should buy and wear these jeans. When we buy what othe rs do to be liked or accepted, we are conforming due to normative influence. There are times when we are more susceptible to conformity pressures. For example, individuals are more likely to go along with the crowd when they are in a good mood (Tong, Tan, Latheef, Selamat, & Tan, 2008) and are more involved with the topic at hand (Huang & Min, 2007). Normative influence can help self-managed teams in businesses to manage themselves . Team mem – bers who feel they belong and are committed to the team can show greater productivity (Stewart, Courtright, & Barrick, 2012). Test Yourself • How are acceptance and compliance related to normative and informational influence? When we conform because of informational influence we are more likely to show accep – tance, not just compliance. Compliance is more likely with normative influence because we are going along with the crowd to be accepted, but not necessarily because we believe the crowd is right. Minority Influence So far, this chapter has discussed the ways in which norms can have a powerful influ- ence on the individual, causing them to go along with what everyone else is doing. But individuals are not powerless. When an individual goes against the majority, that action can influence the majority. In the 1957 film 12 Angry Men, one juror persuades the other 11 jurors to his side of thinking. While, at the beginning of the film, he is the only one who believes in the innocence of the accused, by the end they all believ e the young man fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 178 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.1 Conformity Test Yourself • When are minorities more persuasive? In other words, what qualities in the minority make it more likely to persuade the majority to change? Minorities who offer a distinctive viewpoint, are consistent in their viewpoint, and gain defections from the majority are most persuasive. • Without convincing members of the majority to their side do minorities do anything to or for the majority by holding a minority view? Minorities create more creativity and complexity in the majority, even when the major- ity does not change its viewpoint. accused of the crime is not guilty. The majority is more likely to find a minority viewpoint persuasive if the minority viewpoint is distinct and the position is hel d consistently. When a minority holds one point of difference from the group but agrees with the majority on other points, this creates distinctiveness. If a friend shares your beliefs concerning school reform except for the use of student achievement for teacher evaluation, you might be more willing to entertain that friend’s perspective and potentially be c onvinced by his arguments (Bohner, Frank, & Erb, 1998). Consistently held positions are also more persua – sive. If your friend waivered in his beliefs about teacher evaluations, you would be less willing to hear his arguments (Moscovici & Lage, 1976). Minorities can also become more persuasive when there are defections from the minority. If your friend were to convince someone who used to agree with you to now agree with his line of thinking, you would be more likely to also change your opinion (Clark, 2001). Whether or not minorities actually lead the majority to change beliefs, minorities do cre – ate greater creativity and complexity in the thinking of the majority (Legrenzi, Butera, Mugny, & Perez, 1991; Nemeth, Mayseless, Sherman, & Brown, 1990). The alternative per – spective of the minority causes the majority to consider other viewpoint s and approaches to an issue. The minority viewpoint allows them to think about their ide as from other angles they may not have accounted for before. When minorities do change the opinion of the majority, that changed belief tends to be more stable and more resistant to future change (Martin, Hewstone, & Martin, 2008). In this way, minorities perform a service for the majority, even if they do not convince anyone in the majority to their way of thinking. Having a group move from agreeing with you on an issue to disagreeing with you is an unsettling experience. Individuals who began in the majority and maintai n their opinion as the rest of the group joins the minority opinion tend to have hostile feelings toward the group. On the other hand, those who began in the minority and have a group adopt their opinion tend to like the group more and expect positive interactions with the group in the future (Prislin, Limbert, & Bauer, 2000). Being in the minority is an uncomfortable experi – ence that can improve if others come to see things as we do. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 179 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority 8.2 Obedience to Authority I t began like many other research studies. Having answered a newspaper advertise- ment, male research participants entered the research laboratory and were told they were going to be part of a study of performance and punishment. Each participant was paired with another participant, and both were told they would each be taking on the role of teacher or the role of learner. These roles were chosen randomly, from little slips of paper in a hat. The learner was brought to a separate room. Electrodes were connected to the learner ’s arm and the learner was strapped to a chair. Learners were told, in the presence of the teacher, the shocks would be painful but they would cause no permanent damage. The teachers returned with the experimenter to the other room and were told they would be teaching the learner a series of words, using electrical shocks to punish the leaner for wrong answers. As the teacher and learner worked through the word list, the teacher increased the shock level by 15 volts for every wrong answer, as instructed by the experimenter. At first the experiment was uneventful, but at 75 volts the learner uttered an “Ugh!” after the shock. After several more of these sorts of verbalizations from the learner at the 150-volt level, the leaner said “Ugh! Experimenter! That’s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me now. Get me out of here please. My heart’s starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out” (Milgram, 1974, p. 56). When the teacher asked the experimenter what to do, the experimenter replied that he should go on. After that, if the teacher continued the learner protested until the 330-volt level. After the 330-volt level the learner fell silent, not providing any further protests, but also not answer – ing any questions. The highest shock level possible was 450, a level den oted with XXX, past the denotation of Danger: Severe Shock. Before the study began, psychology undergraduates, adults, and psychiatrists were asked to predict how far on the shock generator the teachers would go. They predicted that only 1 in 1,000 would go all the way to the end of the shock generator, with about 4% even mak – ing it to the 300-volt level (Milgram, 1974). In the study, 62.5% of the participants (25/40) went to the end. Many teachers protested along the way, showing signs of extreme stress, but continued to the end. None of the teachers dropped out before the 135-volt level, and 80% continued to give shocks until the 285-volt level, having given 18 shocks and heard 14 separate protests by the learner. What the participants did not know was that the learner was not getting any electrical shocks; he was working with the e xperimenter, his “random” assignment as learner was rigged, and his verbalizations throughout the study were recordings. The study was designed to investigate obedience, and the primary inter – est of the researcher was whether the participant (the teacher) would obey, even when it meant harming another person. Milgram undertook his study, in part, to try to better understand the events that occurred in Nazi Germany, where many ordinary people went against their own moral codes and their own ethics and participated in the degradation, imprisonment, and killing of Jewish fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 180 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority Test Yourself • In Milgram’s study, did most of the participants obey or did most disobey? In Milgram’s original study more than half, 62.4% or 25/40, obeyed and gave powerful electrical shocks to an innocent victim. • Were the findings of Milgram’s study expected by people asked to predict the results? No. People told about the study but not the results predicted very few would obey to the end. civilians and other innocent people (Milgram, 1963). Milgram argued that one reason for that behavior was obedience. But could obedience be so powerful? Milgram ’s study sug – gests it is. Even given immoral orders to continue to hurt another person, people tend to obey. Many, including Stanley Milgram, the researcher, found these results surprising (Milgram, 1963). The findings of this study suggest that people are willing to harm another person if told to do so by an authority. They may protest, express disapproval, and ask the authority figure to let them stop, but when the authority figure says they should continue, they will. Obedience is a deeply engrained ten – dency—one that we are taught early on in life. Most of the time, obedience is a positive behavior. Driving your car through an intersection at a green light, you hope that those stopped for the red light on the cross street will obey traffic laws and stop. Obedience to authority prevents many thefts, murders, and kidnappings. In fact, we may wish for more obedience in regards to violent and nonviolent crimes. But, as Milgram showed, and as history has taught us, there is also a dark side to obedience. This dark side can be clearly seen in the events at Jonestown. Jim Jones demanded obedience from his followers and, in the end, received ultimate obedience from many—they killed themselves on his command. iStockphoto/Thinkstock We are required to display obedience on a daily basis. For example, drivers are expected to stop at red lights and pedestrians must wait for a signal before crossing an intersection. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 181 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority Social Psychology in Depth: Bad Apples or Vinegar Barrels? When we hear about some of the bad events that happen in our world, we often describe the perpetrators as “bad people.” Yet prominent psychologist Philip Zimbardo argues that we apply such terms too liberally, failing to recognize the capacity for evil that we all hold, given the right set of circumstances (Zimbardo, 2004; 2008). Take, for example, the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal. In 2004, pictures began to emerge of U.S. prison guards (Army reservists) at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq abusing the Iraqi prisoners. The images were graphic. Prisoners were shown naked, in humiliating poses, on leashes, and being threatened by dogs. Our initial instinct is to say the guards were bad people—bad apples who should never have been allowed into the Army (Shermer, 2007). In making such a conclusion we make a fundamental attribution error, ignoring situational factors and blaming dispositional factors for behavior. Milgram’s experiment shows us how powerful situational factors can be. Normal, ordinary Americans were willing to inflict great harm on another person simply because of the orders of a man in a white lab coat. If such behavior can be elicited in a relatively short period in a largely innocuous psychology laboratory situation, might even more brutal behavior be expected over a longer period in a frightening and unfamiliar scenario? Despite focusing on the situation in explaining evil events, Zimbardo does not advocate excusing bad behavior. Understanding the situation that brought about the behavior does not condone it. Those who do bad things should be punished for what they have done. But without some attention to the situation, more people will engage in the behaviors, creating more pain and suffering in the world. Zimbardo (2004) writes:‘While a few bad apples might spoil the barrel (filled with good fruit/peo- ple), a barrel filled with vinegar will always transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles—regardless of the best intentions, resilience, and genetic nature of those cucumbers.’ So, does it make more sense to spend our resources on attempts to identify, isolate, and destroy the few bad apples or to learn how vinegar works so that we can teach cucumbers how to avoid undesirable vinegar barrels? (p. 47) What Predicts Obedience? Milgram (1974) completed a variety of related experiments to learn what factors contrib – ute to obedience. Unlike many studies in social psychology, Milgram used community members for his research, not college undergraduates. His participants were from a vari – ety of education levels, ranging from not completing high school to having obtained doc – toral degrees, and varied from age 20 to age 50. Milgram’s original studies used only male participants; when Milgram expanded his study to include women, though, he found Expand Your Knowledge: Zimbardo on Evil Phillip Zimbardo described the social psychological factors in destructive behaviors in his book The Lucifer Effect . Although obedience is only a part of the expla – nation, if you are interested in learning more about why people act in ways that hurt others, read this book. Zimbardo also wrote two shorter pieces on this topic: a chapter in an edited book titled The Social Psy- chology of Good and Evil: Understanding Our Capac – ity for Kindness and Cruelty and a short article for the magazine Eye on Psi Chi . The book chapter explores what Zimbardo calls a situationist perspective on evil. Zimbardo, P. G. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understand- ing how good people turn evil . New York: Random House. Information on the Lucifer Effect is available at http://www.lucifereffect.com/ . fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 182 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority no appreciable differences between men and women (Shanab & Yahya, 1977). Age does not seem to matter in level of obedience in this type of study either. Children aged 6 to 16 years were about as obedient in a replication of Milgram’s study, with no differences based on age (Shanab & Yahya, 1977). Proximity of the Victim Milgram found that the prox- imity between the learner (the victim) and the teacher (the participant) was an impor – tant factor in obedience. In one study, the learner was in another room and had no communication with the teacher, except in providing answers and, at the 300- and 315-volt level, banging on the wall. In this instance, obedience was rai sed only to 65% (26 out of 40 participants) from 62.5% in the first study. In another study, the learner was in the same room as the teacher. In another, the learner and teacher were next to one another. In this second experiment the learner had to touch a shock plate every time he got an answer wrong. He eventually refused to touch the plate and the teacher had to physi – cally move his hand and force it down on the shock plate. In these studies, Milgram found that the closer the learner was to the teacher, the lower the obedience. When the learner was far removed, obedience was very high; more than half of the participants obeyed the experimenter. When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, obedience declined to 40%, and it further declined to 30% when physical contact was required. When someone is ordered to hurt another, the closer the victim is the lower the likelihood of obedience. Would we harm those we know well? In one of Milgram’s studies, partici pants brought a friend along. The friend was enlisted as the experimenter ’s helper and fulfilled the role of learner, including giving all the protests the confederate learner had offered in the original study. The researchers found much lower obedience in this condition. Only 15% (3 out of 20) of participants were willing to go all the way to the end of the shock generator when their friend protested (Rochat & Modigliani, 1997). Proximity of the Authority In another set of studies, the distance between the experimenter (the a uthority figure) and the teacher was varied. In one study, the experimenter provided directions by telephone or through a prerecorded message. When the authority figure was distant, the participants What Predicts Obedience? Milgram (1974) completed a variety of related experiments to learn what factors contrib – ute to obedience. Unlike many studies in social psychology, Milgram used community members for his research, not college undergraduates. His participants were from a vari – ety of education levels, ranging from not completing high school to having obtained doc – toral degrees, and varied from age 20 to age 50. Milgram’s original studies used only male participants; when Milgram expanded his study to include women, though, he found Expand Your Knowledge: Zimbardo on Evil Phillip Zimbardo described the social psychological factors in destructive behaviors in his book The Lucifer Effect . Although obedience is only a part of the expla – nation, if you are interested in learning more about why people act in ways that hurt others, read this book. Zimbardo also wrote two shorter pieces on this topic: a chapter in an edited book titled The Social Psy- chology of Good and Evil: Understanding Our Capac – ity for Kindness and Cruelty and a short article for the magazine Eye on Psi Chi . The book chapter explores what Zimbardo calls a situationist perspective on evil. Zimbardo, P. G. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understand- ing how good people turn evil . New York: Random House. Information on the Lucifer Effect is available at http://www.lucifereffect.com/ . fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 183 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority were less likely to obey. The legitimacy of the authority was also varied. Milgram moved the study to an office building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, out of the Yale University labo- ratory he had been using. Participants believed they were participating in a study for the “Research Associates of Bridgeport” and saw no connection of the study to prestigious Yale University. In this study obe – dience declined some, from 65% to 48%. Other research – ers found similar results with an authority figure without legitimate authority (Mantell, 1971; Rosenhan, 1969). The implications are frightening: nearly half of participants still obey immoral orders from authority figures who have very little legitimacy. The appearance of authority can be enough to convince us to obey. Outside of the laboratory setting, this con- cept was demonstrated in a study of nurses in a hospital in the 1960s. In this study, a physician, who the nurses on duty were not familiar with, called on the phone and asked them to give a patient what they would hav e known to be an unsafe level of a drug. The study found 95% of the nurses obeyed before being inter – cepted on their way to give the drug (Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966). If a security guard asked you to stand on the other side of a bus stop sign, would you do it? Even though the request was not part of the security guard’s domain, most people asked by a uniformed person to do a simple act, did so (Bickman, 1974). Compliant or Defiant Others When groups of people were part of the study, Milgram found that compliant others led to compliant participants, and defiant others led to defiant participant s. In these studies Milgram had confederates who appeared to be other participants do a variety of teaching tasks. In one study the participant watched as a confederate gave shocks. In this study 90% of participants were fully obedient. In another study two confederates and one par – ticipant were assigned to give shocks. At the 150-volt level, when the learner makes his first long protest, the confederate giving the shocks refused to continue. The second con – federate was then given the job of giving shocks. At the 210-volt level this second confed – erate joined in the protest, getting up from his chair near the shock generator and refusing to continue the study. At that point the actual participant was asked to continue the study on his own. When the two other teachers (the confederates) quit, obedi ence declined sig- nificantly, to 27.5% (Milgram, 1965). Expand Your Knowledge: Video Clips of Obedience The Heroic Imagination project provides an interest – ing set of clips on obedience. The collection includes some archival footage from Milgram’s study and vid – eos of obedience in situations where the authority fig- ure had little authority, including an amusing Candid Camera clip asking people at a lunch counter to fol- low the directions of a light for when they could and could not eat. http://heroicimagination.org/research /situational-awareness/social-influence-forces /obedience-to-authority/ fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 184 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority Culture Culture can also contribute to obedience. In the United States, independence i s a domi- nant value and parents tend to pass on those values to children through childrearing. For example, researchers found that when mothers encourage their children to recount a story, U.S. children are encouraged to describe events that illustrate their own opinions and qualities, while Chinese children are encouraged to describe activities that they did with others or that relate them to others (Wang, 2006). Because social harmony is highly valued in interdependent cultures like Chinese culture, children are more socialized to be obedient (Xiao, 1999). Even within cultures there are variations in the value of obedi – ence. Researchers find that middle-class parents in the United States are more likely to be concerned with emphasizing independence in their children, while working-class par – ents tend to focus more on obedience (Gecas & Nye, 1974; Xiao, 2000). In cultures where authority is highly valued, we are more likely to see the kind of destructive obedience that Milgram studied—obedience without critical examination—that is evi denced in genocide and other violent human acts (Staub, 1999). Test Yourself • What effect did the closeness of the learner/victim have on obedience in Milgram’s study? The closer the teacher was to the learner/victim the lower the obedience . • In situations of obedience do we conform to the actions of others in their obedience to authority? Yes. In studies where confederates posing as participants also obeyed, the participant obeyed as well. In studies where confederates posing as participants disobeyed, fewer participants obeyed the authority figure. Disobedience In Milgram’s original study, 35% of participants disobeyed the authority figure and dis – continued the study. There are times in life when disobedience is a more just and moral choice than obedience. Can we predict who will disobey? In many ways, obedient and disobedient participants are indistinguishable. In later studies on obedience, no difference in stress levels were found—all participants showed physical and psychological markers of stress as the study continued. As participants continued to be obedient, they tended to reach a point of compliant resignation, offering fewer and shorter disagreements and continuing to engage in the behavior. However, when the amount of time people were part of the study was taken into account (disobedient participants obvi ously finished more quickly), the number of disagreements were no different between those who continued to fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 185 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority be obedient and those that disobeyed. No differences in personality were found between obedient and disobedient participants (Bocchiaro & Zimbardo, 2010; Bocchiaro, Zimbardo, & Van Lange, 2012). Disobedience tends to occur at a critical juncture. In studies using Milgram’s paradigm, participants who disobeyed tended to do so when the confederate first pr otested or when the confederate’s protests changed in content or tone (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986; Packer, 2008). After disobeying, most participants believed they did what others would have done. In other words, they did not see their behavior as unusual, showing false consensus, and were surprised that anyone would have continued to obey. Participants reported they made a quick decision when they chose to disobey; for some it was a moral or an ethical decision. These participants mentioned that it would not be right or fair to continue when the other person is clearly suffering. Other participants worried about the other person, or felt empathy for his/her suffering. Others simply did not see the point of continuing within the situation (Bocchiaro & Zimbardo, 2010). Overall, it is difficult to predict who will disobey and who will obey authority in these types of situations. I t appears decisions are made quickly at critical points within a situation, and are made for a variety of rea – sons. These reasons are not reflective of personality differences, or differences in reactivity to stress. Future research on obedience is needed to help us better predict disobedience. One type of disobedience that occurs in response to potentially illegitimate authority is legal disobedience. Legal disobedience may take the form of conscient ious objection, civil disobedience, or outright rebellion against a government or leader (Herr, 1974; Raz, 1975). This form of disobedience occurred as people in communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe overthrew their governments in 1989 and in a variety of Arab countries in 2011, which came to be known as the Arab Spring. Conscientious objections and civil disobedience helped free India from rule by the British Empire, bring about civil rights in the United States in the 1960s, and help end the Vietnam war in the 1970s. In such circumstances, people may feel an entitlement or a responsibility to disobey as an act of citizenship (Rattner, Yagil, & Sherman-Segal, 2003). In fact, people most committed to democracy are often those who are most likely to disobey in the face of potentially illegitimate authority (Passini & Morselli, 2011). For these people democracy pro – vides both an opportunity and a responsibility to disobey when democracy is threated. This dis – obedience prevents authoritarian governments to take hold, preserving or bringing about demo – cratic rule. William Warren/Science Faction/SuperStock In an act of civil disobedience, Vietnam veterans protest against the war. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 186 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.2 Obedience to Authority Ethics of Obedience Research The participants in Milgram’s studies underwent an experience that wa s very stressful. According to an observer of the study:I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous col – lapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe, and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: “Oh God, let’s stop it.” And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end (Milgram, 1963, p. 377). When entering into an experimental situation, research participants put themselves into the hands of the experimenter. After Milgram’s study, other researchers asked if placing unsuspecting people into these kinds of situations was ethical. The main problems identi – fied were that participants had a very stressful experience, and that they would have to live with the knowledge of the lengths to which they would obey, all within a situation based on trust (Baumrind, 1964). Milgram (1964) responded to these criticisms by noting that the findings of his studies and the reactions of the participants were unexpected. When he asked psychologists and oth – ers what to expect, they did not believe participants would go all the w ay to the end of the shock generator and be as obedient as they were. At the end of the experimental session, the experimenter reunited the confederate with the participant so the participant could see that he was not harmed in any way. The experimenter was supportive of whatever decision the participant made in terms of obedience. The study involved a great deal of deception. The participants were lied to about the purpose of the study, about the complicity of the other participant, and about what was actually happening. Critics of the study argued that this type of deception may have an impact on the participants themselves, as they feel duped by the researcher. This form of deception in psychological experiments can potentially impact the genera l public’s view of psychological research. When researchers use deception a great deal, the public may become suspicious of all research studies, and wary of participating in research, even Test Yourself • How are those who disobey different from those who obey authority? For the most part they are not different. There is no difference in personality or in the distress they show or the protests they make. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 187 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.3 Leadership research that does not in fact involve deception. Milgram (1974) contacted p articipants after their participation to ask how they felt about the study. The vast majority said they were glad or very glad to have been part of the study (83.7%). Only 1.3% of the partici- pants reported being sorry or very sorry to have participated. Almost three fourths of par- ticipants reported learning something of personal importance. Test Yourself • What were some ethical issues with Milgram’s study? Participants in Milgram’s study experienced a great deal of distress and were deceived about the nature of the study in a situation of trust. In the end, they may have learned something unpleasant about their own tendencies that they would have to live with . • Did Milgram find any long-term negative effects in the participants who were part of his study? For the most part, no. In follow-up work he found that most people were happy to have been part of the study. 8.3 Leadership T he influences of conformity and obedience sway our beliefs and actions. Cult leader Jim Jones expected obedience from his followers and used conformity to keep his followers in line. Leaders—good and bad—make a difference in what people think and do, contributing to or breaking from conformity. Obedience to leaders has led to some of the most inspiring and heartbreaking events in history. Leadership involves influenc- ing a group and its members to contribute to the goals of the group and coordinating and guiding those efforts (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). If leaders are good leaders who make good decisions, then obedience is appropriate. What makes a good leader? When are leaders most effective? A number of models for describing types of leadership exist. One model offers two main categories of leader – ship: transactional and transformational leadership. In transactional leadership, lead- ers can lead by offering an exchange of rewards for effort from followers. By contrast, some leaders offer their followers a common purpose and ask that individual interest be put aside so the group can work together toward that goal. This leadership style is called transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). An additional type of leadership, called laissez-faire leadership, is characterized by a hands-off approach, with the leader sim – ply allowing the followers to do what they would like without substantial input from the leader (Yammarino, Spangler, & Bass, 1993). Transactional leaders focus on contingent rewards and active management. These lead – ers work out agreements with their followers that will satisfy both parties. People obey transactional leaders because they desire the rewards the transactional leader can provide. Contingent rewards are provided once the followers have fulfilled their end of the bargain. iStockphoto/Thinkstock Leaders can use different strategies and tactics to achieve goals. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 188 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.3 Leadership This type of leadership may also involve active management, where the leader monitors what the fol- lower is doing to redirect, if needed, and enforce the rules that have been agreed upon. Transactional leaders do not always actively manage their followers. At times, they take a pas- sive management approach, inter- vening when problems are brought to their attention (Bass, 1997). These leaders do not necessarily inspire their followers, but they do get the job done. Many leaders of busi- nesses, coaches of sports teams, and politicians would best be described as transactional leaders. Transformational leaders are characterized by charisma, inspirational motivation, intel – lectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Charisma, in this context, means influence toward an ideal that can be accomplished through the leader displaying convic – tion about the goal, presenting and taking stands on important issues, and emphasizing trust. When leaders clearly articulate a vision, provide encouragement, and show opti – mism, they display inspirational motivation. Nelson Mandela, anti-aparth eid leader and former president of South Africa, was such a transformational leader, as was Winston Churchill, prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. Intellectual stimu – lation within transformational leadership is modeled by leaders in their welcoming of new ideas and perspectives. Finally, transformational leaders tend to focus on individual gifts, abilities, and needs, offering individual consideration for followers (Bass, 1997). Along with these qualities, transformational leaders are generally self-confident and are able to handle pressure and uncertainty well. Optimistic and self-determined, such leaders are able to cast a vision for their followers (van Eeden, Cilliers, & van Deventer, 2008). Not all transformational leaders bring about peace and reconciliation. Jim Jones would likely fit in the category of transformational leadership. Jones attracted his foll owers to his vision for a color-blind world where people worked together to create a modern-day utopia. People differ in what they consider to be ideal in a leader. Because of past experiences, values, and personality differences, people develop schemas for what they consider good leadership qualities and these schemas are relatively stable over time (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Keller, 1999; Keller, 2003; Kriger & Seng, 2005). These schemas are called implicit leadership theories . Individuals who show qualities that people expect in lead – ers—those that fit the implicit leadership theories people hold—ar e more likely to be viewed as leaders (Melwani, Mueller, & Overbeck, 2012). Interactions between a fol – lower and a leader will be largely impacted by the follower ’s implicit leadership theories (Epitropaki & Martin, 2005; Fraser & Lord, 1988). Some leaders may be considered bad leaders not because they intend to do any harm to their followers or bec ause they are inherently bad leaders, but because the implicit leadership theories of the f ollowers do not match the leadership qualities and actions of the leader (Peus, Bra un, & Frey, 2012). 8.3 Leadership T he influences of conformity and obedience sway our beliefs and actions. Cult leader Jim Jones expected obedience from his followers and used conformity to keep his followers in line. Leaders—good and bad—make a difference in what people think and do, contributing to or breaking from conformity. Obedience to leaders has led to some of the most inspiring and heartbreaking events in history. Leadership involves influenc- ing a group and its members to contribute to the goals of the group and coordinating and guiding those efforts (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). If leaders are good leaders who make good decisions, then obedience is appropriate. What makes a good leader? When are leaders most effective? A number of models for describing types of leadership exist. One model offers two main categories of leader – ship: transactional and transformational leadership. In transactional leadership, lead- ers can lead by offering an exchange of rewards for effort from followers. By contrast, some leaders offer their followers a common purpose and ask that individual interest be put aside so the group can work together toward that goal. This leadership style is called transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). An additional type of leadership, called laissez-faire leadership, is characterized by a hands-off approach, with the leader sim – ply allowing the followers to do what they would like without substantial input from the leader (Yammarino, Spangler, & Bass, 1993). Transactional leaders focus on contingent rewards and active management. These lead – ers work out agreements with their followers that will satisfy both parties. People obey transactional leaders because they desire the rewards the transactional leader can provide. Contingent rewards are provided once the followers have fulfilled their end of the bargain. iStockphoto/Thinkstock Leaders can use different strategies and tactics to achieve goals. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 189 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Section 8.3 Leadership Success of a leader can be defined in a variety of ways. Successful lead ers might be those who have helped their followers to reach a goal (Kaiser & Hogan, 2007). Even without reaching or moving toward obtaining a goal, leaders might be defined as successful if their group is satisfied or motivated or, simply, if followers rate the leader as successful (Tsui, 1984). Looking from a strict monetary perspective, 14% of the variance in the finan- cial results of a business is due to the leadership provided by the CEO (Joyce, Nohria, & Robertson, 2003). Although we often think of transformational leaders as better leaders, generally there are no overall differences in effectiveness of transformational versus trans – actional leaders (Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004). Test Yourself • A leader who seeks to inspire followers and cast a vision for where those followers might go is using what type of leadership? Transformational leadership . • Joe believes a leader should be kind and compassionate to followers. Marcus thinks leaders should be clear about expectations but uninvolved in the lives of their followers. Joe and Marcus are different in what way? Joe and Marcus are different in their implicit leadership theories, they have different schemas regarding the appropriate qualities of leaders . Conclusion Conformity affects our everyday behavior. We might follow what everyone else is doing or what we think others would like us to do. We might follow because the crowd seems to know something we do not know, or because we want acceptance from the crowd. But minority groups can also influence behavior, particularly when they maintain a consistent, distinctive position. Overall, people tend to be obedient, a positive tendency that allows for a well-ordered and safe society. But rates of obedience are often still high even when it involves harming others, as found in Stanley Milgram’s famous study o f obedience. Obe – dience is even more common when the authority figure is close, the victim is distant, and others are also obeying. Milgram’s studies were attacked for being unethical, as his par – ticipants were put under extreme stress and were deceived within a context where trust is important. Authority figures or leaders come in a variety of styles, showing effectiveness in their roles depending on expectations of followers and the situation in which t hey lead. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 190 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Critical Thinking Questions Chapter Summary Conformity When we do as others do, we are conforming to the behavior of the group. At times our conformity is due to what we believe others want us to do. In this insta nce we are influ- enced by injunctive norms. Descriptive norms refer to what most people do, not necessar – ily what most people approve of. When we conform we may do so to be liked or accepted by the group. Normative influence produces this type of conformity. When we conform to be liked or accepted we may act as others do without believing that a ction is right; we show compliance to the social norm. Informational influence brings about confor – mity because we believe the group knows something we do not. At such times we may act and believe as the group does, showing acceptance of the social norm. Majorities are powerful, but minorities can have an influence too. Minorities with dist inctive positions, that are consistent in their position, and that gain defections from the majority are most persuasive. Obedience to Authority Stanley Milgram completed a study of obedience where participants were asked to follow the orders of an experimenter despite the protests of a victim. In his study, 62.5% of partic- ipants were fully obedient. When Milgram varied the distance of the authority figu re from the participant, obedience declined as the authority figure’s presence was less prominent. The victim’s presence led to a decrease in obedience. When the legitimacy of the authority figure was lessened, obedience was lower, although still quite high. More recent research has shown that obedience has not declined significantly. Disobedience is hard to predict on the individual level, although some situational factors do predict when people are likely to disobey. Milgram’s study of obedience placed participants in a situation of great stress in an environment of trust. Milgram’s follow-ups with his participants indicated that most were happy to have participated and had no long-term ill effects from the study. Leadership Leadership styles may involve a transaction of rewards for effort, known as transactional leadership, or inspiration toward a common goal and purpose, known as transforma – tional leadership. Laissez-faire leadership involves leadership without substantial input from the leader. Followers have particular ways of thinking about leadership, influencing how they evaluate leaders. Generally, leaders do matter and a variety of leadership styles are potentially effective. Critical Thinking Questions 1. Have you been in a situation where you changed your behavior, or observed oth- ers changing their behavior, due to conformity? What was that situation like? 2. In your own life, where might you have seen injunctive norms and descriptive norms? fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 191 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8 Key Terms 3. If you held a minority opinion in a group and wanted to convince the rest of the group to join you in that opinion, what might you do to convince them? 4. Milgram investigated the closeness and legitimacy of the authority figur e, the closeness to and identity of the victim, and the actions of others in relation to degree of obedience. What other factors might influence obedience? 5. If you had been part of Milgram’s study of obedience, what do you thi nk you would have done? 6. What do you think about the ethics of Milgram’s studies of obedience? Do you think they should have been done, or are the ethical implications too great? 7. How might you describe your own implicit leadership theories? What effect have these had on your interactions with leaders? 8. The chapter begins with a discussion of the mass suicide of the people a t Jonestown. Based on what you now know about conformity and obedience wha t do you think could have been done to prevent this tragedy or others like it? Key Terms acceptance When both actions and beliefs are in line with the social norm. compliance When actions are in line with the social norm, but belief remains distinct. conformity Going along with a group in actions or beliefs. descriptive norms Norms describing what most people do. distinctiveness That which gives minori- ties power despite their minority status. This occurs when one point of differences from the group is held by a minority, but the minority agrees with the majority on other points. implicit leadership theories The schemas people have for good leadership qualities. informational influence A type of social influence toward conformity that occurs when the individual believes the crowd possesses knowledge that the individual does not. injunctive norms Norms for what is either approved of or disapproved of. laissez-faire leadership Characterized by a hands-off approach, with the leader simply allowing the followers to do what they would like without substantial input from the leader. leadership Influencing a group and its members to contribute to the goals of the group and coordinating and guiding those efforts. normative influence A type of social influence toward conformity that occurs when the individual conforms to avoid social rejection and to be liked or accepted by the group. transactional leadership Leadership involving offering an exchange of rewards for effort from followers. transformational leadership Leadership where the leader offers followers a com- mon purpose and asks that individual interests be put aside so the group can work together toward that goal. fee85798_08_c08_171-192.indd 192 7/16/13 10:03 AM CHAPTER 8
PSY 301 – 2 Discussion Questions
Group Dynamics; Theory, Research, and Practice 2000. Vol. 4. No. 1.68-80 Copyright 2000 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 1089-2699/0055.00 DO1: 1O.1O37//1O89-2699.4.1.68 Milestones in the Psychological Analysis of Social Influence William D. Crano Claremont Graduate University Social influence research has been, and remains, the defining hallmark of social psychology. The history of this preoccupation is reviewed selectively, and important contributions to social influence and persuasion are discussed. The central thesis of the presentation is that a return to a consideration of the social group, a critical source of identity and individuality, pays major dividends in understanding the processes of social influence. Moscovici’s insistence on the importance of minority influence processes is seen as a harbinger of the return of the group to social influence. Finally, the leniency contract is proposed as a model that integrates these insights with important features of social identity, the elaboration likelihood model, and considerations of structural attitude theory in developing a predictive device that accounts for immediate and persistent majority attitude change as well as indirect and delayed focal change attributable to minority persuasion. More than 100 years ago, Triplett (1898) published a study whose effects remain evident, even in today’s analyses of social influence processes. In his experiment, Triplett demon- strated that the mere presence of coacting human beings could have a powerful impact on people’s behaviors. He found that, when others were present in the research context, partici- pants worked harder and faster than when they worked alone, and he attributed this productivity enhancement to the fact that “the bodily presence of another contestant participating simultaneously in the race serves to liberate latent energy not ordinarily available” (Triplett, 1898, p. 533). Zajonc’s (1965, 1980) view that the mere presence of others operated as a nonspecific, energizing stimulus helped make sense of the phenomenon, and Baron’s (1986) later work showed how conflict or distraction produced by the copresent actors could produce performance gains or losses. Although social facilitation research continues to be pursued (e.g., Aiello & Svec, 1993), the field today is This research was supported in part by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant R01-DAI2578-0I, for which I am most grateful. I acknowledge the kindness of Rod Bond, who provided me a prepublication draft of his meta-analytic work on group size and conformity. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to William D. Crano, Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University, 123 East 8th Street, Claremont, California 91711. Electronic mail maybe sent to [email protected] more inclined to study the impact of actors who take a more directive role in shaping beliefs and actions in the interpersonal context. In this review I trace some of the major developments in directed social influence, from Sherif to today’s studies of majority and minority influ- ence. Along the way, 1 consider important questions about the processes that might result in different influence outcomes and suggest possibilities that may foster understanding of this fundamental activity. This review is not a complete rendering of the literature, nor is it intended to be. Rather, it highlights some of the studies that have had an inordinate influence on the directions the field has taken. Finally, the review will trace the disappearance and reappear- ance of the social group in social influence and document the significance of this reemergence for integrating developing theories. The importance that social psychology at- taches to directed social influence can be inferred from the field’s continuing preoccupa- tion with questions surrounding this issue, and the preeminence of those who have labored on their solution. Of the great names in social psychology’s pantheon—-Allport, Asch, Camp- bell, Festinger, Hovland, McGuire, Moscovici, Jones, Kelley, and Sherif—all have devoted at least a portion of their considerable talents to developing a better comprehension of social influence. Much of the early research under- taken by this distinguished company of scholars was devoted to two tasks: uncovering factors SPECIAL ISSUE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE 69 that enhanced social influence, and developing frameworks in which the interplay of these factors could be understood and mapped onto existing empirical data. I consider some of these frameworks over the course of this review, but before doing so it is reasonable first to consider some of the early studies on influence that gave rise to social psychology’s intense interest in the first place. Sherif s Autokinetic Research Series Solomon Asch is typically acknowledged as the father of social influence research, and there can be little doubt that his impressive series of reports in the 1950s called attention to the intriguing and not easily explicable phenom- enon of compliance. However, to ignore the equally impressive studies conducted by Muza- fer Sherif 20 years before Asch’s is to proceed in extreme peril. Evidence of Sherifs creative genius is well distributed throughout the litera- ture of social psychology, but nowhere is it more obvious than in his autokinetic illusion research (Sherif, 1935, 1936). The illusion relies on a pervasive perceptual shortcoming of human beings. It requires only that a perceiver fixate on a small pinpoint of light in an otherwise completely dark room.1 After focusing on the light for a short period of time, it appears to move. Even experienced judges are not immune to this compelling illusion. Sherif (1936) took advantage of this well-established but poorly understood human foible to study norm forma- tion, a theme to which he would return and augment in the classic Robbers Cave experiment (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961). In his initial autokinetic study, Sherif (1936) required participants merely to estimate the length of (illusory) movement of the light over a series of judgment trials. The impressive over- lap among participants’ judgment patterns laid the foundation for all of his important work on social influence. The first study revealed enor- mous variation in judgments on early trials; but as perceivers gained task experience, within- participant oscillations abated. It was as if each participant had arrived at a self-defined con- sensus, which, once developed, guided later judgments. The across-trials damping of variation in individual judgments suggested an interesting possibility. If one could develop a consensus around one’s own judgments, could not the same process of consensus-based norm formation be accelerated when responding in concert with others? Triplett’s (1898) earlier work suggested clearly that the implicitly and inadvertently directive actions of coacting participants in an autokinetic experiment would have profound effects. To test this possibility, Sherif (1936) paired naive respondents in a second autokinetic judgment study. Over a series of autokinetic trials, their assignment on each was to estimate in tandem the movement of the light. Response order was fixed, and no confederates were used. Sherif found that the naive participants influ- enced one another. The influence was attribut- able to more than mere presence because each participant’s response bore directly on that of his or her partner. Attenuation of response variation was rapid. Participants used one another as models of reality and moved expeditiously to a mutually acceptable judgmental accommoda- tion over the course of their brief interaction. A third study revealed that this accommoda- tion was not undertaken in the service of peaceful coexistence. Recall that each partici- pant reported a distance estimate on each trial. Conceivably, a person who actually “saw” the light move 5 feet might be reluctant to report this perception if his or her partner had reported a mere 2 inches. To maintain a more harmonious situation, the second respondent might report a much-diminished light movement. The rapid accommodation of paired participants’ re- sponses then would be attributable to public acquiescence (of the second responder in the pair) rather than a rational weighting of perceptual and socially supplied information. To investigate this possibility, Sherif (1935) conducted a third study, in which participants who had responded with a given partner were reassigned to new response groups. Sherif believed participants formed response norms in the first session. If so, then subsequently switching participants into new groups should have little effect. At least over the short term, they would continue to respond as they had at the end of the initial norm-formation session. Conversely, if the (second-responding) partici- pants had merely acquiesced to the implicit demands of their response partners, if nothing 1 The impact of the illusion is enhanced if perceivers do not know the true dimensions of the setting. 70 CRANO other than simple accommodation were actually represented in their behavior, then a similar form of accommodation would be found in the second session, when each responded in tandem with a new partner. Such a pattern of acquies- cent accommodation, however, was decidedly absent in the second session of Sherif’s third experiment. Participants maintained the re- sponse norm they had formed on the initial paired trials and remained resistant to the information/implied influence provided (in the form of a perceptual judgment) by their new partners. This series suggests strongly that the partici- pants had learned something in the norm- formation studies and that this learning had affected either their verbal reports or their eyesight. It is not possible to choose between these two alternatives on the basis of the research reported to this point, but a study published nearly three decades after the initial autokinetic studies provides grounds for interest- ing speculation. In this experiment, Hood and Sherif (1962) paired a naive participant with a confederate in an autokinetic light-movement estimation task. In the initial phase of the experiment, the confederate made a series of light movement judgments. The naive partici- pant simply observed. These confederate-based judgments were said by the authors to be either consistently high or consistently low.2 After this observational session, the naive participant made an independent series of judgments after the confederate had left the setting. The results of this treatment are as important as they are heuristic. The judgments of naive participants studied in the condition in which the confederate responded with high estimates were significantly greater than those of participants paired with a low-responding accomplice. Hood and Sherif (1962) argued that their results suggested that people pattern their responses so as to be in accord with those of an influence source, and when they do so they are not necessarily responding to pressure. They argued that interpersonal pressure is probably not a reasonable term to use in describing the force of an influence source in an unstructured situation.3 In their experiment, there was no obvious pressure laid on respondents to adopt the response norm of their partner. Indeed, by the time the participant had begun to voice a response to the apparent light movement, the confederate had left the building. Sherif argued that simple compliance cannot provide a reason- able explanation of this result; there must be more to the process than acquiescence. He suggested an approach to understanding confor- mity that relied on a more rational conception of social action, a view of people as data- dependent information processors who used the responses of others in deciding on the proper action or the proper judgment, especially in unusual or novel contexts.4 Asch’s Line Judging Research It is important to appreciate the historical context of Hood and Sherif’s (1962) arguments in defense of their presumption that participants rationally used socially supplied inputs in coming to a judgment of belief or appropriate action. By this time, the conformity research of Solomon Asch (1951, 1952, 1955, 1956) had stimulated widespread attention. Asch’s findings did not appear amenable to Sherif’s desire (or Asch’s, for that matter; see Campbell, 1990) to characterize humankind as rational information processors, as he had argued years before. The Asch line judgment research series is so well established that its description is unnecessary; however, for heuristic purposes, certain features of this approach deserve emphasis. Recall that Asch required participants to determine which of three comparison lines matched a stimulus line presented over a series of judgment trials. When studied in isolation, participants’ judg- 2 How one can be sure that an illusory judgment was perceived by the watching participant as high or low was not explained compellingly, given the impossibility of knowing the actor’s perception of an illusion, but even the most critical reader can accept the fact that the estimates made in the “high-responding confederate condition” were substan- tially greater than those made in the low-responding confederate treatment. 3 The term “unstructured situation” is used advisedly. By il, Hood and Sherif (1962) implied that the judgment processes of participants placed in contexts in which they have little prior experience may be very different from those exhibited in familiar, well-learned settings (see Gorenflo & Crano, 1989, for a parallel discussion of the role of judgment type on social comparison processes). 4 As Sherif and Hovland (1961) suggested in their classic monograph, human actors were not seen as completely rational. Biases bom of prior beliefs, especially highly ego-involved beliefs, were expected to affect perceptions. SPECIAL ISSUE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE 71 ments, for all practical purposes, were perfect. The task was so simple, the correct answer so inescapable, that no mistakes were made. As in Sherif’s series, Asch’s initial study was a mere preliminary. A perceptual, rather than social- psychological, exercise was used to establish unequivocally that the judgments required of participants were so transparent that any devia- tions from the obvious represented more than mere misperception. Such deviations, of course, are the stuff of which Asch’s reputation is made. He found that naive participants often made egregious errors of judgment when responding in concert with two or more trained confederates who had been coached, unwaveringly, to give the wrong answer on specified judgment trials. Two important findings from Asch’s research deserve comment: Confederates’ impact was evident only when they were unanimous; further, enlarging the size of the (unanimous) confeder- ate majority beyond 3 had little effect. Appar- ently, the compliance-inducing effect of the unanimous peer group quickly reached asymp- tote. Asch’s research suggested that 15 unani- mous stooges were no more persuasive than 3 were.5 The failure to discover a group size effect could not easily be made compatible with the rationalist position of Sherif. Clearly, if 15 people reported a perception at odds with one’s own, the combined weight of their views should be greater than that of only 3 other perceivers, if a rational weighting decision-making process were occurring. That such findings did not emerge appeared not to support to Sherif *s views. Even worse, the simplicity of Asch’s judgment task, the near-inevitability of a cor- rect response under nonitifluenced conditions, as was evident in the control participants’ near-perfect scores, rendered difficult an optimis- tic, Rousseau-like view of the noble naive perceiver. A more cynical interpretation ap- peared justified, one in which perceivers were viewed as easily swayed by the dictates of a largely disinterested majority, who apparently could affect even the most fundamental judg- ments by mere surveillance and the implied threat of disapproval. Milgram (1974, 1977) expanded on this theme in a later and very influential series of studies. Early Attempts at Integration The implications that might be drawn from the pioneering work of Asch and Sherif appeared very different, and the research that followed did not provide an instant solution to the apparent lack of fit between the two significant series. Insko, Smith, Alicke, Wade, and Taylor (1985) found that the size of the apparent majority did have an impact on judgments in a color-judging task. This result was magnified when participants were led to believe that a verifiable (right-wrong) decision could be made. The issue of verinability is important in that it might signal to participants that their judgments may be adjudged valid or invalid. If verifiability is at issue, there must be some consensually agreed-on answer. This probably is not the impression Asch’s respon- dents had, if we give credence to the results of his control group participants. Other research also produced findings at odds with Asch’s contention that absolute majority size was irrelevant (e.g., Gerard, Wilhelmy, & Conolley, 1968; Kumar, 1983), and contemporary models of social impact or social influence have resolutely denied Asch’s contention while simul- taneously attempting to come to grips with his results (Latane & Wolfe, 1981; Tanford & Penrod, 1984). The field’s response to this variation in results was well considered and persistent. Four years before dissonance, Festinger (1953) published a theoretical article that called for the recognition of the differentiation between public compliance and private acceptance. Three years later, Deutsch and Gerard (1955) argued the distinc- tion between normative and informational social influence, and Kelman’s (1958) classic tripartite distinction of compliance, identification, and intemalization followed close on the heels of this work. These approaches were all attempts to make theoretical sense of the wide variations in response to social influence that had been seen in the literature and whose conceptual bound- aries were defined by the findings of Asch and Sherif. 5 This result should not be overinterpreted. Research suggests that in persuasion settings involving more complex issues or that admit to more varied persuasive arguments than “Line B is the right match,” more sources result in greater influence (e.g., Harkins & Petty, 1983, 1987). 72 CRANO The difficulty with Festinger’s, Deutsch and Gerard’s, and Kelman’s attempts at organization and synthesis is that the explanatory mechanism developed to answer the central question, “Under which conditions will one process (compliance vs. acceptance; informational vs. normative influence; compliance, identification, or internal!zation) occur?” were either ill formed or incomplete. For all three models, the answer to the question was usually couched in terms of variations in source qualities. Source expertise, competence, attractiveness, skill, abil- ity, and the like, made for strong influence effects, which often persisted. Brute force— number, surveillance, strong social pressure— also made for influence, but the effects did not persist, nor did they follow a pattern that suggested learning or cogent integration of information. The problem with all three of these explana- tory devices is that the postulated source effects sometimes are reversed; expert sources some- times produce short-lived (or no) change, and brute force effects sometimes persist. The classic models have problems with such rever- sals. Apotential explanation of this variability in source effect seems to lie in the interaction of source and task (which I take to include variations in message strength). If the task is one on which the correct answer is inescapable, there would seem to be little possibility for information-based influence, socially supplied or otherwise. Such a task description character- izes Asch’s line judgment paradigm, if we believe his control group results. However, it is not necessarily true of work undertaken on a Crutchfield-type apparatus, a methodological variant of Asch’s paradigm that sometimes tellingly produced results quite at odds with Asch’s usual result, often more in line with the results of Sherif’s research (Crutchfield, 1955). The apparent difference between these two approaches is that Crutchfield mechanized Asch’s confederates. In most other critical aspects, Asch’s and Crutchfield’s research con- texts were identical. The less apparent but more important difference is that, in mechanizing Asch’s procedure, Crutchfield incidentally en- larged the arena of judgments that could be, and were, required of participants across various research endeavors. Asch seemed more or less stuck with a task in which the answers to all questions were immediately obvious. That participants sometimes gave the nonobvious answer was the feature of his studies that made the research noticeable. Imagine the lack of interest his research would have generated had the vast majority of Asch’s participants resisted influence. Crutchfield’s apparatus was applied in a much wider variety of judgment contexts. Far from being constrained to obvious percep- tual judgments reported under great social pressure, Crutchfield’s device was used to test participants’ responses on a host of issues, ranging from perceptual judgments to answers to obscure factual items. The importance of this variation of contexts is that the required judgments varied in terms of the apparent inescapability of a valid answer. Research suggests that the more difficult or uncertain the judgment, the more likely are informational social influence and private accep- tance (e.g., Crano, 1970; Endler, 1965). With issues of a more objective nature, in which participants are more certain of the correct answer, we find (short-term) normative influ- ence but little, if any, evidence of informational influence (see Gorenflo & Crano, 1989). The perception of inevitability plays a role in the process that will be activated. Considering the interactive combination of source and context materially enhances explanatory power. Campbell’s Framework This more interactive view suggests a new way of conceptualizing the influence process. Who better to systematize this insight than Campbell (1961, 1963), who developed a gen- eral framework based on fundamental psy- chological and social-psychological principles that could engage the most extreme forms of acquiescent behavior, from compliance to con- formity to identification to independence. Camp- bell’s view acknowledged and made creative use of long-established principles to produce a framework that predicted new outcomes while simultaneously mapping onto existing data. The vision he presented in his general model of social influence, proposed in an important set of theoretical articles in 1961 and 1963, extended conceptually well beyond the bound- aries proposed in the theory of social compari- son (Festinger, 1954). These articles speak for SPECIAL ISSUE; SOCIAL INFLUENCE 73 themselves and need little expansion. In brief, Campbell theorized that people differentially use three broad classes of data when deciding on a course of action: (a) history or prior experi- ence, (b) contextual information directly per- ceived, and (c) socially supplied information about a person or context that people may or not have directly experienced themselves. Combin- ing these factors in an action- or decision- making context can account for variations in behavior ranging from complete compliance to complete anticonformity (Brewer & Crano, 1994; Nail, 1986). Paradigmatically, most social influence research negates the first source of behavior-relevant information and assesses the strength of the factors that affect the relative weighting of the second and third sources (i.e., information directly perceived or socially sup- plied by an external agent). This framework for understanding provides a useful structure for organizing the myriad factors that may impinge on human social action (Crano, 1970). Camp- bell’s view requires a departure from a main effects orientation. By its very structure, it demands that features of the source and context be consulted in determining the probable outcome of an attempt at social influence. Persuasion and Message-Based Attitude Change One might have predicted that this multifacto- rial framework for conceptualizing features that affect social influence might have useful and widespread application to a range of research endeavors, especially those involved in the study of people’s actions under pressure. How- ever, a parallel development in social psychol- ogy in some ways counteracted Campbell’s insight, at least for a while. At the time of great fomentation in social influence research, the study of persuasion or attitude change also was moving into high gear.6 Much of this work was guided by Lasswell’s (1948) mantra, “Who says what to whom, how, and under which circum- stances?” a formula that was meant to capture essential components for a comprehensive theory of attitude change. Lasswell’s is a good incantation, and it has served us well over the past 50 years. However, it does admit to a serious shortcoming because the interdependent pieces of the formula can be studied perfectly well in splendid isolation and, moreover, they can be tested in circumstances that largely deny the reality that social influence is often best conceptualized as an interpersonal, rather than as a solitary, intrapersonal phenomenon. Thus, if we were not careful, (a) we might have developed a literature on source credibility (the “who” part of the prescription) that was devoid of considerations of other parts of the formula (the “what,” “whom,” “how,” and perhaps, most importantly, the “under what circum- stances”), (b) we might have attempted to develop a psychology of susceptibility indepen- dent of considerations of source or issue or message or context, (c) we might have at- tempted to forge an understanding of message factors (the “what”) that was independent of the “who” or “whom” and the context in which the what was delivered, and (d) we might even have developed a literature of social influence in which the interaction of influence source, target, message, and context was not considered a relevant term in the change equation. In view of Campbell’s framework and the events leading up to its development, it is clear that these attempts would have been ill-advised, but until recently (with the advent of the dual-process models of attitude change) they are largely what we have been doing in persuasion research. This is not to say that we have been treading water for the past 40 years. Over this span, we have identified many factors that positively affect people’s tendency to weigh socially supplied inputs relative to independent perceptions. These factors have to do with the qualities of the person or group that is laying on the influence, the personal qualities of the individual receiving the (socially supplied or directly experienced) information, and the social-psychological con- text (external and internal) in which the information is conveyed or in which the critical behavior is to take place. We have learned, for example, that sources that possess greater expertise, competence, confidence, and other socially valued traits typically induce greater influence than those that do not. By the same token, we have learned that target individuals who lack expertise, compe- tence, and confidence or who in some other 6 Currently, persuasion and social influence processes are viewed as guided by the same fundamental principles (see Chaiken, Wood, & Eagly, 1996), but history suggests that this view has not long been in the majority. 74 CRANO ways perceive themselves to be subordinate or inferior to an influence source will prove more susceptible to the source’s (socially supplied) information. We have learned that beliefs of relatively little importance, or of low vested interest, are easy to influence but have few implications for behavior, whereas those that have important personal consequences are resistant but not impossible to change, and when they do change, they are strongly directive of action (Crano, 1995, 1997; Petty & Krosnick, 1995). In addition, we have learned that contexts involving difficult or ambiguous judgments tend to incite targets to overweigh socially supplied information relative to their own direct percep- tual inputs. Arrangements that anticipate these empirical regularities are built into all contempo- rary theoretical models of social influence. Further, these models typically require us to consider more than one variable at a time when gauging the likelihood and extent of persuasion or social influence. This more multi factored view of the persuasion process has bled into our considerations of social influence, conformity, and compliance, although possibly not as thoroughly as we might have hoped (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986a, 1986b; Wood, in press). Moscovici’s Reconsideration Obviously, we still have far to go in adopting a more complex view of social influence, but on the whole the movement of our conceptualizing is in the right direction. Recent theoretical treatments of social influence are considerably more complex than their forebears, and the complexity makes sense. They are grounded on reasonable interpretations of regularities in the literature, and they allow prediction of complex variations in the data pattern that are both common and reproducible. This general movement toward a more multifactorial and interactive conceptualization of social influence and the processes that underlie it is a consistent feature of contemporary theory and research in social influence with one apparent and important exception. That exception is seen in the work of Moscovici, whose conflict-based theory, along with the dual-process attitude models, is largely responsible for the revitaliza- tion of psychology’s interest in social influence. Moscovici’s model focuses almost entirely on source and target characteristics and devotes little attention to contextual factors, no attention to message effects, and even less to the inter- action of these features of the influence context (Moscovici, 1974, 1976, 1980, 1985a, 1985b; Moscovici, Lage, & Naffrechoux, 1969; Mos- covici & Personnaz, 1980, 1991). This is not to say that the model cannot be used. Its very unidimensionality invites additions and modifi- cations, and social influence researchers have shown themselves ready to append interactive features to the fundamental conflict theory that both enrich its predictions and expand the realm of phenomena to which it might apply. Bringing to bear the insights born of the intersecting histories of social influence and persuasion, current models of majority and minority social influence illustrate the best of integrative science, the construction of new insights from earlier regularities. At its heart, Moscovici’s model is concerned with factors that affect a minority group’s power to influence the majority or, from the opposite perspective, with the majority’s power to move the minority. The model holds that majorities and minorities instigate distinct belief-change processes. Influence targets finding themselves in disagreement with the majority are thought to focus on the negative interpersonal ramifica- tions of their deviance, which can include ostracism and other sanctions. These negative ramifications stimulate apparent movement in the direction of the majority, but the movement is primarily undertaken in the service of avoiding censure. It is not based on a well- considered elaboration and appreciation of the logic of the source’s position. The majority persuades because it possesses coercive power, the capacity to monitor and to punish misbehav- ior. Overt compliance, but not conversion or private belief change, resolves source-target conflict in such cases. Conversely, by virtue of the unexpectedness of their position, minorities stimulate targets to try to understand why they hold a particular view. The outcome of a target’s quest for understanding can result in minority- based social influence. However, owing to a hypothesized reluctance to be identified with the minority, Moscovici’s theory assumes that minority influence will be delayed or that it will be seen on altitudes associated with, but not identical to, the focus of persuasion (e.g., Perez &Mugny, 1987, 1990). By focusing on influence sources specifically SPECIAL ISSUE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE 75 designated as being of majority and minority status, Moscovici explicitly obligated research- ers to include consideration of the social group as an essential element to understanding social influence. He was not primarily concerned with the internal workings of the individuals under persuasive stress, a common theme of much of mainline social psychology, especially North American social psychology. His emphasis on the group exposed a shortcoming of the excessively intraindividualistic orientation to social influence that had come to characterize much of the field (see Turner, 1991). To appreciate the way in which Moscovici’s insight opened the door for progress, consider the prototypic minority influence study. In the standard study, participants are exposed to a persuasive communication that is contrary to their established beliefs, attributed to a majority or (typically, in-group) minority. Premeasures sometimes are taken, and posttest measures on the targeted or focal attitude are administered immediately and sometimes after a delay of a week or 2. Occasionally, associated beliefs are assessed as well, and, infrequently, message quality also is manipulated. When the source represents the majority, Moscovici predicted immediate change on the targeted (focal) attitude, with little persistence and no diffusion of effects to associated attitudes. Resistance is the predicted response to persuasive messages attributed to minority sources; however, change on associated beliefs (sometimes termed indi- rect change) is expected, as is delayed change on the focal belief itself. Leniency Contract The problem with this set of predictions is that it often falls short: Majority effects sometimes persist, and minorities occasionally produce indirect change without delayed focal change. Moscovici’s theory was not sufficiently developed to digest these rich findings, but models that appeal to the combined literatures of social influence, social identity, and interper- sonal relations support provocative and poten- tially critical insights. Let us consider one such integration in which these considerations are commingled in a theoretical model: the leniency contract (Crano & Chen, 1998).7 The potential utility of the leniency model is that it integrates into a single predictive framework important considerations derived from the social influence, persuasion, and social identity traditions. As such, it offers a means by which the rich insights of the past 100 years may be opportunistically drawn on in developing a model that is at once inclusive and parsimonious. The initial assumption of the leniency con- tract is that the targets of persuasive attacks consider the self-relevance of the issue under debate before deciding on a course of response. Relevance may be adjudged in terms of the issue’s perceived vested interest (Crano, 1995, 1997; Crano & Alvaro, 1998; Sivacek & Crano, 1982) or the implications of compliance or resistance for place maintenance in the social group. The leniency model assumes that social identity concerns (Tajfel, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) become prominent as a consequence of the mere specification of source as being of majority or minority status. Unlike earlier research on source credibility (e.g., Hovland, Janis & Kelley, 1953), this particular character- ization renders the context interpersonal and relevant to considerations of the self. A majority source is a representative of the modal opinion on an issue in an assemblage of individuals that the target uses as a consequential feature of his or her self-definition. A source who is a numeric minority on some subjectively important charac- teristic (e.g., race, religion, ethnicity) or who propounds a minority point of view is deviant, or holds beliefs that are deviant, from the majority of the reference or membership group. As such, a description of an influence source as being of majority or minority status is relational; it suggests an association or connection between target and group that is of some consequence for the target. Depicting a source as of minority or majority status not only describes features of a source but also suggests a relationship with the 7 This is only one of a number of new models of social influence that might have been considered. Models devel- oped by De Dreu and De Vries (1996) and Mugny’s research group (e.g., Mugny, Burera, Sanchez-Mazas, & Perez, 1995; P^rez & Mugny, 1996) might have been profiled just as profitably, but the pull of paternity is strong, and the leniency model makes explicit reference to persuasion-based factors as well as those whose effects usually are examined in the social influence laboratory and thus facilitates my theoretical point better than the others. 76 CRANO target vis-a-vis the group on an issue or characteristics of potential importance. If this were not the case, the source and target classification of majority or minority could not be expected to have much impact. Such a characterization would serve as a heuristic rather than as a systematic cue (see Bohner, Frank, & Erb, 1998; Chaiken, 1987; De Dreu & De Vries, 1993, 1996; Erb, Bohner, Schmalzle, & Rank, 1998). In the leniency model, majority/ minority source characterization may induce systematic as well as heuristic processing. A counterattitudinal communication from the in-group thus presents a relational threat that may jeopardize the target’s relationship with a potential source of self-identity. A threat of this nature is ignored at great peril. Reactions to such threats can take many forms, but at a minimum we would expect the target to consider the issue that is the source of contention with the identity-endowing source. The leniency contract suggests that reactions to a message will vary as a function of features of both the source and its position relative to the well-being of the group (Alvaro & Crano, 1996, 1997; Crano, 1994; Crano & Chen, 1998; Crano & Hannula-Bral, 1994). If the issue under discussion is not one on which the majority is seen as having a legitimate position—one on which it has no legitimate voice—its impact will be greatly attenuated. Group pressure will be adjudged inappropriate, and the group will lose stature. If the issue is relevant to the group, as, for example, a con- sideration of comprehensive examinations or tuition would be for a group of students of the same university, the majority is seen as having a legitimate voice (Baker & Petty, 1994; Mackie, 1987). In this circumstance, its message will be considered carefully. If the message is weak and unpersuasive, the model suggests the majority might have an impact, but it will be short lived. If the message is strongly argued, however, it may have both immediate and long-term effects. Considerable research supports these proposi- tions (e.g., Baker & Petty, 1994; Crano & Chen, 1998; De Dreu & De Vries, 1993,1996; Mackie, 1987). Thus, depending on the relevance and strength of its message, a majority may have no effect, a short-lived result, or a lasting impact. This complex predictive pattern is not a feature of any other theory of majority influence, but it is completely consistent with the theoretical expectations derived from the leniency contract. As is shown, this model also provides a theoretical explication of minority influence that accounts for both the delayed focal change and the (immediate) indirect change effects that the meta-analysis of Wood and her colleagues found associated with minority sources (Wood, Lundgren, Oueilette, Busceme, & Blackstone, 1994). In the case of minority-based persuasion, the leniency contract assumes that uneasiness or perceptions of threat do not arise in targets that find themselves at odds with the counterattitudi- nal pronouncements of an in-group minority, unless the minority threatens the very essence of the group, the group’s raison d’etre. In that case, the in-group becomes out-group and is marginal- ized, ostracized, or ignored. In cases in which the in-group minority’s position does not threaten the continued existence of the group, however, the leniency model holds that the minority will receive courteous and polite treatment from the majority. Owing to concerns with group solidarity, maintenance, cohesion, and stability, in-group minorities are not dero- gated for holding the position that creates their minority status in the first place. On these issues of less critical moment, the minority’s message is elaborated with little counterargument and little source derogation. From considerable research on persuasion, we know that an ideal formula for change involves the active elabora- tion of a strong message coupled with little counterargumentation and no (or minor) source derogation. This is precisely the formula sug- gested by the leniency contract in detailing the majority’s presumed reaction to in-group devi- ants, at least when the critical issue is not central to the viability of the group. Such open-minded and poorly defended elaboration would be expected to result in continuous oscillation of the majority’s position and continual instability in the group’s beliefs. Yet we know from considerable research that the majority position often is quite persistent and resistant to change. How, then, can the theoretical claims of the leniency model be sustained? How, in this system, can the group maintain its integrity and defend the status quo, operations that Moscovici claimed are central to the majority? To respond to this legitimate issue, we must consider one additional feature of the leniency contract. As with all contracts, the leniency contract specifies a quid pro quo. In recompense SPECIAL ISSUE; SOCIAL INFLUENCE 77 for the open-minded elaboration of the minori- ty’s appeal and the non-derogatory treatment that is provided, the model posits a cost. That cost is paid in terms of an implicit understanding that no change will ensue from the persuasive interchange. This implicit agreement is a pivotal theoretical feature of the model. It allows for the maintenance of the majority’s core beliefs while assuaging or, at a minimum, not alienating a significant factor in the group, the in-group minority. The model provides an ecologically appurtenant prescription for group survival. It allows for considerable attitudinal variation within groups on all issues except those that put the viability of the group into jeopardy. Re- search on intragroup relations suggests that such apparent beneficence is a common feature of cohesive groups. The leniency model thus provides the means for the group to tolerate some degree of freedom of expression while simultaneously protecting and maintaining the status quo. At least on the surface, such a complex process would appear to offer the best of all possible worlds, except for those indi- vidual group members who, as minority voices, are truly intent on influencing the character of the majority. All is not lost for the minority, however. Although the contractual feature of the leniency model appears to account for stability in established groups, it also offers the means by which the minority can move the majority. The mutually agreed-on understanding that majority group members will not change as a result of an open-minded elaboration of the minority’s position does not negate the fact that strong change pressures have been introduced as a function of the manner in which the minority’s message is elaborated. How is this pressure diffused? The leniency model suggests that, by spreading activation, beliefs in close cognitive contiguity to the targeted issue are put at risk as a consequence of the majority’s leniency (Anderson, 1983), because, although targeted (focal) beliefs are strongly defended in this system, related beliefs are not. The change pressure experienced as a result of the hypoth- esized lenient responses to minority influence is diffused to these related beliefs, which, unde- fended, are easy prey for attitude change pressures. This process suggests a means by which indirect attitude change, a relatively consistent feature of minority influence (see Wood et al., 1994), comes about. The model also suggests a mechanism for delayed focal change, another consistent feature of the literature. The leniency model’s account of indirect attitude change requires acceptance of the possibility that attitudes are not held in isolation but rather are related to a greater or lesser extent to all other beliefs that constitute the cognitive system. The model assumes that the greater the cognitive contiguity, the greater is the possibil- ity for indirect change, and research supports this expectation (e.g., Alvaro & Crano, 1997; Crano & Chen, 1998). This structural account of indirect change also provides a means of understanding delayed focal change. If an atti- tude is changed, then those that are (or were) contiguous in cognitive space will be put under pressure to change as well, if attitudes are linked in some form of structure, as proposed. Thus, if indirect attitude change occurs in circumstances compatible with those described by the leniency contract, we would expect delayed focal change if the attitude altered by indirect attitude change processes was sufficiently moved to affect the equilibrium of the overall structure of beliefs. In other words, when a minority source induces major indirect attitude change, we would expect subsequent (delayed) change on the focal issue, especially if the indirect change were a conse- quence of a strongly argued focal message. This is precisely the result discovered by Crano and Chen (1998). The leniency model, then, can account for both indirect, minority-induced attitude change and delayed focal change. It provides a theoretically plausible account of the manner in which minorities and majorities persuade while simultaneously supplying a reasonable method of accounting for prior results in minority/majority influence. Perhaps most importantly, the leniency contract is in close accord with a changing emphasis in the field of social influence, a return to earlier days when the centrality of the social group in influence was widely acknowledged. Over the years, social influence had departed from its roots as an interpersonal process. The integration of considerations of group identity, intergroup process, persuasion, belief structure, and message elaboration, central building blocks of the leniency contract, all combine to move our consideration of social influence back to its heritage. Although the model clearly makes use of recent results in social cognition, the leniency 78 CRANO contract also acknowledges—indeed is depen- dent on—intergroup processes to provide a better and more precise account of the ways in which majorities and minorities persuade. References Aiello, J. R., & Svec, C. M. (1993). Computer monitoring of work performance: Extending the social facilitation framework to electronic pres- ence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23, 537-548. Alvaro, E. M., & Crano, W. D. (1996). Cognitive responses to minority or majority-based communi- cations: Factors that underlie minority influence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 105-121. Alvaro, E. M., & Crano, W. D. (1997). Indirect minority influence: Evidence for leniency in source evaluation and counterargumentation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 949-964. Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Asch, S. E, (1951). 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PSY 301 – 2 Discussion Questions
Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 2000, Vol. 4, No. 1,3-6′ Copyrighi 2000 by the Educational Publishing Foundation IO89-2699/WV$5.OO DOI: 10.1037//1089-2699AI.3 One Hundred Years of Groups Research: Introduction to the Special Issue Donelson R. Forsyth Virginia Commonwealth University This special issue looks back at a century of progress in understanding groups and their dynamics. The articles in the issue, by selectively reviewing topics that dominated researchers’ efforts over the past century, offer answers to 7 key questions about groups: What forces bind members to their groups? Who will lead and who will follow? When do groups excel at the tasks they attempt? How do groups influence their members? Do groups influence their members’ self-conceptions? How can relationships between groups be improved? And how can groups be used to enhance psychological adjustment and well-being? Sages and scholars have long been fascinated by groups. A search back through antiquity finds discussions of the nature and dynamics of groups in the writings of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, who posed questions con- cerning humanity’s social and political nature (Ettin, 1992). William Shakespeare filled his plays with recommendations and analyses of groups and leadership (Corrigan, 1999). Niccolo Machiavelli, early in the 16th century, devel- oped insightful analyses of how power could be used in groups to influence leaders and the led (Jinkins, 1998). Tn the 1800s, scholars like Craik (1837) and Le Bon (1895/1960) published intriguing analyses of how people, when part of large groups, can respond unpredictably. But the scientific study of groups is scarcely a century old. Ancient scholars may have asked many questions about the dynamics of groups, but only in the 20th century did investigators seek to answer these questions through the application of scientific methods. Cartwright and Zander (1968), in their classic analysis of the roots of the field, suggested that researchers were slow to take up the study of groups because many felt that the dynamics of groups was a private affair, not something that scientists should lay open to public scrutiny. Others felt that group behavior was too complex to be studied scientifically, particularly when the psychology of individuals remained so little Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Donelson R. Forsyth, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23284-2018. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected] understood. Still others questioned the reality of groups, implying that they could be understood entirely if one only understood the psychology of the individuals who comprised them (Allport, 1924). This issue of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, published as the 20th century draws to a close, looks back at a century of progress in understanding groups. Although that history is checkered with theories and methods that, after initial promise, ultimately generated little in the way of concerted empiri- cal interest, this issue considers topics that have remained at the center of the field for nearly a century: group cohesion (Dion, 2000), leader- ship (Chemers, 2000), performance (Sundstrom, Mclntyre, Halfhill, & Richard, 2000), social identity (Hogg & Williams, 2000), influence (Crano, 2000), intergroup relations (Gaertner et al., 2000), and group approaches to adjustment and change (Barlow, Burlingame, & Fuhriman, 2000). It raises, and provides answers to, seven questions about groups as complex, adaptive, dynamic interpersonal and task systems (Mc- Grath, 1997). What forces bind members to their groups? Although early theorists speculated about the foundations of group solidarity, it was Lewin (1943) who used the term cohesion to describe the forces that keep groups intact by pushing members together and countering forces that push them apart. Since that time, this concept has been applied by researchers interested in studying all aspects of groups, including perfor- mance, development, therapeutic impact, and FORSYTH influence. Dion (2000) reviews prior studies of cohesion, tracing its evolution from a relatively ambiguous Lewinian concept to current concep- tual representations. His review contrasts a group-level approach to cohesion to models based on one-to-one attraction processes and offers clear advice for researchers who wish to assess cohesion in the groups they study. Who will lead and who will follow? In the 19th century, the historian Thomas Carlyle’s (1841) “great-man” theory of history asserted that leaders possess certain characteristics that mark them for greatness. The contrasting view, often attributed to the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1869/1952), argued that leaders come to prominence because the spirit of the times— the Zeitgeist—is propitious for the dominance of a single individual and the qualities of the person are largely irrelevant to this rise to power. These two themes, as Chemers (2000) notes in his review, provided researchers with their first models for studying leaders, Chemers traces the influence of these two fundamental conceptions of leadership through initial contin- gency approaches to leadership, cognitive ap- proaches that considered how group members conceptualize their leaders, and more recent work looking at the cultural and transforma- tional nature of leadership. Chemers then offers a functional model of leadership that stresses the tasks that leaders must accomplish, including creating an image of authority and competence, establishment of positive relationships with followers, and the strategic management of the group’s processes given the organizational environment. When do groups excel at the tasks they attempt? The impact of a group on its individual members is nowhere more apparent than in work groups. This realization, often ignored by management methods that focus on individual incentives, supervision, and worker- specific goals, was shaken by the Hawthorne studies of group productivity conducted in the 1920s (Mayo, 1945). As Sundstrom et al. (2000) note, the Hawthorne researchers initially as- sumed that physical characteristics of the workplace determine productivity. But as they varied conditions with a small group of workers in an experimental test room, they noted that group dynamics—not lighting, temperature, breaks, and so on—determined performance. Sundstrom and his colleagues review how researchers have followed in the Hawthorne tradition by studying groups working in organi- zational contexts. They focus not on the voluminous findings obtained in that research but on the research itself by categorizing the types of groups that have been studied, the strategies used by investigators, and the ways researchers have measured group effectiveness. Their review concludes by making recommenda- tions regarding the continued analysis of teams and other collaborative forms of work structures in organizations. How do groups influence their members? Group members influence one another in many ways, but these processes were not subjected to serious analysis until Sherif (1936), Asch (1955), and Milgram (1963) began to examine how groups influence the actions of individual members. These studies provided compelling evidence of the power of groups, but they also hinted at the other side of social influence. Participants often willingly submitted to the demands of the group situation, but they also displayed an independence and capacity to withstand group pressures. In his review of social influence, Crano (2000) integrates the work of researchers who focus on the group’s impact on the individual with the work of researchers who examine the minority’s impact on the group. He offers his leniency model as an overall conceptual framework that can account for both minority and majority influence. This model integrates cognitive approaches to atti- tude change, such as elaboration likelihood theory, with social identity theory to better predict the flow of influence in small group settings. Do groups influence their members’ self- conceptions? In the early years of the 20th century, researchers debated the relative influ- ence of group and interpersonal forces on individuals. Although some suggested that humans are, by nature, individualists whose self-conceptions are sustained largely through introspection and personal experiences, other perspectives suggested that self and identity are intimately connected to one’s groups and interpersonal relations. Although individualism is the hallmark of Western thought, group- centered approaches have suggested that mem- bers’ sense of self and identity changes when they become members of groups, or when their membership in a group that they already belong SPECIAL ISSUE: ONE HUNDRED YEARS to becomes salient to them. Hogg and Williams (2000) provide a concise review of how these various lines of theoretical and empirical work are integrated in social identity theory. This perspective, which is consistent with models of self developed by sociological, social psychologi- cal, and personality theorists, is generally traced back to the work of Henri Tajfel (1984). Tajfel argued that group members derive much of their social identity from their group identities, and that group membership therefore sets off a complex of cognitive, affect, and motivational processes (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Hogg and Williams (2000), in tracing the historical roots of Tajfel’s social identity theory back to early thinkers, clarify the relationship between social identity theory and related work on self-categorization and identify weaknesses in the general model. How can relationships between groups be improved? When two groups meet, the encoun- ter often ends in conflict rather than cooperation. This tendency for group relations to be hostile rather than amicable was confirmed many years ago by Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif (1961) in their classic study of two groups of boys competing for prizes and territory at a campsite in the United States. Gaertner and his colleagues (2000) revisit this study, examining its findings in light of more recent theory and research. They find that many of the causes of intergroup conflict highlighted by contemporary models of intergroup conflict and prejudice were present at the Robbers Cave, but they also suggest Sherif et al. were able to reduce conflict during the study by taking advantage of such mechanisms as decategorization, recategoriza- tion, and mutual intergroup differentiation. How can groups be used to enhance psycho- logical adjustment and well-being? Group psychotherapy, like all psychological therapies, did not become a legitimate means of treating people with psychological problems until the 20th century. Initially, physicians began to meet with their patients in groups where members discussed their illnesses, and these methods were used with people suffering from both physical and psychological difficulties. This early application, as Barlow et al. (2000) note in their article, was only the beginning of a concerted and more systematic application of groups to help people improve their well-being. Barlow and her colleagues review the history of group treatment methods, as well as the history of research efforts aimed at better understand- ing, and improving, such applications. On the basis of their analysis, they conclude that group psychotherapy is a relatively effective treatment, but they also offer suggestions for future work in the area. These articles, although they focus on seven central domains within the field of groups and group dynamics, only hint at the tremendous progress made by theorists and researchers in the past 100 years. The scientific study of groups is only reaching its adolescence, but despite its youth it has compiled an impressive body of theoretical, empirical, and practical knowledge about groups. As Shaw (1981, p. 450) concluded in his comprehensive review of the field, A beginning has been made, and available data reveal the great complexity of small group behavior. The interrelations among the many parts of the group and the variables that influence group process almost defy comprehension. But hope springs external; we are beginning to gain some understanding of this multiplex phenomenon. These seven articles summarize the tremendous advances in understanding gained in the past century, but they also serve as reminders of how much more needs to be done. References Allport, F. H. (1924). Social psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressures. Scientific American, 193(5), 31-35. Barlow, S. H., Burlingame, G. M., & Fuhriman, A. (2000). The therapeutic application of groups: From Pratt’s “thought control classes” to modern group psychotherapy. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 115-134. Carlyle, T. (1841). On heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic. London: Fraser. Cartwright, D., & Zander, A. (1968). Origins of group dynamics. Tn D. Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dynamics: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 3-21). New York: Harper & Row. Chemers, M. M. (2000). Leadership research and theory: A functional integration. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 27—43. Corrigan, P. (1999). Shakespeare on management: Leadership lessons for managers. London: Kogan Page. Craik, G. L. (1837). Sketches of popular tumults. London: Knight. FOR5YTH Crano, W. D. (2000). Milestones in the psychological analysis of social influence. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 68-80. Dion, K. L. (2000). Group cohesion: From “field of forces” to multidimensional construct. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. 4, 7-26. Ettin, M. F. (1992). Foundations and application of group psychotherapy: A sphere of influence. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. R, Banker, B. S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., & McGlynn, E. A. (2000). Reducing intergroup conflict: From superordinate goals to decategorization, recategorization and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. 4, 98-114. Hogg, M. A., & Williams, K. D. (2000). From I to we: Social identity and the collective self. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 81-97. Jinkins, M. (1998). The character of leadership: Political realism and public virtue in nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Le Bon, G. (1960). The crowd. New York: The Viking Press. (Original work published 1895) Lewin, K. (1943). Farces behind food habits and methods of change. Bulletin of the National Research Council, 108, 35-65. Maya, E. (1945). The social problems of an industrial civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McGrath, J. E. (1997). Small group research, that once and future field: An intepretation of the past with an eye to the future. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 1, 7-27. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378. Shaw, M. E. (1981). Group dynamics: The psychol- ogy of small group behavior (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York: Harper & Row. Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J.,Hood. W. R,, & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation. The Robbers Cave Experiment. Nor- man, OK: Institute of Group Relations. Sundstrom, E., Mclntyre, M., Halfhill, T., & Richard, H. (2000). Work groups: From the Hawthorne Studies to work teams of the 1990s and beyond. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 44-67′ Tajfel, H. (Ed.). (1984). The social dimension: European developments in social psychology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tolstoy, L. (1952). Warandpeace. Chicago: Encyclo- pedia Britannica. (Original work published 1869) Turner, J. C, Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford, UK.: Blackwell. APA Division 49 members receive this journal as part of their benefits and should not order it ORDER FORM Start my 2000 subscription to Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice! ISSN: 1089-2699 $35.00, APA Member/Affiliate $47.00, Individual Nonmember $100.00, Institution In DC add 5.75% sales tax TOTAL AMOUNT ENCLOSED $ Subscription orders must be prepaid. (Subscriptions are on a calendar basis only.) Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of the first issue. Call for international subscription rates. 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