21 Social Cognition and Influence: How Do People Interact?

Helen Keller is reported to have said, “Blindness separates people from things, deafness separates people from people.” If you Google the quote, you will find that most people using it are companies selling hearing aids, but that is beside the point. The point is, we think, that being separated from people is worse than being separated from things. Our world, it seems, is largely a social one. As such, the purpose of cognition (see Unit 2) is not simply to understand and reason about the world of objects. Rather, a great deal of cognition concerns the social world. And an understanding of principles of social cognition can help you to navigate our social world.

Of course, we go well beyond simply thinking about other people; we also interact with them every day. In particular, we influence them, and they influence us.

These three ideas – thinking about, interacting with, and influencing other people – are the topics of this module. They are spread over five sections. Section 21.1 describes the process through which people explain others’ behavior; it is called attribution. In 21.2 you will learn about the relationship between thinking about other people (attitudes) and interacting with them (behavior). Section 21.3 is about one of the most serious and harmful problems associated with thinking about and interacting with other people: the human tendency to rely on stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination in our social relations.  Sections 21.4 and 21.5 cover the “influence” part of the module. One key way source of influence is the many types of groups in which we find ourselves. Section 21.4 describes many of these group influences. Finally, section 21.5 covers specific efforts and techniques people use when they attempt to influence others—namely, persuasion and obedience to authority.

21.1 Attribution: Explaining People’s Behavior

21.2 Attitudes and Behavior

21.3 Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

21.4 Group Effects on Individuals

21.5 Attempts to Influence Others

READING WITH A PURPOSE

Remember and Understand

By reading and studying Module 21, you should be able to remember and describe:

• Attribution: situational and dispositional attributions, correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error), actor-Observer bias (21.1)
• Attitudes (21.2)
• Cognitive dissonance (21.2)
• Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination: social identity, realistic group conflict (21.3)
• Modern racism, implicit attitudes, implicit bias (21.3)
• Social norms: descriptive norms, injunctive norms (21.4)
• Conformity, groupthink, social facilitation (21.4)
• Bystander effect: diffusion of responsibility (21.4)
• Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion: central and peripheral routes (21.5)
• Milgram’s obedience research (21.5)

Apply

By reading and thinking about how the concepts in Module 21 apply to real life, you should be able to:

• Recognize dispositional and situational attributions, as well as the correspondence and actor-observer biases (21.1)
• Explain why attitude and behavior are consistent or inconsistent in an example (21.2)
• Recognize the use of persuasion and obedience principles (21.5)

Analyze, Evaluate, and Create

By reading and thinking about Module 21, participating in classroom activities, and completing out-of-class assignments, you should be able to:

• Improve your ability to make situational corrections or attributions when they are appropriate (21.1)
• Differentiate stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination; identify examples, and propose how they may be corrected (21.3)
• Determine which group effects are operating in groups to which you belong (21.4)
• Create a multi-part persuasive appeal using both the central and peripheral routes. Determine when each strategy should be employed (21.5)

21.1 Attribution: Explaining People’s Behavior

In Module 1, we noted that people commonly have the same goals that psychologists do, namely explaining others’ behavior. The process by which we try to figure out the causes of someone’s behavior is attribution, another word for explanation. There are an infinite number of specific attributions that we can make to explain any specific behavior. In the case of the rude chemistry professor of the Activate section, for example, you might conclude that they are a nasty person, that they are acting tough to set a tone for the semester, or that they had a fight with their spouse that morning. Individuals tend to think that they make attributions well, in other words, that they are “a good judge of character” (van Boven, 2003). Unfortunately, this confidence is not always well placed. Of course, if we were perfect at explaining others’ behavior, there would be little need for psychology, or at least for this part of social psychology.

We are fairly good at some kinds of attribution, however. Charles Darwin found that people are good at the simple recognition of emotions revealed through facial expressions, and others have since confirmed that observation. We make these kinds of attributions hundreds of times each day. It is important to keep these successes in mind as we focus on the errors that can creep into our other interpersonal judgments.

There are two broad types of attributions. One is a dispositional attribution, an explanation that the behavior is a result of an enduring personality trait, or disposition. For example, someone who concludes that the chemistry professor is a nasty person would be making a dispositional attribution. The second type is a situational attribution, an explanation that the behavior results from some external factor, or the situation. A student who concludes that the chemistry professor must have had a fight with their spouse is making a situational attribution. Many people initially make dispositional attributions somewhat automatically. Then, upon reflection, they may update or correct that initial attribution with situational explanations (Quattrone, 1982). So, your first reaction to the chemistry professor is likely to be, “what a jerk!” After you think about it for a while, you may realize that there might be other reasons why they might be acting like that.

One extremely important situational factor that often gets overlooked is the observer themself. When you are observing someone else, you are often part of the other person’s situation and can be a contributing factor in a behavior. For example, teachers who encounter their students out in the community can be surprised to find that the students’ behavior is very different from the classroom (of course, we could say the same thing reversing the role of teacher and student, by the way). When they are surprised, it is because they have not realized the powerful situation that they, as teacher, impose on the behavior of their students. We are not necessarily observing our students’ dispositions, simply how they act in our classes.

This tendency to attribute behavior to enduring dispositions was originally noticed by Gustav Ichheiser (1943), and elaborated by Fritz Heider (1958). Early researchers called it the fundamental attribution error; more recently, it has been renamed the correspondence bias (although you will still hear many psychologists using the old name). The name change came about because the tendency is not fundamental, and it is not always an error. First, it is a bit presumptuous to automatically judge that a dispositional attribution is incorrect. After all, the whole subfield of personality psychology is predicated on the observation that many behaviors do, in fact, result from dispositions. Sometimes, then, the tendency to draw dispositional attributions is correct, so it is fairer to call it a bias than an error.

You can also access the video directly at: https://youtu.be/Y8IcYSrcaaA

Second, “fundamental” means “essential,” or “serving as a foundation.” At the very least, a fundamental bias should be one that everyone uses and that would be very difficult to counteract. Consider a famous demonstration of the correspondence bias (Jones & Harris, 1967). Participants are asked to judge the personal views of an essay writer whom they know was assigned to the topic; for example, the writer had been told to write an essay in support of the death penalty. Most American and Asian college students who have participated in experiments like this have fallen for the correspondence bias. In other words, even though the participants knew that the writer had been assigned the topic, they assumed that the essay reflected the writer’s actual opinion. What if, prior to participating in this demonstration, however, you were placed in the position of the essay writer and asked to write a persuasive essay on an assigned topic (which should alert you to the situational factors involved)? How would that change your dispositional judgment of another essay writer? Well, if you are like the typical American participants, the answer is that your dispositional judgment would not change at all. But when Korean participants took part in the same experiment, the correspondence bias disappeared (Choi & Nisbett, 1998). The correspondence bias, then, although common, can be eliminated in some people. Thus, it is not what you would expect from a fundamental bias.

Extraordinary, or in many cases even ordinary, situations can move people to engage in a wide variety of behaviors, as you will see throughout this unit. You are likely to be very surprised by many of these demonstrations. Why? Because of the way the correspondence bias affects our thinking. Daniel Gilbert (1998) has pointed out that the subfield of social psychology, and its scientific approach to investigating human social behavior, exists precisely to counteract the strong tendency to attribute behaviors to dispositions rather than situations.

One extremely useful point about the correspondence bias that you should keep in mind throughout school and your career is that other people often fall for it when making judgments about you. Always remember that teachers and employers are likely to make dispositional attributions about you from the behaviors that they see. Many times we have heard our colleagues complain about “lazy, disrespectful” students who fall asleep in class, “unmotivated” students who do not turn in assignments, and “none-too-bright” students who do poorly on “easy” exams. Remember, even if the instructors were aware of the midnight to 8:00 am shift you just worked, the sick child that you have at home, or the four additional classes you are currently taking, the situational corrections they might make would likely be insufficient. And, as have been saying, the situational factors are often invisible to the instructors, so in many cases, they are unlikely to be taken into account at all.

A few moments of reflection will likely lead you to an important observation about the correspondence bias—namely, that you are less likely to mistakenly attribute your own behavior to dispositional causes. If you act rudely toward someone at the end of a bad day, you will probably realize that the misfortune that you have suffered throughout the day is more of the cause of the behavior than your personality. This interesting phenomenon is known as the actor-observer bias; we are prone to the correspondence bias when making judgments about other people (when we are the observer) but not about ourselves (when we are the actor). Clearly, we judge ourselves differently from how we judge other people. Much to our chagrin, we have sometimes noticed the actor-observer bias in ourselves.  For example, while driving, we might notice and complain about the carelessness of pedestrians who cross in the middle of a block or against the traffic light (a dispositional attribution). Then when we are pedestrians ourselves, we sometimes engage in the same behaviors, but only when I am in a hurry (a situational attribution). Again, when we are observers, we have limited information; all we see is the behavior and we are quick to make a dispositional attribution. Then, when we are the actors, we know about the situations, the reasons, for our specific behaviors and take those reasons into account. Think about it; we, as psychology professors and textbook authors, are keenly aware of the actor-observer bias, and we still fall for it. Imagine how common it must be among people who never even heard of it.

21.2. Attitudes and Behavior

Attitude is one of those pesky terms that have a different meaning in scientific psychology than in everyday conversation (other examples include experiment, nerve, and depressed). In casual conversation we might use the word attitude to mean something like a person’s overall mental approach to life, as in “She has a great attitude, always positive, never in a bad mood.” Or, sometimes we reserve the word to denote a negative outlook only, like when parents complain that their teenager “has an attitude.” These senses of the word are both too broad and too narrow for the psychologist. When psychologists talk about attitudes, we are referring, not to a general state of mind, but to an attitude toward a specific target, for example, your attitude toward school, which may be very different from your attitude toward amusement parks. So in that way, the everyday definition is too broad. It is also too narrow, though, because the positive-negative dimension that seems to capture the whole everyday meaning is only a fraction of the psychologists’ multidimensional concept.

There are, in fact, three elements—belief, feeling, and behavior—together that compose what psychologists refer to as an attitude, a psychological tendency that people express by evaluating some entity with favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). You can certainly hold attitudes about other people, a primary concern of social psychology, but you can also have an attitude about virtually anything, including a concrete object (e.g, a soft drink brand), an abstract concept (e.g., democracy), or an activity (e.g., quilting).

We feel confident that we do not need to define beliefs and behavior for you. Let us be a little more careful about what we mean by feelings, however. This is the evaluative part of the attitude, the part that corresponds to the favor or disfavor part of the definition. In short, it is the part of the attitude that makes you say, “I like the show Tiger King” or “I dislike politics.”

Consider, for example, your attitude toward psychology. It might consist of the following elements:

• Belief: You believe that psychology is the most important discipline in the history of the world.
• Feeling: You love psychology.
• Behavior: You have filled your entire course schedule with psychology classes.

Why do we care about attitudes? Well, the fact that advertisers pay attention to them is a very important clue. Attitudes have that all-important behavior component. One can use people’s attitudes to predict their behavior and can change their attitude to influence their behavior. Marketers, of course, are interested in purchasing behavior, and in section 21.5, you will learn about some of the techniques that they use to change your attitudes in order to persuade you to purchase their products.

Do Attitudes Cause Behavior?

Many years ago, a researcher made an important observation about attitudes and behavior: people’s stated attitudes in some cases did not coincide with their behavior at all. Specifically, the researcher traveled around the US with a Chinese couple during a period of quite serious prejudice against Asians. They stayed at 66 different hotels and ate at 184 restaurants throughout the country and were refused service only once. Yet, when he returned home and wrote to the very same hotels, 90% of the owners who responded reported that they would not serve Asian people (LaPiere, 1934).

This striking example of attitude-behavior discrepancy set off a kind of crisis among those who believed that attitudes can predict what people will do. A 1969 review of research found that attitudes did a very poor job of predicting behavior (Wicker, 1969). Still today, some observers are critical of researchers’ attempts to predict behavior from attitudes. Many researchers, however, realized that the relationship between attitude and behavior is complex, and they set out to discover the conditions under which the two do coincide. Three of their findings stand out.

First, you have to look at the right kind of attitude. Specifically, if you want to predict the likelihood that someone will engage in a behavior, you have to know their attitude toward the behavior, not toward an associated object. You might express a positive attitude about a political candidate, but a negative attitude about contributing to their presidential campaign. In this case, you would be extremely unlikely to donate when you get a telemarketing call from the campaign headquarters. Another way to think about this idea is that there are many potential behaviors that might be consistent with a positive attitude toward political candidates. If looking for consistency, you can broaden your search to include these different possible behaviors. On average, individuals will act in ways that are consistent. So, although you might not contribute to the political campaigns of your favored politicians, you might tell your friends about them, subscribe to their email newsletters, attend their rallies, and vote for them (Fishbein & Azjen, 1974).

A second important consideration when trying to predict behavior is the influence of other people. We often act in ways that are inconsistent with our attitudes under the influence of people who are important to us (Azjen & Fishbein, 1980). If you do not believe us, we invite you to ask the parent of a young child who plays the game Candyland with their child every day how much they like the game.

A third factor is a bit obvious, but it is an important one. An attitude is not likely to be a good predictor of behavior if it is a weak attitude. An intense attitude about something important to the individual, one that can be easily called to mind and about which the individual has a great deal of knowledge—in other words, a strong attitude—is a very good predictor of behavior (Kraus, 1995; Krosnick et al., 1993). Attitudes that are formed through direct, personal experience are especially strong and likely to lead to consistent behavior (Fazio & Zanna, 1981; Millar & Millar, 1996). For example, an individual whose life was saved because she was wearing a seatbelt during an automobile accident is likely to have an extremely strong attitude about seatbelts.

Does Behavior Cause Attitudes?

Another group of researchers took a very different approach. They discovered that sometimes, it goes in the opposite direction; engaging in a particular behavior changes your attitude. The process through which this can happen is called cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). According to cognitive dissonance theory, when we have two contradictory cognitions, we experience an aroused mental state called dissonance. We are then motivated to reduce the dissonance. The only way to do that is to change one (or both) of the cognitions so that they no longer contradict each other. Suppose one cognition is the realization that you just did some behavior, and the other is that you have a negative attitude toward the behavior. For example, you volunteer at the humane society, and one day you suddenly decide to adopt a kitten, even though you have never liked cats. You cannot change the fact that you adopted the kitten, so in order to reduce the dissonance, you are forced to change the other cognition (maybe cats are not so bad after all).

The effects of cognitive dissonance can be difficult to accept, so perhaps another example is in order. You are in the market for a car and are trying to decide between a fuel-efficient compact car and a pickup truck. Because both cars have features that you judge extremely important, it is a toss-up; the two alternatives are equally desirable. You realize that you need to make a decision, so you buy the pickup. At first, you will probably experience dissonance (“maybe I should have bought the compact; fuel is over $4.00 per gallon.”), specifically, postdecisional dissonance, commonly known as buyer’s remorse. You are motivated to reduce the dissonance and you cannot change the cognition that you did, in fact, buy the pickup truck. Therefore, you change your inconsistent cognitions and begin to think of the truck as the far better alternative (Brehm, 1956).

Cognitive dissonance theory has led to some very surprising discoveries. Suppose we offer to pay you to give a speech about a stance with which you disagree, and we are secretly motivated to get you to change your opinion. Should we pay you $100 or $5? Most people’s first inclination is to predict that the large payment would lead to a larger actual opinion change. Cognitive dissonance theory, however, makes the opposite prediction. In the $100 dollar case, there is no dissonance because all of your cognitions are consistent (I gave the speech, I don’t really agree with the content of the speech, but I was paid a lot of money for it and so I had a good excuse for making it). On the other hand, if you are paid only $5, your cognitions are inconsistent (I was paid next to nothing for giving a speech I don’t really agree with, so why did I do it?). In order to reduce the dissonance, you try to persuade yourself that perhaps you actually did agree with the content of the speech somewhat. Of course, you are unlikely to change your opinion completely, but research on cognitive dissonance over the years has shown a consistent shift in opinion in the predicted direction (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Riess & Schlenker, 1977).

21.3. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

How we think about and interact with other people is determined to a great extent by stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. People often use these terms as if they are interchangeable, but they are not. A stereotype is a set of beliefs about an individual person derived from their membership in a category, such as an ethnic group, age group, gender, or sexual orientation. Prejudice is a feeling, an evaluation of the person who has been stereotyped. Although a prejudice can be positive or negative, the negative ones, because they are so damaging, have much more frequently been the focus of psychologists’ attention. Discrimination is a set of behaviors, treating a person differently because of stereotypes and prejudice.

You probably noticed this already, but in case you didn’t, these definitions parallel what we just told you about attitudes very closely. So, one way you can think about stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, is that they compose a person’s attitude toward some targeted group of people (and individual members of that group).

Anyone can be harmed by stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. When they are applied by a member of a more powerful group to a member of a less powerful group—such as when a white male uses a stereotype to judge a black male—the damage is greater. In particular, the discriminatory behaviors stemming from stereotypes and prejudices lead to tangible (for example, economic or, in some cases, life-or-death) consequences.

Sadly, bias and discrimination are not things of the past. For example, according to the US Census Bureau, for every dollar a white man earns, a woman earns $0.82. The New York Times (Leonhardt, 2020) reported that the wage gap between white and black men is as large today as it was in 1950 (when accounting for everyone, not just those employed or officially looking for work).

Some of the differences can be explained by different career choices and opportunities, education level, and geographic distributions (which is bad enough). Some differences even persist for the same work and same experience. There is little doubt that a great deal of these wage gaps is a consequence of discrimination. To give you an idea of just how pervasive discrimination is, researchers have even discovered that the fresh fruit purchased in stores of the same supermarket chain in the same city was lower in quality in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status (Topolski et al., 2003).

Stereotypes and Social Categorization

One of the most important discoveries of the past 40 years about stereotypes is that they resemble other types of concepts in many important ways (Taylor, 1981). You may recall from Module 7 that mental concepts affect our thinking about everything we encounter, so it should not surprise you that they have been used to help people understand complex social categories as well. Social categorization serves many of the same functions that categorization of the non-social realm does. The main benefits are simplicity and efficiency; we need not go to the trouble of collecting detailed information about all the people we meet. All we have to do is figure out what category they belong to, and then make inferences based on category membership. “Oh, they are a psychology professor. They must be odd, absent-minded, and geeky.”

It turns out that our social identity, the part that is based on our group memberships, is a key part of our identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Our social identity leads us to make a basic social categorization of “people like me” and “people not like me,” or in other words, ingroups and outgroups. People have a tendency to see members of an outgroup as more similar to each other and less like the in-group members (Fiske, 1998; Linville, Fischer, & Yoon, 1996). Individuals are also likely to think favorably about their ingroup and unfavorably about their outgroup, as a way to enhance their individual self-esteem through their group memberships (Lindeman, 1997; Tajfel et al., 1971; Wilder, 1981; 1984). As a result, you can already see prejudice beginning to flourish from these basic social categorizations.

Beyond the basic ingroup-outgroup distinction, our ability to create new social categories is unlimited. In other words, we can easily create infinitely many different ingroups (e.g., black, female, psychology major, runner) and just as many outgroups (e.g., white, male, history major, non-exerciser).

The most important problem with a stereotype is that it typically gets applied to all members of the target category equally. It is, in a way, irrelevant whether a stereotype is based on truth. The error lies not so much in stereotyping but in applying the stereotype equally to all members of the target group without regard to any individual information.

In addition, many stereotypes are exaggerated at best and flat-out wrong at worst (Fiske, 1998). The problem is that many people form their stereotypes on the basis of unrepresentative cases (for example, vivid cases in the media). The availability heuristic leads them to overestimate the frequency of stereotypical behavior; once the stereotype is formed, the confirmation bias  leads to its maintenance and exaggeration. For example, a person who has formed a negative stereotype about the criminal behavior of African Americans would be very likely to notice the news reports of criminal activity and fail to notice their law-abiding African American classmates.

Prejudice and Perceived Threat

Once an individual has categorized people into ingroup and outgroup, prejudice can easily increase. The emotional response of prejudice often comes with the perception of the outgroup as a threat. For example, realistic group conflict theory explains how two groups who compete for the same resources, such as jobs, often have prejudiced feelings toward each other (Esses, Jackson & Armstrong, 1998; Fiske & Ruscher, 1993; Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995).

In addition, prejudice can flourish when a person is uncomfortable with direct contact with members of the stereotyped group. This discomfort would lead the individual to avoid contact and to experience anxiety and other bad feelings when forced to come into contact (Fiske, 1998). Thus, once prejudice has started, it can feed on itself.

Did the 2020 Racial Justice Protests Surprise You?

If so, you are probably white. On May 25, 2020, 46-year old George Floyd, a black man who was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill in a store, was killed when a Minneapolis police officer (who has since been charged with murder in the case) kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. The ensuing worldwide protests against police mistreatment of people of color and against systemic racism (which included protests in all 50 US states) began a period of activism among the general population not seen since the civil rights era in the 1960s. Although a great many white Americans took part in the protests and demonstrations, some had been surprised by the depth of black Americans feelings about their mistreatment at the hands of the police and other parts, systems, organizations, and people in our society. A full discussion of the concept of systemic racism, as it is known, is beyond the scope of an Introduction to Psychology textbook. One thing we can do is explain some of the psychological roots of the ongoing problem (which we have already begun through the explanation of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination), and perhaps explain the surprise experienced by some white Americans. By the way, this is probably as good a time as any to point out that we are using the problems faced by black Americans to illustrate the concepts. You can choose any other minority group that is a target of bias (e.g., members of the Latinx community, Muslim Americans, LGBTQ+ Americans) and make many of the same points.

For years, perceptions of Blacks and Whites about their beliefs about race relations in the US have been markedly different. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 46% of white Americans and 61% of black Americans said that race relations were bad. By 2019, a clear majority of the population had begun to realize that race relations were poor (and getting worse). Still, the different perceptions between Blacks and Whites persisted (56% of whites and 71% of Blacks said race relations in the US are generally bad).

Of particular importance has been the differences between Blacks’ and Whites’ perception of discrimination. Again, in 2016, Pew found gigantic gaps in perceptions of how Blacks are treated by police, banks, employers, in stores and restaurants, and in voting (gaps ranged from a low of 23%, for voting, to 42%, in the workplace). Indeed, one month before the George Floyd killing, the Pew Research Center conducted a new poll in which they found glaring differences between Blacks and Whites. For example, 84% of white respondents, but only 56% of black respondents had a fair amount or a great deal of confidence in the police to act in the best interest of the public. 78% of white Americans, but only 52% of black Americans rated police officers’ ethics high or very high (Pew Center, 2020).

How could white Americans not see what has seemed obvious to black Americans for decades (centuries, really)? Well, laws barring discrimination had reduced cases of overt discrimination. Further, many of the open biases that people held, seemed to be a thing of the past. People who used to openly tell racist jokes at work and freely shared their opinions about “lazy [insert racial epithet here]” found their audiences less receptive. Psychologists cautioned that some of the overt ethnic and racial discrimination of the past had been transformed into what they call modern racism, subtle discriminatory behavior (and stereotypes and prejudice) that can be hidden behind some other motive or belief (Pettigrew, 1998). For example, the opinion that racial discrimination was no longer a problem in the US was generally considered a reflection of modern racism (Swim et al., 1995).

At the same time, some of the discriminatory actions were not at all subtle to the targets of those acts. For example, compared to white Americans, black Americans are stopped more often by police, more likely to be arrested, more likely to have force used against them, more likely to be shot and killed. Making these biases worse is the fact that Blacks who are stopped by police are more likely to be innocent than Whites who are stopped (Bronner, 2020). (Note, we are venturing into the systemic racism part of the conversation. We have to touch on it to illustrate the scope of the problem).

Importantly, researchers began to discover and develop ideas related to implicit attitudes and implicit bias. These are attitudes or biases that people are unable or unwilling to express overtly. These implicit biases can influence our behavior in sometimes subtle ways, so they can be unnoticed by some. But think about how this might work. An individual white person might have an implicit bias that they are at best vaguely aware of. Perhaps they encounter a black person two or three times per week, so most of the time that implicit bias is completely buried. A black individual, however, may be the target of dozens if not hundreds of other people’s implicit biases every single day. It becomes easy to see how Whites might have been surprised to discover that Blacks did not experience the same America. Then, combine that with the systemic racism part of the equation. It is a lot easier to notice when something is happening than when it is not. For example, if you are white, it is hard to notice that you are NOT getting pulled over by police with regularity for no reason. The result was that many white Americans did not realize how serious and common the problems faced by black Americans still are.

Can We End Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination?

Some observers complain that we cannot legislate our way out of this mess. Although that is true, it is part of the solution. We can absolutely ensure that serious forms of discrimination are criminal acts, and we can enforce those laws. But the observers are right, legislation alone is very unlikely to be sufficient to cure society of discrimination as long as there are new ways for it to manifest itself. Ultimately it will be more effective to address the stereotyping and prejudice that drive discrimination, essentially killing discrimination at its roots.

An understanding of how stereotyping and prejudice develop is an important first step in reducing it, both for psychologists and individuals. We are certainly not going to put a stop to the process of social categorization, but we can make people aware of the need to get information about people that highlights their individuality. Research has shown that simply giving people different goals, such as to be accurate when judging someone or to learn about a stereotyped person as an individual, can encourage them to devote the extra effort to go beyond a simple social categorization (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Stangor & Ford, 1992).

A second key to reducing prejudice and discrimination is to encourage contact between groups. Not just any contact will do, though; recall that prejudice itself sometimes emerges from contact. In order for contact to work, it should be between people who are of equal status, and it should allow members of different groups to discover their similarities and to learn about each other as individuals. Finally, the contact should take place in a context in which cooperation is expected and encouraged and the members of different groups depend on each other (Pettigrew, 1997; Schwarzwald et al., 1992; Wright et al., 1997).

A third key is to acknowledge and learn how to compensate for implicit bias, and control for the substitution of a new discriminatory behavior when an old behavior becomes unacceptable. For example, some research has shown that police officers who undergo some types of implicit bias training are better able to distinguish between images of black people with and without weapons in shooting training exercises. Although the effects do not last, this is a promising avenue to develop.

21.4. Group Effects on Individuals 

In Section 21.3, you saw that stereotypes and prejudice essentially emerge from a categorization of others into “people like me” and “people not like me.” In other words, we tend to categorize people in terms of whether or not they are in the same important groups as we are. It is easy to see that certain social categories, such as ethnicity and religion, are extremely influential aspects of people’s lives. What you may not realize is that belonging to a group is very important to human beings in general. One way you can see this is to note how easy it can be to get people to feel as if they are part of a group. In many cases, researchers have been able to create ingroup and outgroup categorizations by randomly assigning people to groups or basing group membership on some trivial difference such as the type of shoes that people were wearing (Billig & Tajfel, 1973; Locksley et al., 1980; Tajfel, et al., 1971).

Many cultures across the world differ on what we call collectivism and individualism. Obviously, in collectivistic cultures, in which membership in groups is emphasized, groups have a profound influence on people. Even in the US, however, a culture that is staunchly proud of its individualistic values, groups play essential roles in people’s lives.

Groups in general have powerful influences on individuals. This section talks about five aspects of that influence—in the language of social psychology, they are social norms, conformity, groupthink, social facilitation, and bystander effects.

Social Norms

Groups have rules; they are called social norms. The strength of the rules and penalties for violating them are a large part of the power of a particular group. The rules are very often unstated, so they become obvious only when they are violated.

Even unofficially, weak groups have a set of norms. If you do not believe us, stand up in the middle of class during your next exam and entertain your classmates by singing a Broadway show tune (just make sure you do not do it in your psychology class). You might just discover that the penalty for violating some social norms is to be kicked out of the group, by the way, so you probably should not accept our challenge. Frequently, the penalty for violating norms is more subtle, however, something like embarrassment or anxiety.

Try this yourself someday. Go out onto a crowded street corner and stare up at the sky for as long as your neck will allow. Depending on where you do this, people may question you, ignore you, or push you out of the way, but a few will join you. On another occasion, do the same thing but with one small change: bring four friends to stare at the sky along with you. Within a few minutes, you are likely to attract quite a large group of passersby perfectly willing to cramp their necks to gaze at nothing. In one famous study, 84% of people passing through a street corner fell for this very trick, a striking example of the power of descriptive norms, one of the key types of norms we observe in social environments (Cialdini et al., 1991; Milgram et al., 1969). A descriptive norm is a group rule based on the actual behavior that group members exhibit. In other words, descriptive norms simply describe the group members’ behavior.

Robert Cialdini and his colleagues have noted that, in addition to descriptive norms, we can also be influenced by injunctive norms, norms based on other members’ expressions of approval or disapproval. Basically, descriptive norms are what the group does, while injunctive norms are what the group says we are supposed to do. Both descriptive and injunctive norms can influence us, and they usually agree with each other. In other words, the behaviors that a group expresses approval about are often the ones they engage in. On the other hand, the two can contradict each other sometimes. When that happens, whichever norm seems most prominent in the situation will be the more powerful influencer (Cialdini et al., 1991). For example, consider cheating. Without a doubt, colleges in general have a strong injunctive norm against cheating. In essence, no one condones cheating. On some campuses, however, cheating may be common, indicating that the descriptive norm is the opposite of the injunctive norm. The college might try to shame students into having more integrity by drawing attention to the rampant cheating, but that tactic is likely to backfire. In essence, highlighting the descriptive norm makes it seem as if, despite the disapproval, “everyone is doing it.” Many potential cheaters would probably be encouraged to see if they could do it too.

Conformity

You are sitting around a table looking at a catalog with five other people. Each of them in turn marvels at the jacket on page 14. You noticed the jacket instantly because it is hideous; you cannot believe that anyone would buy it. Yet, inexplicably, your first companion loves the jacket. You look at it again, without saying anything, thinking perhaps that it might look better from another angle. Nope, still ugly. Then, the second person at the table chimes in: “it is beautiful,” she exclaims. You take off your glasses and wipe them on your shirt before looking again. Then, the third and fourth tablemates both agree that the jacket would be a bargain at twice the price. The fifth person picks up the phone to order it, and all eyes turn to you. Do you express your opinion that the jacket is the ugliest waste of cloth you have ever seen, or do you go along with the rest of the table and say that it is an attractive jacket?

The power of descriptive norms suggests that conformity would be surprisingly common. Solomon Asch (1951; 1955), in some of the most famous experiments of all time, demonstrated that many people would deny the evidence from their own senses and go along with what the rest of the crowd said. Asch used judgments of line lengths to test his hypothesis. Participants were shown a line and asked to judge which of three comparison lines was the same length. Although it was an easy judgment to get right when making judgments alone, over three-quarters of Asch’s participants conformed at least once, and over one-third of the total judgments were of the wrong line simply because other people had picked it first.

You can also access the video directly at: https://youtu.be/TYIh4MkcfJA

Asch and later researchers have found that not all situations lead to equal conformity. For instance, factors such as gender, culture, and minority influence can influence conformity (Bond & Smith, 1996; Griskevicius, et. al., 2006; Kim & Markus, 1999; Pasupathi, 1996). Moreover, if the group opinion is not unanimous, many fewer participants make the wrong judgment. The size of the group also makes a difference: Once a group has three members, conformity begins in earnest, and conformity levels continue to increase up to at least eight members (Bond & Smith, 1996). Researchers have also discovered that high-status individuals are particularly effective at inducing compliance (Harriman & Costello, 1980; Mullen et al., 1990). Finally, if group members like and admire each other, conformity pressures will be very high (Crandall, 1988; Latane & L’Herrou, 1996).

Groupthink

Most of the research through the years examining the effectiveness of groups when they are trying to accomplish some task has found that groups tend to outperform individuals. In essence, two heads are indeed better than one. A key exception to the superiority of groups was discovered in the early 1970s by Irving Janis. He noted that in some situations, groups that are trying to make decisions do very poorly. He called the phenomenon groupthink and used it to explain some of the most famous disasters of the US government over the years. Janis (1982) proposed that highly cohesive groups that are headed by a directive leader who already has a preferred decision often try to stifle disagreements, leading to a poor evaluation of alternatives, bad decisions, and over-commitment to the bad decisions. The group comes to see itself as invulnerable and morally superior, and it becomes very difficult for individual members to speak out against the apparent unanimity of the rest of the group. (We say apparent because several individual members often harbor private reservations that they are afraid to bring into the open).

Groupthink is one of the most famous concepts in social psychology; it has broad appeal in the discipline, and in political science and business. It is presented as fact throughout the land (we will bet you can guess where we are going with this). In reality, however, it has received little research support. One problem is that it is extremely difficult to do research on groupthink. One version of the groupthink model (Janis, 1983) lists seven separate preconditions, seven separate symptoms of groupthink, and seven separate symptoms of defective decision-making. The options for doing research are overwhelming. If you want to choose which combination of the seven preconditions to vary in an experiment, for example, you have 127 different options. Then, you would need to operationally define your chosen variables, another difficult task. Rather than the huge number of options spurring researchers to try many tests of the concept, it seems to have stifled research. An article commemorating the first 25th anniversary of the groupthink concept found that an average of only one empirical study per year was published (Turner & Pratkanis, 1998). There have been several compelling case studies through the years describing disastrous decisions that have occurred when several groupthink preconditions and symptoms were present, but you have to remember that it is difficult to generalize from case studies. It is impossible to know whether the poor decisions resulted from groupthink or from some unknown and unnoticed factor. Still, however, the case studies are worth listing. For example:

• The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by US-backed Cuban exiles in 1961
• Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War
• Richard Nixon’s decision to break into Democratic party offices, setting off the Watergate scandal
• The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion
• The widespread misprediction by news organizations of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election

Although the reasons for these decisions are complex, important elements of groupthink were present in all of them: high levels of group cohesiveness among the decision-makers, strong leadership that had a preconceived idea about the “correct” decision, and threats from the outside. According to Janis, these key preconditions lead members of the decision-making group to have a strong desire for consensus, be closed-minded and believe strongly in their moral superiority. The consequences are poor decisions characterized by too little examination of options, failure to realize the risks of chosen action, and an over-commitment to the poor decision (Turner & Pratkanis, 1998).

Although Janis believed that cohesiveness of the group was a very important aspect of groupthink, most research has not verified that it is. Similarly, the presence of an outside threat may not be as important as Janis originally thought. The one groupthink precondition that has found the strongest support is the presence of a strong, biased leader, one who strongly favors a particular decision at the beginning of the process (Esser, 1998). Currently, many psychologists believe that groupthink is a useful concept to guide research but that it does not explain defective group decision-making nearly as well as its popularity would suggest (Kerr & Tindale, 2004; Turner & Pratkanis, 1998).

Social Facilitation

Sometimes, we are influenced by what the others are doing, as indicated by the concept of descriptive norms. Sometimes, we are influenced by our expectations of how others will act or what they expect of us. Sometimes, it is literally the fact that other people are there that influences us.

Many serious fitness enthusiasts across the US discovered an unpleasant truth during the spring 2020 COVID-19 shelter-in-place. As you may know, running races around the world were canceled, from the prestigious (and enormous) Boston Marathon, to countless local 5k and 10k races. Many race organizers replaced their events with virtual races: participants strapped on their GPS watches and raced the required distance alone in their own neighborhood. And many found that their times were quite a bit slower than expected. In short, it is very difficult to run fast when you are alone; it is much easier when you are surrounded by hundreds (or thousands) of other people.

This is social facilitation; it is the social psychologists’ explanation the common race-day excitement that leads to fast times. One of social psychology’s first discoveries, social facilitation is the tendency for people’s performance to improve when other people are present. It has been demonstrated many times and in many situations, such as the rate at which children wind a fishing rod and the ability to produce word associations and solve arithmetic problems (Allport, 1920; Dashiell, 1930; Triplett, 1898).

But wait, you might think. What about that time I gave a speech and the audience got me so nervous, I could barely remember my name, let alone what I was supposed to say? That sure does not sound like social facilitation. Well, you may have a career ahead of you as a famous social psychologist. Robert Zajonc (1965) noticed the same discrepancy (which others had observed previously) and proposed that the presence of others does not necessarily produce facilitation. What it does is increase arousal, and arousal is likely to produce the response that is most dominant. If the dominant response is the activity you are doing, as would be the case if the activity is straightforward or one that you do well, then the result will be social facilitation. If some other response might be dominant, such as being nervous because the task is difficult or you are not very good at it, the result will be social hindrance. Perhaps you did not need us to say it, but you probably should have practiced your speech more.

Bystander Effect

In Module 2, we described a research study in which participants who were talking about college adjustment in a group over an intercom heard one of the group members suffer an epileptic seizure (Darley & Latane, 1968). The researchers discovered that the larger the size of the group, the less likely individuals were to try to help the student in trouble. This failure to help became known as the bystander effect. Darley and Latane began this line of research in response to a well-publicized gruesome murder that had been committed in 1964. In an interesting twist, the reports of this murder were wrong, but they still led to one of the most important findings in the history of social psychology. As the original story went, in the early morning of March 13, 1964, the manager of a bar, Kitty Genovese, was attacked and murdered on her way to her New York City apartment after work. Ms. Genovese began screaming when the attacker began stabbing her, but apparently no one came to help or called the police. The attacker was briefly frightened away and then returned to finish murdering her. The entire attack took between 30 and 45 minutes, and there were 38 witnesses watching from their windows. The original reports were that not one even called the police until Ms. Genovese was dead.

Observers were disturbed and judgmental. They said the witnesses were uncaring, callous, big-city dwellers. The country was doomed because people no longer felt enough empathy to help a stranger in need. First, let us set the record straight. Those original reports missed many crucial details. In reality, there is no evidence that there were 38 witnesses (the prosecutor in the trial only found 3 who could identify the killer), a number of neighbors did try to help immediately by calling the police and yelling to frighten the murderer away, one witness, in particular, rushed to Ms. Genovese’s aid and comforted her until the police arrived, and Ms. Genovese died in an ambulance, well after police had been called (Kassin 2017; Manning, Levine, & Collins 2007; Takooshian et al. 2004).

Still, at least some people who witnessed part of the attack did do nothing. Darley and Latane’s line of research, discovered that key factors in the situation play a major role in people’s failure to help in times of emergency. Reverse those situational factors, and helping behavior increases dramatically.

One key situational factor that explains the Kitty Genovese case and many other failures to help is the number of bystanders. The more people there are, the less responsibility each one feels individually to act; this effect is called diffusion of responsibility. People essentially say to themselves, “someone else will call the police.” The problem is, they are all saying that. Remember the bystander effect the next time an emergency situation arises. You may be the only bystander who realizes that everyone else is assuming that another person will take responsibility to act.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BdpdUbW8vbw

You can also access the video directly at: https://youtu.be/BdpdUbW8vbw

Darley and Latane (1970) also discovered several additional factors that help determine whether or not an individual will help in an emergency. First, you have to notice the event and judge it to be an emergency (several witnesses in the Genovese murder reported that they did not realize it was an attack). Although this may seem simple, real emergencies can often be ambiguous. Have you ever seen someone lying on a sidewalk in a large city? Was it a homeless person sleeping, or was the person injured and unconscious? Then, you have to know what to do. If the person is unconscious, do they need CPR? Do you know how to administer CPR? Again, these can be very difficult to know. Finally, after all of that, you have to decide to take action. Only then,  you would be able to start to help in the emergency.

21.5. Attempts to Influence Others

One key source of influence, as you have just seen, is a group. The group effects discussed in section 21.4 are powerful and can be manipulated, but they take place even though no one is trying to influence us. As I am sure you realize, we are certainly prone to influence when that is someone’s goal.

The two primary kinds of “on purpose” influence are persuasion and obedience. The key distinguishing element between the two concepts is authority. If you do not have any authority over another person—for example, the two of you are peers or the other person has authority over your—your attempts to influence would be called persuasion. If you do have authority over the other person—for example, you are a parent—the influence is called obedience. A child’s attempts to get their parents to let them stay up late to watch 1959 Sci-Fi classic The Brain That Wouldn’t Die would be persuasion. The parent’s insistence that the child goes to bed at 8:30 is an attempt to elicit obedience.

Persuasion: Influence Without Authority

Suppose a sales associate is trying to persuade a customer to purchase a new $130 pair of running shoes. She begins by describing the innovative pronation control features, the extra cushioning provided by the brand-new (patented, of course) gel composite in the forefoot, and the carbon rubber outer sole that is both durable and lightweight. By the time she gets to the mesh upper material that allows a runner’s feet to breathe, some customers are already taking off their shoes to give the new ones a “test drive,” while others are dumbfounded as they begin eyeing the $65 dollar pair on the shelf. Why does the same persuasion effort work so well for some people and fall so flat for others? You will be able to select the types of persuasion strategies that are most likely to be effective if you know the answer to one question: how likely is it that the person you are trying to persuade will be devoting a lot of effort to making the decision?

In the running shoe example, what if the customer is an often-injured, self-described serious runner who has just recovered from an Achilles tendon injury brought on by the wrong pair of shoes? They subscribe to several running magazines and is knowledgeable about most of the major technologies that running shoe companies have developed. They paid $170 for their last pair of running shoes, which they know have 350 miles on them. This customer’s background and current situation are likely to make the choice of a new pair of running shoes a fairly important one, and they will probably be devoting a great deal of effort to the decision.

On the other hand, what if the customer was attracted to the store by the flashy window display. They are not a runner but has been thinking about starting so they can get in shape for their 20-year high school reunion. They have never spent more than $60 for a pair of athletic shoes before and have never really thought about the differences between running shoe models. They essentially think of all athletic shoes as “sneakers.” This customer is not likely to be devoting a great deal of effort to choosing among the different kinds of shoes. They are very unlikely to be persuaded by the technical details about the features of the shoes. On the other hand, they may very well be persuaded if they learn that Ruth Chepngetich, the current (in 2024) world record holder in the marathon, runs in these shoes.

These relationships between the likelihood that an individual will be devoting effort to a decision and the appropriate persuasion strategy have been summarized by the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; 1986). According to the ELM, there are two basic methods of persuasion, the central route and the peripheral route. The central route to persuasion (sometimes referred to as central route processing) is appropriate when the person to be persuaded is motivated to devote effort to the decision. Because the person will be scrutinizing the persuasion attempt, the central route strategy involves making solid, strong arguments that convey the important (i.e., central) features about the persuasion topic. For example, the technical features of the running shoes. The peripheral route to persuasion (sometimes referred to as peripheral route processing) is appropriate when the person to be persuaded will not be devoting effort to the decision. This strategy, actually a number of strategies, involves associating the persuasion topic with peripheral (i.e., unimportant or irrelevant) cues that nevertheless may influence the person to like it. For example, the fact that a woman who can run 26.2 miles at a 4 minute-55 seconds per mile pace runs in a particular pair of shoes says nothing about whether you should be running in those shoes (unless you can run that fast, in which case, we apologize for underestimating your running ability, Ruth). There are many different kinds of peripheral cues, such as famous endorsers, association with attractive models or catchy music, or other classical conditioning effects. Just remember, any time the persuasive attempt does not really contain solid information that will stand up under scrutiny, it is taking the peripheral route.

Of course, persuasion is not just the goal of people who are trying to sell you something, although you will certainly be able to recognize these principles in marketing efforts. You can also see (and use) them in many other everyday persuasion situations. For example, a political candidate who runs an ad in which they are surrounded by American flags without actually saying anything substantive is using the peripheral route. A friend who flatters you before asking you if they can borrow your car is using the peripheral route. A child who draws you a picture so you will forgive them for squirting yogurt on the stereo is using the peripheral route. Remember that the success of these persuasion attempts depends on the likelihood that you will be motivated to devote effort to processing the information. If you are prepared to scrutinize the merits of a political candidate’s position, and all they come up with is “I love the flag,” you are likely to be insulted rather than persuaded. On the other hand, if you are not paying very close attention, the flag appeal may be quite effective (there is a civics lesson not very subtly hidden in here).

Some Specific Persuasion Techniques and Tricks

Individuals who are skilled at persuasion often use principles that have been discovered and developed through psychological research. Sometimes, they figure out these techniques on their own. Often, however, when persuasion is part of someone’s job (for example a salesperson), these techniques are specifically taught. You will probably realize it without us saying this, but these can all be seen as specific kinds of peripheral cues.

Triad of Trustworthiness

We are sure it comes as no surprise to you to learn that persuaders who are seen as trustworthy are more effective. Psychologists have identified 3 key concepts that can make someone appear more trustworthy:

• Authority (having an official position of authority, being well-credentialed, and appearing knowledgeable and competent)
• Honesty
• Likability

Note that for the triad to work, the persuader only needs to appear trustworthy. Thus, these principles can be manipulated by an untrustworthy individual to fool us into trusting them.

The remainder of the strategies have been adapted from Robert Cialdini’s excellent book, Influence: Science and Practice (2008).

Reciprocation

“There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness.” (Cicero, quoted in Goulding, 1960).

Reciprocation might be a universal human norm. In other words in every (or nearly every) culture in the world people are expected to return kindness with kindness. If someone does a favor for you, you are expected to return the favor. And people can use this principle to persuade. For example, a successful door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson carried rolls of paper towels to give to prospective customers as soon as they opened the door. That little impulse to repay the kindness, even a small one, was often enough to get the customer to listen to the salesperson’s pitch.

And this kindness to be reciprocated can take many forms. Think about the free samples that grocery stores used to hand out in the days before COVID-19. They were not only there to allow you to discover what the food tasted like. They were a small gift given to you by a pleasant person. The expectation is that you will repay this kindness with a purchase. When a website offers you valuable free information (for example, a “white paper” about investment strategies), they intend for this kindness to be repaid by becoming a client. Keep in mind, for such a large commitment, the reciprocation alone is often not enough. That is why they will often use some of these additional strategies.

Commitment and Consistency (Foot-in-the-Door)

People like to appear consistent. So if you get someone to make a commitment, you can use this consistency desire to gradually get them to commit more and more. This technique, commitment and consistency, is also known as the foot-in-the-door technique, as the initial goal is to get a very small commitment (that is the foot-in-the-door part). Once that is achieved, the persuader will gradually escalate the commitments asked for. For example, a canvasser knocks on the door and asks the resident to sign a petition in favor of some social cause. After a couple more commitments (for example, asking which neighbors are also likely to sign the petition), the canvasser springs the real ask: a donation to support the organization spearheading the effort.

Or here, magician Derren Brown uses commitment and consistency to persuade strangers to hand over their wallets:

You can also access the video directly at: https://youtu.be/DR4y5iX4uRY

Reject Then Retreat (Door-in-the-Face)

Let us return to our paper towel gifting vacuum cleaner salesperson from above. After a 45-minute demonstration with the potential customer (making great use of commitment and consistency, no doubt), it is time to make the sale. The salesperson announces that the price of the vacuum cleaner is $2000. The customer is aghast! That is way too much money! “Well, let me call my manager, and see what I can do,” is the reply. Minutes later, the customer is offered the sale price that is going to be offered next week: $1000. You see, the salesperson never expected to get $2000 (of course, they wouldn’t turn it down if the customer accepted the price though!). Rather it was the reject then retreat technique: come in with an outrageous opening offer that is expected to be rejected. Then, “give in” and offer what seems like a much more reasonable price. It is like the teenager asking their parents to spend the night in Chicago, knowing that their parents will say no, so they can “settle” for spending the night with their friend across town.

Social Proof and Testimonials

Social proof is a lot like using descriptive norms to persuade. We decide what to do by looking at what others do, or did, in a similar situation. So advertisements that tell us that a particular brand of car, soft drink, or laundry soap is the best-selling brand are using social proof. We can also look beyond the sheer numbers of people as a version of social proof, too. For example, testimonials, in which a customer or better yet, a celebrity, sing the praises of the product we are considering can be a very persuasive tool.

Scarcity

The fact that an item is scarce seems to make it desirable, an observation that follows from the basic economic principles of supply and demand (i.e., when demand is high, a seller can charge more for the product). Of course, persuaders have found a way to manipulate this to their benefit. Now, we admit this could be completely innocent, but doesn’t seem a bit odd that Apple never seems to make enough iPhones when they launch a new model (or, if you like, substitute Nintendo, Sony, Tesla, and any other of the countless companies that somehow can’t seem to make enough of their products). Even simple matters like putting a limit on the number of items you are allowed to purchase makes the product seem scarce and increases sales.

Many of these techniques work, in part, because people often go through life on automatic pilot, so to speak. We operate on routine and habit without much thought. Ellen Langer (1992) called it mindlessness.  When we are operating mindlessly, we are prone to respond to what Cialdini called trigger features, environmental cues that lead a specific response without much thought. For example, when meeting an acquaintance in the hall who says, “Hi, how are you?” many people reply without thinking, almost reflexively, “Fine thanks, how are you?” In this case, the phrase (hi, how are you) is the trigger feature. If you think about it, you can probably recognize many such nearly automatic responses to common trigger features (for example, reaching for your phone when someone else’s makes a noise, taking out your notebook when you see your professor enter the room, and so on). By the way, if this sounds like classical conditioning, A-plus for you today!

There is no question that a savvy persuader can take advantage of this mindless responding to trigger features. For example, some companies produce private-label store brands that resemble name-brand products, apparently hoping that consumers will respond to the approximate appearance and pick up the look-alike.

Or again, Derren Brown has an entertaining (and amazing) demonstration:

You can also access the video directly at: https://youtu.be/3Vz_YTNLn6w

By simply getting the vendors into a mindless conversation, and slipping in the trigger feature phrase, “Take it, it’s fine,” he was able to pass off blank paper as money. Interestingly, the one person for whom it did not work was the street vendor, who probably cannot afford to be mindless because people might try to rip them off routinely.

Obedience: Influence with Authority

Above, we introduced the concept of obedience with the example of a parent enforcing an 8:30 bedtime. Your own experience as a parent or child may have led you to notice something. Many people recall these often-futile attempts to elicit obedience in their children and think that it is difficult to accomplish. Particularly in the US, where we tend to value independence and individuality, you might think it is nearly impossible to exert authority and force people to be obedient against their will. Well, I have a surprise for you.

In what may be the most famous set of experiments in all of psychology, Stanley Milgram demonstrated dramatically that it can be easy to get ordinary people to obey commands, even commands to commit horrible acts. In a typical experiment from Milgram’s program of research, a participant would be paired with a fake participant, an actor who was working for the experimenter. The “two participants” were informed that they were going to help the experimenter examine the effects of punishment on learning. The true participant was assigned the role of “teacher,” and the actor was assigned the role of “learner.” The teacher’s job was to read a list of word pairs to the learner and then test the learner by reading the first word of the pair. The learner was to respond with the second word of the pair. If the learner was correct, fine; the teacher moved on to the next word pair. If the learner made a mistake, however, the teacher was instructed to punish the learner with a painful electric shock. Before beginning the teaching-learning process, the learner was brought to an adjacent room out of sight of the teacher and strapped into a shock-receiving contraption. Then the procedure began. Because the whole setup was fabricated (including the shocks; no real shocks were given), Milgram was sure to plan it so that the learner made lots of mistakes, and for each one, the teacher was ordered to administer a shock. For every successive mistake, the teacher was instructed to use a stronger shock than the one used previously. The shock-generating machine (also fake, of course) was clearly labeled with increasing voltage levels, and the highest levels were labeled, “Danger- Severe Shock,” and “XXX.”

As the teacher (the true participant) began to protest and complain that they wanted to stop the experiment, the experimenter, a stern man in a white lab coat, urged the teacher to continue, saying things like, “It is absolutely essential that you continue,” and “whether the learner likes it or not, you must continue until they have learned all of the word pairs.” I should point out that it is difficult to convey the drama and realism of this experimental situation in writing. Although you may feel that the setup is so obviously contrived that no one would believe it, video recordings of the actual experimental sessions show that the participants took it very seriously.

At this point, I would like you to recall the answer to one of the questions in the Activate section. What would you do if you were a participant in this experiment?

• Early on, the learner is in obvious pain; they yell and demand to be released from the experiment. Behind you, the experimenter continues to order you to continue the procedure. Do you continue or stop the experiment?
• If you continue, as the shock level increases, the learner complains more loudly. Soon, they report that their heart is starting to bother them. Still, the experimenter commands you to go on. Do you continue or stop the experiment?
• If you continue, the learner, in an attempt to quit the experiment, refuses to answer any more. The experimenter tells you that a non-response is considered a wrong answer, so you must administer the electric shocks. Do you continue or stop the experiment?
• If you continue, after several refusals, each followed by a stronger shock and very loud screaming, the learner goes completely silent. They are obviously unconscious and can no longer respond. The experimenter tells you that you must continue the experiment. Do you continue or stop the experiment?
• If you continue, after several completely silent trials, you have reached the top levels of the shock generator, the ones labeled “Danger- Severe Shock” and “XXX.” The experimenter tells you that you must continue the experiment. Do you continue or stop the experiment?

We assume that by now most of you have “dropped out” of the experiment. Well, do not be so sure. In Milgram’s original studies, more than 50% (the exact number is 65 percent) of the participants obeyed the experimenter fully, past the point of the learner passing out, all the way to “XXX”.

Many people learn about these results and conclude that Milgram’s experiment demonstrated that it is easy to get “some people” to obey orders to commit horrible acts. After all, “only” 65% complied with all of the orders. Surely, strong-willed people, people taught to question authority and think for themselves, would not obey such obviously evil commands. We think a few details are in order. First, no one refused to begin the experiment. In other words, everyone was willing to inflict some pain on the learner simply because the white-coated, bossy experimenter commanded it. Second, and more importantly, you may have missed an important point (one that we have purposely not emphasized yet). This section is about the Milgram experiments, not experiment. In reality, Milgram conducted a series of experiments that varied many aspects of the experimental situation. By introducing some changes to the situation, obedience was driven down to 0 (that is, nobody obeyed). On the other extreme, Milgram was able to design a situation in which 93% of the participants complied fully. It should also be noted that in a few almost direct replications of Milgram’s studies researchers have found that many participants were still willing to obey the experimenter all the way to “XXX” (Burger, 2009, Dolin´ski1 et al., 2017).

These are easily some of the most famous experiments in all of psychology and Milgram’s original interpretation has been accepted uncritically by many for decades (with only occasional discussions of ethics). But there are old criticisms and new developments that call into question the major conclusion that Milgram’s work revealed the dangers of blind obedience to authority. As you will see, the results are still very instructive and useful, but perhaps not what we have thought all this time.

As early as 1968, critics were concerned about the possibility that participants might figure out the deception in studies like Milgram’s (Orne & Hammond, 1968). In that case, it would not really be obedience that Milgram was observing, rather just a version of participant demand, in which research participants play their expected role to perfection (Module 2). Indeed, a previously unreported analysis that Milgram conducted revealed that most (but not all) participants who really believed the learner was being shocked did not obey (Perry et al., 2019). So, it is very likely that the true level of obedience was lower than Milgram reported.

But even among the participants who believed the deception, it might not have been obedience that made them comply. A finer-grained analysis that looked at participants responses to specific verbal prods found that the ones that most resembled orders were rarely followed. The ones that emphasized science and encouraged identification with the experimenter and scientific process tended to be the ones that did the trick (Haslem, Reicher, & Birney, 2016). This reinterpretation is consistent, not with blind obedience, but with something closer to persuasion. Reicher, Haslem, and Smith (2012) called it engaged followership, compliance that comes from identification with the leader. In other words, the participants were likely to follow (not obey) when they believe in and are committed to the experimenter and the scientific process in the study more than with the learner.

Some of the important factors that led to higher compliance are consistent with both the obedience and the engaged followership interpretations. For example, if the learner was depersonalized and far away from the participant, and the researcher had higher status, participants were more likely to comply. If the learner was located in the same room as the teacher, compliance dropped, even more, if the teacher had to move the learner’s hand to the shock terminal. If the learner was quiet and in another room, obedience was very high. If the authority phoned in the orders, obedience was very low. Also, if the authority had low status or was not perceived as legitimate, few people obeyed the commands.

Whether obedience or engaged followership, many observers have used Milgram’s work to help us understand how many evil acts throughout history have occurred. For example, there are chilling similarities between Milgram’s experiments and the Nazi Holocaust; atrocities committed by armies, such as the US forces in My Lai during the Vietnam War, and widespread genocide, such as Hutus slaughtering 2 million Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s. If you still doubt that such effects would occur in this century, you would be wrong. Early in 2004, photographs of US military guards abusing, torturing, and humiliating Iraqi prisoners were released and publicized throughout the world.

Milgram’s experiments shed some light on how such horrible acts could be committed—not to excuse them, but to understand them so that we may someday be able to prevent their recurrence. If you put someone in a very powerful situation (and can get followers to identify with your goals), even a good person can commit a horrible act.

Social psychologists have often focused on the dangers of obedience (and now engaged followership). Given humanity’s history of ghastly atrocities committed by people following orders this attention is warranted. We should remember, however, that these kinds of compliance can be a good thing. First, some cultures across the world and sub-cultures in the US place a great value on obedience. Second, even cultures and individuals who disdain blind obedience in general often recognize its value in some situations. For example, parents who encourage their children to think critically for themselves and to question authority (respectfully, of course), realize that sometimes they must “do what they are told.” For example, a three-year-old does not fully understand what it means to be hit by a car and killed, so they must learn to obey a parent’s commands to stay out of the street.

We are left with a bit of a puzzle, then. Why can it be difficult to elicit obedient behavior in children when it can be easy to do so in strangers? We think that part of the answer lies in the distinction between the original obedience and the new engaged followership interpretations. It can be difficult to get a child, particularly a young child to identify with the parent, even if the parent is aware of the importance of engaged followership. Instead, they just give orders, sometimes with threats that the child soon learns can be empty. For example, as soon as the child realizes that the parent has no real intention of “stopping this car and making you walk home,” that particular threat loses its power to elicit obedience.