‘Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth’ John F. Kennedy

1. ‘Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth’ • John F. Kennedy

2. ‘When someone demands blind obedience, you’d be a fool not to peek’ • Jim Fiebig

3. ‘The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, its conformity’ • Rollo May

4. ‘It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action’ • Milgram

5. ‘If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: a man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good’ • Thomas J. Watson

6. Is it better to resist or to conform/obey?

7. Know how people resist the pressure to conform • Understand explanations for resisting obedience

8. Funnel it down! • Read the information in your booklets. • Funnel the information down to the key words/phrases to write your own definitions • Write your definition in your OWN WORDS!

9. Think of 3 examples when you have not conformed

10. Think of examples in Asch and Milgram’s studies when people didn’t obey or conform

11. Resisting pressures to conformMoral considerations • If the task involves judgements with moral dimensions (aspects), the cost to one’s personal honour may be higher and they are less likely to conform • Evaluation • Hornsey et al (2003) found little movement towards the majority on attitudes that had moral significance for individuals (e.g cheating), even when it involved public (rather than just private) behaviours.

12. The non-conformist personality • fill in the gaps • The extent to which _______ influence impacts upon individuals is _____________ by their ___________. Not _____________ to a given norm is usually a result of _____________ towards the group norm. Some people are _____________ to react to majority influence by __________ the norm. Such __________ are said to have an anti-conforming orientation to their personalities. • Evaluation • Those who __________ to majority influence with _____________ tend to be unconcerned with social _______ (Nail et al 2000) or even __________ of the social norms.

13. Further evaluation of resisting pressures to conform • Match the statement to the correct evaluation point.

14. Resisting pressures to obeyMoral considerations • Description: One of Milgram’s colleagues, moral philosopher Lawrence Kohlberg (1969), presented a group of Milgram’s volunteers with a set of imaginary moral dilemmas. • These dilemmas determined not so much what people would do in situations like Milgram’s shock experiment, but WHY they would behave in that way.

15. Evaluation: Kohlberg found that those who based their decisions on more general moral principles (e.g. the importance of justice over social order), were more defiant in the Milgram study, while most of those at a more restricted level of moral development obeyed the experimenter completely. • The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King argued that laws are only valid insofar as they are grounded in justice, and that a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws.

16. Social Heroism • In his book, The Lucifer Effect (2007) Zimbardo suggests that while the most humans obey unjust authority, the few who resist are really heroes. • In this context, heroes are those people who are willing to make sacrifices for the good of others in society. • Social heroism involves putting oneself at risk in pursuit of an important principle. • It may be very costly in terms of lowered social status, loss of credibility and in some cases, even arrest, torture and even death.

17. Social Heroism • The best-known ‘hero’ is probably Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 36 years for his resistance to government apartheid policies in South Africa. • A less well-known ‘hero’ is Michael Bernhardt, the US soldier who refused to obey orders to shoot unarmed civilians in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war in which nearly 500 Vietnamese died at the hands on the US troops.

18. Zimbardo’s beliefs – Social Heroism • Zimbardo believes a key factor that encourages heroic action is stimulation of the ‘heroic imagination’, a mental orientation that makes people more likely to act ‘heroically’ when the time comes. • This involves imagining facing potentially risky social situations, struggling with the hypothetical problems these situations raise, and considering one’s likely actions and their consequences.

19. Further evaluation of resisting pressures to obey • Milgram showed that when the authority figure (AF) is absent obedience is reduced (20%). • Bickman(1974) used three male actors dressed in normal clothes, as a milkman, or as a security guard. Passersby were most likely to obey the actor dressed as a security guard and least likely to obey the actor in normal clothes. This is because the actor dressed in normal clothes had less legitimacy • disobedient role model reduces the behaviour. In Milgram’s experiment, participants found it easier to refuse to obey the order to give electric shocks when they could see another participant also disobey.

20. Homework • Revision notes • Essay plan – ‘Discuss one or more explanations of independent behaviour, for example, how people resist pressures to conform or obey’ (8 marks)