What's covered
Key facts
Conformity — Asch
Asch's aim was to investigate whether people would conform to a majority giving an obviously wrong answer.
Obedience — Milgram and the authoritarian personality
Bickman found people obeyed a confederate dressed as a guard far more than the same requests made in civilian clothes.
Crowd and collective behaviour, deindividuation
Although early theories saw crowds as violent mobs, research shows most crowd behaviour is actually peaceful and can be prosocial (helping).
Prosocial behaviour and bystander — Piliavin
The arousal:cost–reward model says a bystander feels arousal at seeing distress, then weighs costs against rewards before helping.
Conformity — Asch
About 75% of participants in Asch's conformity study conformed on at least one critical trial.
Obedience — Milgram and the authoritarian personality
Adorno argued the authoritarian personality develops from harsh, strict parenting in childhood.
Crowd and collective behaviour, deindividuation
Deindividuation is the loss of a person's sense of individual identity when they are part of a crowd or group.
Prosocial behaviour and bystander — Piliavin
Higher perceived cost of helping (danger or unpleasantness) lowers the chance a bystander will step in.
Conformity — Asch
In Asch's study, the naive participant sat with confederates (actors) who gave pre-agreed wrong answers.
Obedience — Milgram and the authoritarian personality
The agentic shift is the move from the autonomous state to the agentic state.
Sample questions
A taste of the 67 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.
What was the aim of Asch's 1951 study?
- •To investigate how memory recall changes when retelling an unfamiliar story
- •To investigate whether children can take another person's visual viewpoint
- ✓To investigate whether people conform to a majority's obviously wrong answer
- •To investigate whether people obey an authority figure who orders harm
What is deindividuation?
- •Becoming more self-aware when others are watching
- ✓Losing your sense of individual identity in a crowd
- •Refusing to follow the behaviour of a crowd
- •Working less hard when part of a larger group
What did Bickman (1974) find about a confederate dressed as a security guard?
- ✓Strangers obeyed him far more than in civilian clothes
- •Strangers obeyed him less than in civilian clothes
- •Strangers obeyed him the same as a milkman
- •Strangers refused almost all of his requests
Which pair are the two social factors affecting bystander behaviour?
- •Age of the victim and time of day involved
- ✓Presence of others and cost of helping
- •Similarity to victim and cost of helping
- •Similarity to victim and expertise of the bystander
Who were the actors that gave pre-agreed wrong answers in Asch's study?
- ✓Confederates
- •Independent observers
- •Naive participants
- •The control group
What is social loafing?
- •Losing your personal identity when part of a large crowd
- ✓Putting in less effort in a group than when working alone
- •Putting in more effort in a group than when working alone
- •Refusing to take part in any group task at all
Try it for four weeks. Free.
One school. Unlimited classes. No card limit. No teacher limit. If your students aren't practising daily by the end of the trial, you owe us nothing.