AP Psychology: Conformity Quiz - Test Your Knowledge!

🧠 Quick Study Guide: Understanding Conformity & Obedience

• 🤝 Conformity Definition: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. It's about 'going along to get along' or believing others have better information.
• 🔬 Solomon Asch Experiment (1951): Classic study demonstrating normative social influence. Participants conformed to clearly incorrect group judgments about line lengths to avoid standing out.
• ⚡ Stanley Milgram Experiment (1960s): Landmark study on obedience to authority. Participants (teachers) administered increasing 'shocks' to a learner, even when distressed, under the command of an experimenter.
• 🗣️ Types of Social Influence:
  • ⚖️ Normative Social Influence: Conforming to gain approval or avoid disapproval from others (e.g., dressing a certain way to fit in).
  • 💡 Informational Social Influence: Conforming because one accepts others' opinions about reality, especially in ambiguous situations (e.g., looking to others in a new environment).
• 🎭 Social Roles: Expected behaviors for a given position or status in a group. Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment famously illustrated the powerful impact of social roles.
• 📉 Conditions Strengthening Conformity:
  • 👥 Group size (typically 3+ people).
  • 🤝 Unanimity of the group (no one else dissents).
  • 📈 High status of the group.
  • 📝 No prior commitment to an answer.
  • 🗣️ Public response (not private).
  • 🌍 Cultural values (collectivistic cultures show higher conformity).
• 🚫 Groupthink: Occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives, leading to poor decisions (e.g., Bay of Pigs Invasion).

📝 Practice Quiz: Conformity & Obedience

1. Which concept is best illustrated by participants in the Asch experiment publicly agreeing with a clearly incorrect group judgment about line lengths?

1. Group polarization
2. Informational social influence
3. Normative social influence
4. Social facilitation

2. In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, participants were most likely to continue administering 'shocks' when:

1. The learner was visible and vocal.
2. They were in the same room as the learner.
3. The experimenter was perceived as a legitimate authority figure.
4. Other participants refused to continue.

3. A student is unsure how to behave on their first day at a new school. They observe how other students dress, talk, and interact, and then adjust their own behavior to match. This is an example of:

1. Social loafing
2. Informational social influence
3. Deindividuation
4. Normative social influence

4. Which of the following conditions would typically lead to increased conformity within a group?

1. The group consists of only two people.
2. One member of the group openly dissents.
3. The individual has made a prior public commitment to their opinion.
4. The group is unanimous in its opinion.

5. The concept where individuals lose their sense of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity is known as:

1. Groupthink
2. Social facilitation
3. Deindividuation
4. Social inhibition

6. Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment highlighted the powerful influence of:

1. Emotional intelligence
2. Cognitive dissonance
3. Social roles
4. Attribution theory

7. A group of friends decides to go along with a risky plan for a party, despite some individual members having serious reservations, because they don't want to disrupt the group's harmony. This scenario best illustrates:

1. Social compensation
2. Group polarization
3. Social loafing
4. Groupthink