This paper examines the psychological concepts of conformity and obedience through both classical and contemporary research. It compares the two concepts, drawing on Cavazza et al.'s work on majority influence and Milgram's foundational studies on obedience to authority. The paper also explores altruism through prosocial volunteer behavior, reviews Milgram's landmark shock experiment and its implications for understanding human submission to authority, and considers a contemporary reassessment of whether people today would be as obedient as Milgram's original subjects. Finally, it addresses the individual and societal mechanisms that lead people to deviate from dominant group norms.
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of primary and secondary sources: rather than simply summarizing each source in isolation, the writer draws connections across Milgram's original work, Blass's historical retrospective, and Elms's contemporary reassessment to build a cumulative argument about how obedience functions over time and across contexts. This multi-source synthesis is characteristic of strong undergraduate social-science writing.
The paper is organized into five clearly labeled sections, each addressing a distinct aspect of group influence on the individual. Section one defines and contrasts conformity and obedience. Section two introduces altruism via volunteer research. Section three provides extended analysis of Milgram's shock experiment. Section four updates the discussion with a 2009 reassessment of Milgram's findings. Section five concludes by examining the internal psychological mechanisms that enable deviance from group norms.
This paper evaluates the influence of group dynamics on the individual, bringing together classical and contemporary analysis in a cohesive, succinct presentation. Within this discussion, the concepts of conformity and obedience are addressed alongside altruism, prosocial behavior, and the psychological mechanisms that lead individuals to deviate from dominant group norms.
Research published in The Journal of Social Psychology defines conformity in its most widely accepted terms as "an effect of majority influence on an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behavior" (Cavazza et al., 2008). Cavazza et al. add that recent research into conformity embraces "situational factors" such as social and group pressure, "individual predispositions" — for example, authoritarian personalities — along with "motivational and cognitive processes" such as social comparison and cognitive restructuring. These approaches to studying conformity, which examine factors that "foster or reduce" the phenomenon, do not, however, provide a thorough subjective account of how the majority impacts the self and others (Cavazza et al.).
The authors suggest that one way to understand an individual's conformity — or non-conformity — with the majority is to examine the "third-person effect": the tendency for a person to believe that persuasive messages (such as those from mass media or advertising) "influence other people more than they influence one's self" (Cavazza et al.). In other words, conformity in this context is something that "other people" are seen as more willing to embrace. This connects to the "tendency to evaluate oneself more favorably than others," also known as the "illusory superiority phenomenon" (Hoorens, 1993).
Regarding obedience, renowned researcher Stanley Milgram explains that obedience is as "basic" a part of the fabric of society "as one can point to" (Milgram, 1974). Writing in Harper's Magazine, Milgram asserts that obedience is "a deeply ingrained behavior tendency" and "a potent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct" (Milgram, 1974). The "dilemma inherent in submission to authority is ancient," and the question of whether one should obey when commands conflict with conscience has been debated as far back as ancient Greece (Milgram, 1974). Milgram explains that some degree of obedience is "a requirement" in communal living situations — every community, large or small, must have some level of authority, otherwise chaos would ensue. The only individuals who need not respond to the commands of others, Milgram insists, are those living in "isolation."
In summary, conformity involves agreeing with or going along with a majority group for any of several reasons — among them group pressure and cultural habits — while obedience is an impulse to do what one believes is correct or necessary, based on respect for or fear of authority.
One productive avenue for identifying altruistic behavior in a psychological and sociological sense is through the analysis of prosocial behavior. A particularly illuminating way to examine how altruism applies to the self and to one's behavior is to study the motives and personalities of volunteers who provide free "direct-care" services — love, nurturing, and empathy — for victims of sexual assault. Research by Chan Hellman and Donnita House, published in The Journal of Social Psychology (2006), identifies the qualities and values that characterize this kind of volunteer-based altruism.
The authors reference Omoto and Snyder (1995, 2002), who identified "antecedents" such as "a helping personality, the motivation to serve, and social support" as influences on individuals' decisions to volunteer (Hellman et al., p. 118). Three factors were found to drive the prosocial behaviors of volunteers working with rape victims: (a) "satisfaction with their experiences" with those in need; (b) "commitment to the organization" that serves victims of sexual assault; and (c) the "persistent" intent "to stay" involved with victims (Hellman et al., p. 118). Volunteers who reported "higher levels of the value of training and social support" were most consistently linked to "higher overall satisfaction" with their interactions with victims. In this way, the self and behavior are directly linked in those who altruistically donate their time and talent to others in need.
Stanley Milgram published Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View in 1974, providing a detailed account of his now-classic obedience experiment. His original solicitation sought "five hundred New Haven men" to participate in "a scientific study of memory and learning" (Milgram, Fig. I, 1974). Volunteers between the ages of 20 and 50 were offered $4.00 (plus fifty cents for "carfare") for spending "only one hour" with "no further obligations." The experiment employed a "shock generator" with switches ranging from low-intensity settings — "Slight Shock," "Moderate Shock," "Strong Shock," and "Very Strong Shock" — up to "Extreme Intensity Shock," "Danger: Severe Shock," and finally "XXX" for the highest levels.
The purpose of this experiment, conducted at Yale University, was to "measure the strength of obedience and the conditions by which it varies" (Milgram, p. 13). Milgram asserted that the "moral principle" closest to being "universally accepted" is that one should never "inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening to oneself" (Milgram, p. 13). To test participants' obedience to instructions — even when those instructions caused harm to innocent people — Milgram designated some participants as "teachers" and others as "learners." The learner was strapped into a chair with an electrode attached to his wrist and asked to listen to lists of simple word pairs, then tested on his memory. Crucially, the "learner" was actually an actor receiving no shock at all — a fact unknown to the "teacher."
Before conducting the experiment, Milgram consulted psychiatrists, college students, and behavioral science faculty members. With "remarkable similarity," they predicted that "virtually all the subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter" (Milgram, 2004). They were wrong. Approximately sixty percent of Yale undergraduates were "fully obedient," and this figure rose to as high as 85% when the experiment was replicated in Munich, Rome, South Africa, Australia, and at Princeton University. Milgram's interpretation: "All people harbor deeply aggressive instincts continually pressing for expression, and the experiment provides institutional justification for the release of these impulses" (Milgram, Harper's Magazine, 1974).
Many of the "teachers" were "totally convinced" that what they were doing was wrong, yet their moral sensibilities were overridden by their desire to avoid "violating the experimenter's definitions" of their competence. In fact, the teachers were, for the most part, "proud" of "doing a good job, obeying the experimenter under difficult circumstances" (Milgram, 1974).
The "essence of obedience," Milgram writes, "is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions" (Milgram, 1974). Once responsibility shifted from the subject's own mind to that of the experimenter, "all of the essential features of obedience follow." As Milgram concludes: "The subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by authority" (Milgram, 1974).
On page 8 of his book, Milgram captures the deeper significance of his findings:
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