Factors Affecting Conformity and Obedience

Both conformity and obedience are influenced by a range of situational and dispositional factors. Understanding these factors is essential for explaining why people sometimes follow the group or obey authority and why they sometimes resist.

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Factors Affecting Conformity

1. Group Size

Asch found that conformity increased as group size increased, but only up to a point:

• 1 confederate: very little conformity
• 2 confederates: conformity increased slightly
• 3 confederates: conformity increased significantly
• Beyond 3–4: little additional increase in conformity

This suggests there is a threshold beyond which adding more people to the majority has diminishing effects.

2. Unanimity

Conformity drops dramatically when the unanimity of the group is broken:

• When one confederate gave the correct answer, conformity dropped from about 37% to 5.5%
• Even when the dissenter gave a different wrong answer, conformity still dropped significantly
• Having just one ally is enough to dramatically reduce the pressure to conform

3. Task Difficulty

When the task is more difficult (i.e. the correct answer is less obvious), conformity increases. This is because people are more likely to look to others for guidance when they are uncertain (informational social influence).

4. Cultural Factors

Cross-cultural research shows that conformity rates vary:

• Collectivist cultures (e.g. Japan, China) tend to show higher conformity — group harmony is highly valued
• Individualist cultures (e.g. USA, UK) tend to show lower conformity — independence is more valued
• Smith and Bond (1993) found conformity rates ranging from 14% to 58% across different cultures

5. Personality

Some individuals are naturally more independent and resistant to conformity:

• People with high self-esteem are less likely to conform
• People with a strong internal locus of control (belief that they control their own outcomes) are more likely to resist group pressure
• People with expertise in the task area are less likely to conform

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Factors Affecting Obedience

1. Presence and Proximity of Authority

• Obedience is highest when the authority figure is physically present and in close proximity
• When Milgram's experimenter gave orders by telephone, obedience dropped to 20.5%

2. Legitimacy of Authority

• People are more likely to obey someone they perceive as a legitimate authority (someone with the right to give orders)
• Legitimacy can come from: uniforms, titles, institutional affiliation, or expertise
• Bickman (1974): people were more likely to obey a request from someone in a guard's uniform than from someone in ordinary clothes

3. Proximity to the Victim

• Obedience decreases as the person being harmed becomes more visible and closer
• This is because proximity makes it harder to maintain the agentic state — the person can see the consequences of their actions

4. Social Support for Disobedience

• Having allies who resist authority makes disobedience much easier
• In Milgram's variation with two confederate teachers who refused, obedience dropped to 10%

5. Gradual Commitment

• Milgram's study used gradually increasing shocks — once participants agreed to give a small shock, it was difficult to identify a clear stopping point
• This is similar to the foot-in-the-door technique — agreeing to a small request makes it harder to refuse subsequent larger requests

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Resisting Social Influence

Resisting Conformity

Strategy	How It Works
Independent thinking	Valuing your own judgement over the group's
Having an ally	Just one person who agrees with you dramatically reduces conformity
Confidence	People with high self-esteem and knowledge are better at resisting
Private responses	When responses are anonymous, conformity decreases
Awareness	Knowing about conformity research (like Asch) may help people recognise and resist group pressure

Resisting Obedience

Strategy	How It Works
Social support	Others who resist make disobedience easier
Questioning legitimacy	Asking "Does this person have the right to tell me what to do?"
Awareness of consequences	Being close to the victim makes disobedience more likely
Time to think	Rapid demands for obedience are harder to resist than those with time for reflection
Education	Understanding Milgram's findings may help people recognise and resist destructive obedience

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Locus of Control

Rotter (1966) proposed the concept of locus of control — the extent to which a person believes they have control over their own life:

flowchart LR
    LOC["LOCUS OF CONTROL<br/>Rotter 1966"]
    LOC --> INT["INTERNAL<br/>’I control<br/>my outcomes’"]
    LOC --> EXT["EXTERNAL<br/>’Luck / fate / others<br/>control my outcomes’"]
    INT --> R1["Takes personal<br/>responsibility"]
    INT --> R2["Questions<br/>instructions"]
    INT --> R3["RESISTS conformity<br/>and obedience<br/>Blass 1991"]
    EXT --> S1["Accepts orders<br/>uncritically"]
    EXT --> S2["Conforms to<br/>group pressure"]
    EXT --> S3["SUSCEPTIBLE to<br/>conformity and obedience"]

Type	Belief	Effect on Social Influence
Internal locus of control	"I am in control of what happens to me"	More resistant to conformity and obedience
External locus of control	"What happens to me is determined by outside forces"	More susceptible to conformity and obedience

People with an internal locus of control are more likely to take personal responsibility and resist social pressure because they believe their actions matter and they can make their own choices.

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Key Points

• Conformity is affected by: group size, unanimity, task difficulty, culture, and personality.
• Obedience is affected by: authority presence, legitimacy, victim proximity, social support, and gradual commitment.
• Resistance to conformity: allies, independent thinking, private responses.
• Resistance to obedience: social support, questioning legitimacy, education about obedience.
• Internal locus of control is associated with greater resistance to social influence.

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Individual factors and cultural factors

AQA specifies that candidates should be able to discuss individual factors (personality, authoritarianism, locus of control) and cultural factors (individualist vs collectivist cultures) alongside situational factors. Two points are worth developing: