if someone in a position of authority
told you to like stop walking on the
grass you would stop walking on the
grass right and if they told you to help
someone's grandma across the street or
pick up your dog's poop or put your
shoes on before you go into a store you
probably comply but what if they ordered
you to physically hurt another person
you're probably thinking no way I could
never do something like that but there's
a good chance you're wrong
nearly 1960s Yale University
psychologist Stanley Milgram began what
would become one of social psychology x'
most famed and chilling experiments
Milgram began his work during the widely
publicized trial of World War two Nazi
war criminal Adolf Eichmann Eichmann's
defense along with other Nazis for
sending millions of people to their
deaths was that he was simply following
the orders of his superiors and while
that may have been true it didn't fly in
court and Eichmann was ultimately
executed for his crimes
but the question got Milgram to thinking
what might the average person be capable
of when under orders so for his initial
experiment Milgram recruited 40 male
volunteers using newspaper ads he built
a phony shock generator with a scale of
30 switches that could supposedly
deliver shocks and increments from 30
volts up to 450 volts labeled with terms
like slight shock too dangerous shock up
to simply xxx he then paired each
volunteer participant with someone who
was also apparently a participant but
was in fact one of Milgram's colleagues
posing as a research subject he had them
draw straws to see who would be the
learner and who would be the teacher the
volunteers didn't realize that the draw
was fixed so that they'd always be the
teacher while Milgram's buddy would be
the learner so the fake learner was put
into a room strapped to a chair and
wired up with electrodes a teacher the
person who was being studied and a
researcher who was played by an actor
went into another room with a shock
generator that the teacher had no idea
was fake the learner was asked to
memorize a list of word pairs and the
participant was told that he'd be
testing the learners recall of those
words and should administer an electric
shock for every wrong answer
increasing the shock level a little bit
each time from here the pretend learner
purposely gave mainly wrong answers
eliciting shocks from the participant if
a participant hesitated perhaps swayed
by the learners Yelp's of pain the
researcher gave orders to make sure he
continued these orders were delivered in
a series of four prods the first was
just please continue if the participant
didn't comply the researcher issued
other prods until he did he'd say the
experiment requires you to continue and
then it's absolutely essential that you
continue and finally you have no choice
but to continue even Milgram was
by the first round of experiments about
two-thirds of the participants ended up
delivering the maximum 450 volts shock
all of the volunteers continued to at
least 300 volts over a year's Milgram
kept conducting this experiment changing
the situation in different ways to see
if it had any effect on people's
obedience what he repeatedly found was
that obedience was highest when the
person giving the orders was nearby and
was perceived as an authority figure
especially if they were from a
prestigious institution this was also
true if the victim was depersonalized or
placed at a distance such as in another
room plus subjects were more likely to
comply with orders if they didn't see
anyone else disobeying if there were no
role models of defiance in the end
Milgram's path-breaking work shed some
seriously harsh light on the enormous
power of two of the key cornerstone
topics of social psychology social
influence and conformity we all
conformed to some sort of social norms
like following traffic laws or even
obeying the dress codes for different
roles and environments when we know how
to act in a certain group or setting
life just seems to go more smoothly some
of this conformity is non conscious
automatic mimicry like how you're likely
to laugh if you see someone else
laughing or nod your head when they're
nodding in this way
group behavior can be contagious but
overall conformity describes how we
adjust our behavior or thinking to
follow the behavior or rules of the
group we belong to social psychologists
have always been curious about the
degree to which a person might follow or
rebel against their group social norms
during the early 1950s Polish American
psychologist Solomon Asch expressed the
power of conformity through a simple
test in this experiment a volunteer is
told that they're participating in the
study on visual perception and is seated
at a table with five other people the
experimenter shows the group a picture
of a standard line and three comparison
lines of various lengths and then asked
the people to say which of the three
lines matches the comparison line it's
clear to anyone with any kind of good
vision that the second line is the right
answer but the thing is most if not all
of the other people in the group start
choosing the wrong line the participant
doesn't know that those other people are
all actors a common deception used in
social psychological research and they
are intentionally giving the wrong
answer
this causes the real participant to
struggle with trusting their own eyes or
going with the group and the utmost
subjects still gave what they knew with
the correct
answer but more than a third were
essentially just willing to give the
wrong answer to mesh with the group ash
and subsequent researchers found that
people are more likely to conform to a
group if they're made to feel
incompetent or insecure and are in a
group of three or more people especially
if all those people agree it also
certainly doesn't hurt if the person
admires the group because of maybe their
status or their attractiveness and if
they feel that others are watching their
behavior we also tend to conform more if
we're from a culture that puts
particular emphasis on respect for
social standards this might sound a
little bit familiar like it's all of
high-school fraternities or sororities
the big company you work for or any
other group that you've ever been a part
of the classic experiments of Milgram
and ash showed us that people conformed
for lots of different reasons but they
both underscored the power of situation
in conformity whether that situation
elicits respect for authority fear of
being different fear of rejection or
simply a desire for approval this is
known as normative social influence the
idea that we comply in order to fuel our
need to be liked or belong but of course
groups influence our behavior in more
ways than just conformity and obedience
for example we may perform better or
worse in front of the group this is
called social facilitation and it's what
might say help you sprint the last
hundred meters of a race if people are
cheering you on but it's also what can
make you nervous enough to forget the
word to that poetry you were supposed to
be slamming in front of a crowd but
that's what can happen in front of a
group what happens when you're actually
part of a group do you work harder or
start slacking one study found that if
you blindfold students hand them a rope
and tell them to pull as hard as they
can in a game of tug-of-war the subjects
will put in less work if they think
they're part of a team instead of
pulling by themselves about 20% less it
turns out this tendency to exert less
effort when you're not individually
accountable is called social loafing
that's pretty good you can now add the
word loafing to your scientific
vocabulary but a group's ability to
either arouse or lessen our feelings of
personal responsibility can make us do
more dangerous things than just phone in
some group homework assignment it can
also lead to D individuation the loss of
self awareness and restraint that can
occur in group situations being part of
a crowd can create a powerful
combination of arousal
and anonymity it's part of what fuels
riots and lynch mobs and online trolling
the less individual we feel the more
we're at the mercy of the experience of
our group whether it's good or bad and
it should come as no surprise that the
attitudes and beliefs we bring to a
group grow stronger when we talk with
others who share them this is a process
psychologists know as group polarization
and it often translates into a nasty
us-versus-them dynamic and you know what
is great at polarizing groups the
Internet the Internet has made it easier
than ever to connect like-minded people
and magnify their inclinations this can
of course breed haters like racist may
become more racist in the absence of
conflicting viewpoints but it can and
often does work for good promoting
education crowdsourcing things like
fundraising and organizing people to
fight all kinds of world sock and group
dynamics can not only affect our
personal decisions they can also
influence really big decisions on a
larger even national scale groupthink is
a term coined by social psychologist
Irving Janis to describe what happens
when a group makes bad decisions because
they're too caught up in the unique
internal logic of their group when a
group gets wrapped up in itself and
everyone agrees with each other no one
stops to think about other perspectives
as a result you get some big and bad
ideas including some enormous historical
Fiasco's like the Watergate cover-up and
the Bay of Pigs invasion in the
Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident so
while two heads may often be better than
one it's important to make sure those
heads are still open to different
opinions or they can do some really dumb
stuff in the end it's best to understand
ourselves and our decisions as informed
simultaneously by both individual and
group factors personality and situation
and don't get too freaked out about what
people are capable of I mean just think
back to Milgram's experiment for the 2/3
of us who would shock someone to death
in the right circumstance there's
another third who wouldn't reminding us
that while group behavior is powerful so
is individual choice today you learned
about the power of social influence
conformity and authority we looked at
the shocking results of the famous
Milgram experiment the concept of
automatic mimicry and how Solomon Asch
proved the power of conformity in
situation you also learned how normative
social influence sways us how
social facilitation can make or break
your performance and how social loafing
makes people lazy in the group and
finally we discussed how harmful
deindividuation group polarization and
groupthink
can be thank you for watching especially
to all of our subbable subscribers who
make crash course possible for
themselves and for everyone else to find
out how you can become a supporter just
go to subbable.com this episode was
written by Kathleen Yale edited by Blake
de pastino and our consultant is dr.
Ranjit Bhagwat our director and editor
is Nicholas Jenkins the script
supervisor is Michael Aranda who is also
our sound designer and the graphics team
is thought cafe