Follow the Leader (Inducing Conformity)

Assignment 3: Follow the leader (Inducing conformity)

Get together with a group of people—about 5-7 would be a good number—and try to get strangers to conform to your behavior. This will only work if you appear to be unrelated strangers. See the suggested ideas below to get a sense of what this entails. Submit a 2-3 page paper (independently written—not written as a group) in which you describe your experience, focusing on the following questions:

 Describe what exactly your group did, and where.

 Did you get strangers to conform? How many? What exactly did they do?

 Did only certain kinds of people conform (e.g., only men, only people who were alone, etc.)?

 Did you get any other reactions out of people? Did anything unexpected, funny, or weird happen?

 In what ways was your experience consistent with research on conformity? In what ways was it discrepant? Ideas (it’s better to think up your own rather than to take one of these, but you can if you want):

 Everyone board the same elevator (pretending not to know each other) with one or two unsuspecting strangers. All of you face the rear of the elevator. See if the strangers (or anyone else who boards the elevator later) will face the rear as well.  Everyone stand at the foot of a tall building (again pretending not to know each other) and stare up at the building, as if intently watching something. See if you can get passersby to stop and look, too.

 Everyone get in line at a supermarket checkout facing the wrong way and see if others will do the same. Or everyone get in the same line, pretending not to know each other, and each one do the same counter-normative thing (such as tipping the cashier, or shaking his hand). See if the strangers in line behind you follow your example.

 One of you drop a bunch of loose papers in a crowded place and the others (pretending to be strangers) stop to help pick them up. See how many other people also stop to help. Notes:

 You should not interact directly with any of the observing strangers. The idea of conformity is that people simply copy your behavior without being told or asked to do so in any way.

 If it works, try to replicate it. If it doesn’t work, see if you can figure out why and fix it so that it does (Do you need more confederates? Do you need to target strangers who are alone? Do you need a better location or time of day?)  Do not enter the situation as an identifiable group, but appear as if you’re strangers to each other.

 Keep a straight face and act as if nothing at all is unusual, or it won’t work.

 Use common sense: be sure that you’re not upsetting or interfering with anyone or causing a disruption.  Don’t try to incite inappropriate or potentially embarrassing behavior.  Don’t interfere with any university operations (don’t do this in class, for example).

 Yes, it’s OK for you to do this with a group of your friends who aren't in this class. You don’t have to all be students in this class. Only the participants who are actually students in this class (who want to get credit for the assignment) need to write the paper, of course! Important: To help ensure that you’re not unwittingly putting yourself or others at risk of harm, someone from your group must run your idea by the instructor and get approval before you actually go out in public and try it!