Conformity
A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure. If you rise to cheer a game-winning goal, drink coffee, or
... [Show More] wear your hair in a certain style because you want to, and not due to the influence of others, you are not doing this. But if you do those things because other people do them, then you are.
Public Conformity
A type of conformity involving a change in behavior.
Private Conformity
A type of conformity involving a change in belief.
Norms
Imaginary rules that shape how we behave in a group or society.
Acceptance
Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure. You may exercise because you believe that exercise is healthy.
Compliance
Conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing. These acts of compliance are often to reap a reward or avoid a punishment.
Obedience
A type of compliance involving acting in accord with a direct order or command. It means doing something you wouldn't do otherwise because someone else says you need to.
Muzafer Sherif
A Turkish social psychologist. In 1969, his experiment studied the emergence of a social norm in the laboratory by using an autokinetic phenomenon.
Autokinetic Phenomenon
Self motion. The apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark.
Mirror Neurons
Neurons that rehearse or mimic witnessed actions; it suggests a biological mechanism that explains why our yawns so often mirror others' yawns.
Mood Linkage
Sharing ups and downs with the type of people around them. Laugh tracks utilize this logic.
Mass Hysteria
Suggestibility to problems that spreads throughout a large group of people. "Fire and brimstone falling from the sky. Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanos. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together..."
Conversion Disorder
A form of mass hysteria caused when psychological stress is unconsciously expressed in physical symptoms.
Chameleon Effect
A form of social contagion where we mimic someone else's behavior. Mimicry helps people look more helpful and likable, but mimicking another's anger fosters disliking.
Tanganykia Laughter Epidemic
An outbreak of mass hysteria in 1962 rumored to have occurred in or near the village of Kashasha on the western coast of Lake Victoria in the modern nation of Tanzania near the border with Uganda. It began with three girls yucking it up in their school, only for dozens, hundreds, and soon a thousand to follow suit. The school had to be closed down.
Strawberries with Sugar
A Portugese teen drama broadcast from 2003 to 2012. In May 2006, an outbreak of a "virus" was reported in Portuguese schools. 300 or more students at 14 schools reported similar symptoms to those experienced by the characters in a then recent episode where a life-threatening virus affected the school depicted in the show. The case was dismissed as mass hysteria.
Werther Effect
A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide. Also known as copycat suicide, this happened with Kurt Cobain and Robin Williams.
Werther Effect 2.0
A spike of both emulation suicides and homicides after a widely publicized suicide or homicide.
Nominal Group
A group without a name, kind of like a social aggregate.
Heathers
A 1988 dark-comedy film that demonstrates conformity. A regular girl, Veronica, tries to survive the social jungle of high school by sticking with the three most popular girls at school who all share the same name. As she meets a sociopath named JD, her life spirals into a continuous cycle of hate, unintentional murder and indifference, as she exacts revenge on her enemies, also known as her best friends.
Feedback Loop Effect
A social psychological principle in conformity where we're more likely to agree with our friends because vice versa.
Role Reversal
A form of role playing in which two or more participants exchange roles and act out a situation. A useful tactic in social psychology that can help you recognize what you're conforming to.
Solomon Asch
A Polish-American gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He conducted an experiment that had subjects answer how long lines were. He purposefully made subjects self-conscious when their answer was different than the majority, demonstrating how dissonant arousal can warrant group conformity. [Show Less]