By nature, humans are extremely social creatures. All of our thoughts and behaviors occur in a social context. Consequently, social psychology is one of the most captivating and well studied disciplines within psychology. Social psychology is the scientific study of the ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people. This section is broken down into Social Influence (below), Social Norms, Social Cognition, Morality, and Culture, all of which are important facets of social psychology.
Social Influence
Social influence is exerted when a person changes their behavior or beliefs in response to perceived pressure from others. A certain degree of social influence is needed for people to work together and for society to function properly, but sometimes it can have detrimental consequences. Social influence can manifest in three different ways.
Conformity: We change our behavior based on both implicit and explicit social rules. We do this out of a desire to be right (informational conformity) or a desire to be liked (normative conformity). Informational conformity leads people to privately accept that they are wrong and others are right, while normative conformity only leads people to conform publicly (while still holding their personal belief privately).
Compliance: We change our behavior or perform tasks when others request that we do so. Some moderators of compliance are mindlessness (we comply when not paying attention), reciprocity (we comply in response to a kind act), commitment and consistency (we comply with a request when we have agreed to similar requests in the past), and liking (we comply with requests from people we like).
Obedience: We change our behavior or perform acts when others command us to. We are more likely to obey when the person giving orders is an authority figure with high status, when we believe the authority figure (not ourselves) will be responsible for our actions, when the consequences of our actions gradually go from mild to severe, and when there is no clear-cut point that we can identify as "going too far." Obedience is a slippery slope. Once we agreed to one command, disobeying future commands become increasingly difficult.
The initial study of social influence was inspired by the actions taken by the Nazis during World War II. When asked about atrocious acts they had committed, many soldiers stated that they were "just following orders." Studies such as Milgram's Obedience Studies (1963) and the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) demonstrated how the power of social influence and social norms can cause people to behave in evil ways.
SPOILER WARNING: The following description and video contains important plot information from The Reader.
In this clip from The Reader (2008), Hanna, a former guard in the Nazi army testifies in court about an incident where she, along with the other guards, kept a group of Jews locked in a church as it burned to the ground. Her defense is more in line with a case of deindividuation (discussed in the "Social Cognition" page), but it is clear that her actions were also derived from conformity and a need to obey her superiors.