- Normative social influence
- Conforming to be liked or accepted by a group, even when you privately disagree. Driven by the desire to fit in and avoid rejection or ridicule. Produces public compliance without necessarily changing private beliefs. Most powerful in ambiguous situations where the desire for social approval is high.
- Informational social influence
- Conforming because you genuinely believe others have more accurate knowledge than you. Particularly powerful in novel or ambiguous situations where you are uncertain what to think or do. More likely to produce genuine private attitude change alongside public compliance.
- Milgram's obedience experiment (1961–62)
- Participants were instructed by an authority figure (experimenter in a lab coat) to administer escalating electric shocks to a confederate learner. Despite the learner's expressed pain, 65% of participants administered the maximum 450-volt shock. Key factors increasing obedience included proximity of authority, distance from victim, and the prestige of the setting.
- Asch's conformity studies (1951)
- Participants judged which of three lines matched a standard line — a task with an obvious correct answer. When confederates unanimously gave the wrong answer, 75% of real participants conformed on at least one trial. Asch showed that conformity dropped dramatically when even one other person broke with the majority.
- Agentic state
- Milgram's concept describing the psychological shift from seeing oneself as a responsible, autonomous agent to seeing oneself as an instrument of an authority's will. In the agentic state, individuals feel less personal responsibility for their actions — a key mechanism explaining extreme obedience.
- Foot-in-the-door technique
- A compliance strategy in which a small initial request is made first, increasing the likelihood the target will agree to a larger subsequent request. Works through commitment and consistency — once people comply with a small request, they are motivated to behave consistently by complying with larger ones.
- Minority influence (Moscovici)
- Serge Moscovici showed that a minority can influence a majority if it is consistent (maintains its position across time and members), flexible (not dogmatic), and willing to engage. Unlike majority influence, which produces rapid but shallow conformity, minority influence tends to be slow but produces deeper, more lasting private attitude change.
- Sherif's autokinetic effect studies
- An early conformity experiment using an ambiguous perceptual task: participants estimated how far a stationary light appeared to move in a dark room (it doesn't move — the movement is an optical illusion). When placed in groups, individual estimates converged on a group norm, demonstrating informational influence in conditions of uncertainty.