Three situational determinants of conformity to social norms.

Goldberg, Solomon C.

doi:10.1037/h0056249

Cited by 124 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The tendency to increase magnitude and probability of conformity reflects the findings of early conformity research (Fisher and Lubin, 1958;Goldberg, 1954;Hovland and Pritzker, 1957;Zimbardo, 1960). Subjects who received MPH exhibited twice the conformity of subjects receiving a PL after moderate social conflict without observed effects on working memory, sustained attention, or fatigue.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modulation of Social Influence by Methylphenidate

Campbell-Meiklejohn

Simonsen

Jensen

et al. 2012

Neuropsychopharmacol

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The ability to infer value from the reactions of other people is a common and essential ability with a poorly understood neurobiology. Commonly, social learning matches one's values and behavior to what is perceived as normal for one's social group. This is known as conformity. Conformity of value correlates with neural activity shared by cognitions that depend on optimum catecholamine levels, but catecholamine involvement in conformity has not been tested empirically. Methylphenidate (MPH) is an indirect dopamine and noradrenalin agonist, commonly used for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder for which it reduces undesirable behavior as evaluated by peers and authority figures, indicative of increased conformity. We hypothesized that MPH might increase conformity of value. In all, 38 healthy adult females received either a single oral 20 mg dose of MPH or placebo (PL). Each subject rated 153 faces for trustworthiness followed immediately by the face's mean rating from a group of peers. After 30 min and a 2-back continuousperformance working-memory task, subjects were unexpectedly asked to rate all the faces again. Both the groups tended to change their ratings towards the social norm. The MPH group exhibited twice the conformity effect of the PL group following moderate social conflict, but this did not occur following large conflicts. This suggests that MPH might enhance signals that would otherwise be too weak to evoke conformity. MPH did not affect 2-back performance. We provide a new working hypothesis of a neurocognitive mechanism by which MPH reduces socially disruptive behavior and provides novel evidence of catecholamine mediation of social learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modulation of Social Influence by Methylphenidate

Campbell-Meiklejohn

Simonsen

Jensen

et al. 2012

Neuropsychopharmacol

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“…First, empirical evidence obtained over a wide variety of constructs does not support this assumption. Studies of such traits as dependence on external influence (Linton, 1955), punctuality (Dudycha, 1936), conformity (Goldberg, 1954), moral character (Hartshorne andMay, 1928, 1929), introversion (Newcomb, 1929), friendliness and conscientiousness (Bem and Allen, 1974) all support the conclusion that the covariation among alternative indices of given personality traits is low. Although there are exceptions to these findings (for instance, Nelsen, Grinder, and Mutterer, 1969;Rubin, 1973), these findings have generally been obtained in developmental studies where age tends to confound and artificially inflate the correlations (Flavell, 1971 ).3 In fact, Mischel (1968) concluded that in general it was unlikely that cross-situational correlations (correlations among alternate indices of a trait) would ever exceed an absolute value of 0.30.…”

Section: Cross-situational Consistencymentioning

confidence: 85%

The Cross-Situational Consistency of Communicative Behaviors

Hewes

Haight

1979

Communication Research

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Cappella for their ideas and criticisms.Personality traits are widely employed as antecedent variables in the explanation of communicative behaviors. This study explored the legitimacy of the use of traits by focusing on the conceptual and empirical justification for one assumption of the trait approach: "cross-situational consistency. " This assumption was not supported for the traits of "reticence" or 'predisposition toward verbal behavior." Evidence also raised questions concerning the general validity of this assumption for other, familiar trait variables. Alternative conceptualizations of the trait/behavior relationship were reviewed and briefly critiqued.The purported link between personality and communication behaviors has been the focus of increasing amounts of empirical investigation in the field of communication. Personality variables such as Machiavellianism, selfconcept, introversion, anomie, dogmatism, and anxiety have all been considered as antecedents of an array of communicative acts. Most recently communication scholars have developed a set of personality variables uniquely derived from within our field. Exemplifying this trend are at

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“…Being informed of apparent group judgements has also been shown to alter individuals' judgements in areas such as judging a person's intelligence from a photograph (Goldberg 1954). Crandall et al (2002) determined there was a strong relationship between the judged acceptability of prejudice towards a target and the level of prejudice reported against that target, r = 0.96.…”

Section: Social Norms and Prejudicementioning

confidence: 95%