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Essay On The Effect Of Authority On Likelihood To Conform

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Essay On The Effect Of Authority On Likelihood To Conform
Running head: EFFECT OF AUTHORITY

Effect of Authority on the Likelihood to Conform

Abstract To explore the relationship between increased power or social status and a person’s likelihood to conform, forty high school students (5 boys and 5 girls from each grade level: freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors) will be taken one at a time into a room with five confederates (classmates who are considered by their peers to be in the “popular crowd”). The participants will be shown a variety of simple addition problems (1+1 through 10+10) and will be asked to choose the correct answer to the equation from four answer choices. To every question, the confederates will each answer the same incorrect answer. The hypothesis is that, over the course of the study, the participants will begin to answer the same incorrect answers as the “popular” confederates. The predicted results will demonstrate the theory that obedience to authority continues to have a strong impact on the decisions people will make.

Effect of Authority on the Likelihood to Conform The events that occurred in Germany during Adolf Hitler’s reign as chancellor were devastating. The list of questions people have regarding the Holocaust is extensive and covers multiple areas of psychology. It is natural for a few “bad apples” to reside in a large group of …show more content…
The researcher will then use a one-way ANOVA to determine if there will be any significance in the findings of the study. The experiment has only one manipulation, which will be the confederates that continue to answer the questions incorrectly. The dependent variable of this study will be the amount of mathematical problems it takes the participant to begin to answer the questions the same way as his or her peers
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