The Social Animal

A broad overview of social psychology constructed around a small group of experiments loosely connected by Forced Conformity Theory – starting with a quick clip of an Asch test in progress. This is followed by an experiment led by Dr. Stanley Schachter that examines the reactions of a small group of students to a student plant who refuses to conform to their collective viewpoint about a (fictional) contentious issue.

This experiment took place in 1963, but if you’ve got even a passing familiarity with 21^st century reality TV shows you’ll recognise the underlying process at work as the non-conformist is systematically isolated and eventually excluded from the group…

The next segment focuses on Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance which we’ve covered elsewhere.

The final segemnt is introudced by Dr. Morton Deutsch and explores concepts of competition and cooperation based around an experiment to investigate the effect of threat on a bargaining process.

In the experiment two respondents are charged with going head-to-head in a competition to see who can make the most money – they can either co-operate to make modest profits or they can introduce a threat to try to force their competition to conform to their wishes…

A final fun fact here is that a ceretain Dr Philip Zimbardo played a part in helping design Festinger’s experiment…