Social Influence and Obedience Practice Quiz (20 questions)

Explanation

Social influence involves changes in perceptions, judgments, attitudes, or behaviors when a person encounters those of others. Coercion is merely one possible means of producing influence, not its definition.

Explanation

The six vectors are personality factors, social perception, promises of need satisfaction and rewards, interpersonal interaction, group phenomena, and organizational power. The other sets combine related social or psychological concepts but omit the specified framework.

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Agreement to a request is voluntary, while obedience is obtained through coercion or submission to a legitimate authority. The other distinctions confuse this difference with context, outcome, or perceived character.

Explanation

Coercion usually produces behavioral change without a corresponding change in mindset or attitude. Sustainable engagement is more closely associated with participation, persuasion, or internal acceptance than with coercive pressure.

Explanation

Lewin found that 32% of participants engaged in the group-decision condition, compared with 3% in the control condition. The reversed percentages misread the comparison, while the other figures belong to a different experiment or are unsupported.

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Identification naturalizes behavior by connecting it more strongly to personality and orienting identification toward higher social values. Cutting the behavior-personality link and establishing a preventive contract describes de-identification instead.

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De-identification prevents repetition by breaking the naturalization link between behavior and personality and establishing a contract about preventing recurrence. Strengthening that link and connecting behavior with higher values characterizes identification.

Explanation

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort produced by mutually conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, which motivates restoration of consistency. Cognitive consistency instead refers to harmony among attitudes and behaviors, not conflict.

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Engagement links an individual to their own action through a promise to act or by having already begun acting, activating responsibility and persistence. A belief, agreement, or feeling about an issue does not by itself constitute engagement.

Explanation

Engagement is strengthened when an action is public, explicit, repeated, irrevocable, costly, consequential, and freely performed. A private or easily reversible intention has fewer of these features and therefore creates a weaker link to the action.

Explanation

Cialdini identified consistency, reciprocity, social proof, authority, likeability, and scarcity as six weapons of influence. Reciprocity concerns repaying what another person has given, whereas consistency concerns alignment with previous behavior.

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Foot-in-the-door gains compliance by first obtaining agreement to an inexpensive behavior and then requesting a more costly behavior consistent with it. Starting with a very costly request followed by a smaller one describes door-in-the-face.

Explanation

Reciprocity increases compliance by creating a perceived obligation to return a gift or concession. Likeability works through positive feelings toward a familiar, similar, or attractive person rather than through repayment.

Explanation

Door-in-the-face first presents a costly request expected to be refused, then follows with a less costly request that appears comparatively reasonable. The small-then-large sequence is characteristic of foot-in-the-door.

Explanation

In an agentic state, the individual sees themselves as an instrument of a social, institutional, or ideological entity and displaces responsibility to that authority. An autonomous state involves seeing oneself as responsible, while direct threats describe coercion rather than the agentic shift.

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Legitimate authority derives influence from socially recognized status, such as institutional, intellectual, symbolic, or social standing. Coercion relies directly on force or threat, whereas gifts and personal attraction reflect different influence mechanisms.

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The learner was a confederate who acted as though he were receiving shocks, while the teacher was the genuine participant. The experimenter did not receive shocks or serve as the learner.

Explanation

Milgram reported that 65% of participants continued to the maximum apparent shock of 450 volts. The prediction that almost nobody would pass 150 volts came from psychiatrists before the experiment, not from the observed results.

Explanation

Obedience tends to rise when the authority has greater prestige or is physically closer to the participant. Remote or recorded instructions generally weaken the authority’s influence rather than strengthening it.

Explanation

Obedience decreases when the victim’s suffering is more visible or when other participants model disobedience. Greater proximity and prestige of the experimenter generally produce the opposite effect by strengthening authority pressure.