Obedience, Conformity, and Social Roles: Active Learning in a ...

3. Act out your study for the class. For example, if you plan
to do something like Zimbardo’s prison study, you might
want to hold up a piece of paper that says “Day 1” and
then act out what happened on Day 1; then hold up another
piece of paper for “Day 2” and act out big events
that you think may have occurred on Day 2, etc.
4. Then, on the board, list for the class at least three variables
that will influence how important your concept is
(e.g., Under what conditions are people more likely to
fall into a social role? Under what conditions are people
less likely to obey an authority figure?). Do not write
much on the board—keep it brief and to the point. If
you can bring these variables into your act, great, but it
is not necessary.
5. Remember your task: Make sure the other students in
the class know what they need to know about your
topic.
Go! You have 25 min.
Students could divide their third of the class in whatever
fashion they chose. Students were familiar with working in
small groups in the class, and most students worked in a traditional
group size of 4 or 5 people. One student, however, led a
group of 11 people in a very successful demonstration of employee
obedience.
Group Work
Although my students were accustomed to completing
brief activities and generally seemed to enjoy them, they
showed an impressive amount of interest in this activity. For
the 25 min during which students worked, I made a conscious
effort not to peek over shoulders and instead offered advice
only if a group requested my assistance. When 25 min had
elapsed, various groups volunteered to present. Skits were
very brief, averaging 2 to 3 min in length. Due to time constraints,
6 of 10 groups demonstrated their study. Although
the remaining 4 groups did not present at all, students turned
their materials in to me at the end of class and received credit
for participating. Two examples of group skits may illustrate
students’ creativity and insight in completing the activity.
Skit 1
Students in one group performed a demonstration of social
roles. While one student held up signs displaying to the audience
the day of each event, the other two students acted as
employees in an office building. On Day 1, the two employees,
Mark and John, chatted about their weekends as they
worked side by side. On Day 2, John was promoted to position
of vice president of the company. On Day 3, John asked
Mark to bring him a cup of coffee, and Mark did so begrudgingly.
Mark began to tell John about an experience he had
had the night before, but John interrupted him with a request
for the morning paper. The skit skipped to Day 5, when Mark
brought John his coffee and paper without complaining—it
was a routine now. On Day 8, Mark handed John his morning
coffee, and John handed Mark some of his clothes to be taken
to the dry cleaner. On Day 10, John requested that Mark call
him Mr. Stone instead of John. Mark cringed but complied.
The skit ended with Mark saying, “Do you need me to work
overtime this weekend, Mr. Stone?”
The students discussed three variables that may have altered
the effect of social roles: (a) age, such that if Mark had
been older than John he may have been more resistant to his
newroleasJohn’shelper;(b)personality,suchthatifMarkhad
been more assertive and confident he would have been more
resistant to his new role; and (c) sex, such that if both employees
had been women, the transformation from employee to
employer may not have been so rapid because the women may
have been concerned about destroying their friendship.
Skit 2
Students in one of the conformity groups played the roles
of witnesses to a mugging. In Part 1 of the skit, several men
and women were casually observing as a woman was mugged.
In the mugging, a man ran into the woman and they tussled
briefly over her purse. The mugger grabbed the purse as he
pushed the woman to the floor, and then ran off. In Part 2 of
the skit, the witnesses to the mugging were being questioned,
as a group, by a police officer who had arrived at the scene.
The police officer asked the witnesses what happened, and
one male witness described the mugging in detail, but left out
the part about the purse being stolen. One of the women
spoke up and said, “Yeah, and he took her purse!” The witnesses
debated for a short time—no one else saw the mugger
take a purse. The woman defended her story for a little while
and then folded, unsure of her own recollection of the event.
The students who designed the skit discussed three variables
that may have impacted conformity: (a) individual versus
group questioning, such that the woman would have been
less likely to conform had she been questioned individually;
(b) presence or absence of a partner, such that the woman
would have been less likely to conform if just one other person
had supported her story; and (c) relatedness to victim,
such that if the woman had been related to the victim she
may have been less likely to doubt what she saw.
After each skit was over, I led the class in a brief discussion.
For example, after Skit 2, I asked whether the woman’s
behavior illustrated normative or informational conformity.
Then I asked students to describe how they would test the
presenting group’s predictions. Thus, through these group
demonstrations, students applied their knowledge of all topics,
not just their own.
Evaluation and Discussion
Students evaluated the activity during the final 5 min of
class. The results appear in Table 1.
On a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)to4(neutral)to
7(strongly agree), 78% agreed or strongly agreed that the activity
was useful in accomplishing its objectives. Eighty percent
disagreedorstronglydisagreedwiththestatement,“Theactivity
was a waste of time.” Sixty percent disagreed or strongly disagreed
with the statement, “I would have preferred to have a
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