About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about some early research into social influence, focusing in particular on: (i) obedience as the first form of social influence studied, which was the focus of many psychologists during Nuremberg trials of the Nazis after World War Two; (ii) Milgram’s 1963 obedience study, which assessed whether ordinary people would electrocute another person, potentially to death, if an authoritative figure demanded that they do; (iii) compliance as rooted in the fundamental rule of reciprocity; (iv) conformity as studied by Asch in his 1951 ‘line study’, whereby people were found to purposefully provide the wrong answer to an easy question, if their peers were providing it.

About the lecturer

Dr Ayoub Bouguettaya is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Dr Bouguettaya’s research interests are in social psychology and how knowledge from that field can be applied to others, particularly health, including how we can apply social identity theory to societal problems, as well as investigating the different perspectives one might take on those issues. Some of Dr Bouguettaya’s recent publications include 'The relationship between gambling advertising and gambling attitudes, intentions and behaviours: a critical and meta-analytic review' (2020) and 'The Effect of a Food Addiction Explanation Model for Weight Control and Obesity on Weight Stigma' (2020).