In all likelihood, participants in Milgram's obedience experiments (conducted in the 1960s and 1970s) were willing to administer increasingly severe shocks to a confederate learner because they were concerned that the experimenter would be disappointed or perhaps even angry with them. Such concerns reflect the power of __________ to induce obedience to authority.

In psychology, normative social influence refers to a type of social influence that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by other people.

Normative social influence is what makes us change our behavior in order to fit or be accepted in a particular group. Thus, we act the way the group acts (although we don't necessarily accept the behaviors internally, or approve of them).

The Milgram's obedience experiments consisted in a series of experiment where participants were supposed to administer electric shocks to other people and the intensity of these shocks were supposed to be getting stronger until the point that, if they had been real, they would've had the power to kill participants.

However, participants were willing to administer increasingly severe shocks because they were concerned that the experimenter would be disappointed or angry with them.

Thus, the participants changed their behavior (by administering the shocks even though they didn't agree with it) to be accepted by the experimenters and have their approval.

This reflects the power of normative social influence to induce obedience to authority.