conformity

• what's conformity?


  a type of social influence where we choose to go along with the majority(majority influence).
• what are the three types of conformity that Kelman(1958) suggested?

  • Identification
  • Internalisation
  • compliance
• What is identification conformity?


  Individuals conform to the expectations of a social role. For example, nurses and police officers.
• what is internalisation conformity?


  A person publicly changes their behaviour to fit in with the group, while also agreeing with them privately.
• what is compliance conformity?


  going with the majority(publicly), in spite of not agreeing with them(privately).
• The Stanford Prison Experiment- Zimbardo(1973)

  • Lab study- prison
  • Male sample- randomly split into guards and prisoners
  • uniform for guards(guard uniform, polarized glasses, baton)
  • uniform for prisoners(dress like 'smock', ankle chain, identification numbers, stockings over their head)
  • prisoners arrested in their homes
  • Experiment only lasted 6 days!
• What is Obedience?


  it is a form of social influence that involves acting on the orders of an authority figure.
• Asch devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain.
• Variables investigated by Asch

  1. Group size
  2. Unanimity
  3. Task Difficulty
• What was the main focus of Asch's experiment regarding group size?

  To determine if group size was more important than group agreement
• How did Asch test the effect of group size on conformity?

  By varying the number of confederates from 1 to 15
• What type of relationship did Asch find between group size and conformity rate?

  A curvilinear relationship
• What happened to the conformity rate as the group size increased?

  Conformity increased with group size but only up to a point
• What was the conformity rate when there were 3 confederates?

  31.8%
• What occurred when more than 3 confederates were present in Asch's experiment?

  The conformity rate leveled off and showed little difference
• What does Asch's finding suggest about people's sensitivity to others' opinions?

  Most people are very sensitive to the views of others
• How many confederates were enough to sway opinion according to Asch's findings?

  Just one or two confederates
• Who introduced the concept of unanimity in conformity studies?

  Asch
• What was the role of the confederate in Asch's study?

  The confederate disagreed with the other confederates
• How did the presence of a dissenter affect the genuine participant's conformity?

  The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
• What was the effect on conformity rates when the majority was unanimous?

  The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
• What does the presence of a dissenter suggest about the influence of the majority?

  The influence of the majority depends largely on it being unanimous
• What does the perception of cracks in the majority's unanimous view lead to?

  Non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's unanimous view
• Task Difficulty

  • Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would after the degree of conformity.
  • Asch increased the difficulty of the line- judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length.
  • This meant it became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines.
  • Asch found that conformity increased.
• A limitation of Asch's participants were American men. Other research suggests that women may be more conformist since they may be concerned about being accepted.
• One limitation of Asch's research is that the task and situation were artificial. The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform.
• One strength of Asch's research is support from other studies on the effects of task difficulty.
• Another strength of Asch's research is that he used real people as confederates, which makes his results more valid than if he had used actors or students pretending to be confederates.
• Informational social influence is about who has the better information- you or the rest of the group.

  For example, you may not know the answer to a question in class. But if most of your class gives one answer, you accept it because you feel they are likely to be right.

  We follow the group's behavior (the majority) because we want to be right.
• Informational social influence is a cognitive process because it is to do with what you think. It leads to a permanent change in opinion/behaviour (internalisation).
• Informational social influence is most likely to happen in situations that are new to a person or where there is some ambiguity.

  It also occurs in crisis situations where decisions have to be made quickly and we assume that the group is more likely to be right.
• Normative social influence is about norms or typical behaviour for a social group. Norms regulate the behaviour of groups and individuals so it is not surprising that we pay attention to them.
• Normative social influence is an emotional rather than cognitive process. It leads to a temporary change in opinions/behaviour (compliance).
• Normative Social influence is likely to occur with strangers where you may feel concerned about rejection. It may also occur with people you know because we are mostly concerned about the social approval of our friends.
• One strength of Normative social influence is that evidence supports it as an explanation of conformity.

  For example, when Asch interviewed his participants, some said they conformed because they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer and they were afraid of disapproval.
• What did Lucas et al. find regarding participants' conformity to incorrect answers?

  Participants conformed more often when the maths problems were difficult.
• Why did participants rely on the answers they were given in the study by Lucas et al.?

  Because the situation became ambiguous when the problems were hard.
• What happens when the maths problems are easy according to Lucas et al.'s findings?

  Participants 'knew their own minds' and did not conform.
• How does the study by Lucas et al. illustrate the concept of informational social influence?

  It shows that people rely on others' answers in ambiguous situations.
• What does the study by Lucas et al. suggest about the validity of informational social influence as an explanation of conformity?

  It suggests that it is a valid explanation because the results align with predictions.