Sherif

• The Sherif study


  Sherif conducted one of the classic conformity experiments
• What visual illusion did Sherif use in his 1935 experiment?


  The autokinetic effect
• What is the autokinetic effect?


  An optical illusion where a stationary point of light appears to move in a dark room
• What deception did Sherif use in his experiment regarding the light?


  He told subjects he would move the light
• What type of experimental design did Sherif use in his study?


  Repeated measures design
• What were the differences in estimates among subjects in Sherif's experiment?


  Subjects produced widely varying estimates of the light's movement
• What were some of the estimates given by subjects in Sherif's experiment?


  Estimates ranged from 2 inches to 8 inches
• What was the second part of Sherif's experiment about?


  • Participants were placed in small groups of about three people
  • Their individual estimates were compared to group estimates
  • This was also a repeated measures design
• How did Sherif manipulate the composition of the groups in the second part of his experiment?


  He grouped two similar estimators with one dissimilar estimator
• What was required of each participant in the group during Sherif's experiment?


  Each participant had to say aloud how much they thought the light moved
• Findings


  • firstly, under these conditions the estimates of different subjects converged (i.e. they make more alike)

  • Secondly when faced with an ambiguous (uncertain) situation the participants look to others in the group for guidance that is informational social influence.
• evaluation of the Sherif study

  (higher level skill A03).

  INTRO:

  While Sherif believed that he had shown that conformity does indeed take place, others notably, Asch, were very critical of his findings.

  Asch has done more than most to increase our understanding of conformity
• Weaknesses


  1 according to Ash the fact that the task used by Sherif was ambiguous (i.e. there was no right or wrong answer) made it difficult to draw any definite conclusion about conformity.

  If people yield to group pressure when the answer is obvious this is a much stricter test of conformity.
• what did Asch do?


  Perhaps his greatest contribution to psychology was devise a procedure to assess how much people will conform to the opinion of others even in situations where the answer is certain (unambiguous)

  As a simple perceptual task that involved participants deciding which of three comparison lines of different length matched a standard line.

  In a pilot test (a pilot test is a test before the actual test) Asch tested 36 participants on 20 slightly different versions of the task.
• what were the findings of the pilot test?


  they made a total of three mistakes in the 720 trials.
• what was the purpose of the pilot study?


  The purpose of the pilot study (which involved participants who weren’t to take part in the actual experiment) was to establish that the task really was simple, and the answer was obvious and unambiguous
• Second weakness

  Sherif used a very artificial situation and it is not clear how relevant his findings are for most everyday situations.

  We rarely find ourselves in groups estimating how far we think light has moved- lacks ecological validity.
• which type of demonstrated in Sherif’s study? Why do you think this?


  Internalisation- Sherif’s experiment, participants were internalising others judgements and making them their own. Faced with an ambiguous situation, participants were guided by what others believed to reduce their uncertainty. this is related to ISI.