conformity-psychology

• what is conformity?

  conformity is following the behaviour and the beliefs of the majority of people. This could be to fit in with the group or because we don't know how to behave in an unusual situation.
• Conformity is the tendency to change our behavior or beliefs to fit in with others around us.
• The Asch paradigm is used to measure conformity by presenting participants with a line matching task where one person gives an incorrect answer and others give correct answers.
• The majority of Asch's participants conformed at least once, but only one participant never conformed.
• Participants who conformed were those who gave the same wrong answer as the confederate.
• Asch's study


  In the 1950's Asch was confused how increased communication may affect peoples opinions. He said this is because peoples opinions can be very easily swayed by hearing what others believe. This is called 'Group pressure'
• Asch's study: aim


  Set out to investigate how people respond to group pressure , he wanted to study conformity. He did this by testing an answer that was clearly wrong to see if even then people are influenced by what others think
• Asch's method


  123 male students participated, They do not know the aims of the study. confederates were people who were hired to play a role, Naive participants were the people who were unsure of the aims of the study. 6-8 conederates, Naive participants thought the others were real participants. All men sat around a table with the naive person near the end. On each trial, each man was asked whether line a, b or c matches. There were 18 trials. On the first few trials the confederates gave the right answers but then gave wrong from trial 12 onwards.
• Conformity


  The act of changing one's behavior or attitude to match that of a group or majority.