conformity

• Factors affecting conformity

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
  • Public vs private
  • Confidence
• Group size - Groups of 3 are the most effective in rate of conformity
• Unanimity - When one confederate gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to 5% - they are less likely to conform as the unanimity is dropped
• Task difficulty - The more difficult the task, the more the participants doubted their ability and were more likely to conform
• Public vs private - When it is private, there is less pressure to conform as the group won't see the results
• Asch had ethical issues - lack of informed consent, deception in that the confederates weren't real participants but participants were fully debriefed
• Synchronic consistency- Consistency among members of minority group
• Diachronic consistency - Consistency over an extended period of time
• Weaknesses of Asch experiment-

  • Artificial tasks
  • the group didn't know each other which meant conforming or not didn't have consequences
  • Lacks ecological validity as it can't be applied to real life
  • All male art students mean it wasn't representative of the general population
• social roles are the behaviour society expects from you
• we internalise and accept a role and internalise these expectations so they shape behaviour
• zimbardo - stanford prision experiment is an example of conformity to social roles
• issues with zimbardo -

  unethical

  observer bias

  artificial environemnt
• orlando - psychiatric ward - conformity to social roles
• reicher and haslam - repeated zimbardos study
• reicher and haslam - behaviour was situational rather than dispositional