Conformity

• Informational Social Influence


  Conform due to lack of knowledge
• Normative Social Influence


  Conform due to a need to be liked
• Conformity


  Changing behaviour as of result of real or imagined pressure from others
• Internalisation


  Accepting beliefs publicly and privately, permanently changing behaviour
• Identification


  Conforming due to value of a group
• Compliance


  Conforming in one moment under a direct pressure
• When was Asch's Line Experiment?

  1951
• Procedure of Asch's line experiment

  Naive participant and 7 confederates, confederates gave intentional wrong answers to see if the participant would comply with the group
• Findings of Asch

  32% conformed and gave the wrong answer

  75% conformed at least once
• How does unanimity affect Asch?

  Rate of conformity dropped to 5% if even only 1 other person disagreed with the group
• How does task difficulty affect Asch?

  The harder the task, the more likely to conform
• Low temporal validity of Asch

  Perrin and Spencer in 1980 repeated and found only 1 of 396 conformed- may have been due to the high patriotism in america in the 1950s due to the anti-communist movement
• How does the controlled nature of Asch affect the study?

  Low ecological validity as the situation does not affect one in real life
• When was the Stanford Prison Experiment and who did it?

  1971, Philip Zimbardo
• Procedure of Stanford Prison Experiment

  Mock prison was made and 24 volunteers were assigned a guard or prisoner randomly. The experiment lasted 6 days due to extreme conformity.
• Finding of Zimbardo

  The participants conformed so severely, guards were violent to prisoners and everyone acted like it was actually a prison
• Strengths of Zimbardo

  The participants were tested for emotional stability so factors like personality would not affect the study - high internal validity

  90% of conversations were about prison life
• Opposing research of Zimbardo (lack of realism)

  Banuazzi and Mohavedi (1975) argued the participants were play acting in coherence to stereotypes
• Findings of Reicher and Haslam against Zimbardo

  2006- found that prisoners took control of the prison rather than guards, shows that Zimbardo's research was not generalisable