Comformity

• What is conformity?

  Changinging behaviour, attitudes or values due to real or imagined group pressure
• How many levels of conformity are there?

  3
• What are the names of the 3 levels of conformity?

  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• What does compliance mean?

  Going along with others but not changing personal opinions and behaviour
• What does Identification mean?

  Public opinions and behaviour will change but not necessarily opinion in private.
• Why do people conform in identification?

  Due to valuing something about the group so we want to be part of it
• What does Internalisation mean?

  When a person genuinely accept the norms of a group. There is a public and private change to both opinions and behaviour.
• How is the change in Internalisation?

  It is permanent because attitudes have been internalised. The change will continue to exist even if the group leaves.
• What is the lowest level of conformity?

  Compliance
• What is the highest level of conformity?

  Internalisation
• What is the middle ground of conformity?

  Identification
• What is Informational Social Influence (ISI)?

  We agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well.
• What does Informational Social Influence (ISI) lead to?

  Internalisation
• What is Normative Social Influence (NSI)?

  We agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked.
• What does Normative Social Influence (NSI)?

  Compliance
• Is ISI an emotional or cognitive process?

  Cognitive
• Why is ISI a cognitive process?

  We change the way that we think and it leads to a permanent change in behaviour
• Is NSI an emotional or cognitive process?

  Emotional
• Why is NSI and emotional process?

  It leads to a temporary change in behaviour
• Research Support - ASCH 1951

  THE LINE EXPERIMENT

  Procedure - Participants were asked to judge LINE LENGTHS in groups with confederates who were intentionally given wrong answers.

  • Each group had 6-8 confederates and 1 naive participants.
  • Each set of lines consisted of 1 line that was obviously the same length as the reference line and two that were obviously different.

  The confederates gave their answers first then the real participant answers.

  • Each group did the task 18 times.

  The confederates answered correctly first 2 trials and incorrectly 12/16

  12 trials were critical trials.
• What was ASCH 1951 FINDINGS?

  Participants conformed 36.8% on critical trials to incorrect answer.

  • Control group error rate of 0.7%

  75% conformed at least once.

  • 25% did not conform at all.

  Nobody conformed on 100% of trials

  • Highest rate of conformity was the participant who conformed 11/12 trials
• What was ASCH's CONCLUSIONS?

  Majority can influence minority.

  • Even in unambiguous (obvious) situations where the correct answer was obvious.

  The participants were perceived to be responding to normative social influence.
• What are the factors affecting conformity?

  • Size of the majority
  • Nature of Task
  • Unanimity of Group
• What are the Findings on Size of Majority?

  • 1 Confederate : Saying wrong answer - 3%
  • 2 Confederate : Saying wrong answer - 14%
  • 3 Confederate : Saying wrong answer - 32%
• What happens if there was more than 3 confederates?

  There was no further increase conformity
• What does NATURE of Task have to do with conformity?

  When the tasks gets more difficult, more conformity happens.

  NSI happens so they are more likely to conform to be right.
• What is unanimity of the group?

  The extent to which we agree with the group.

  Conformity reduces if the confederate gave either right or wrong answer.
• Evaluation - Asch

  The conformity rate was only 36.8%. Asch reported the results of his study as astonishing but failed to acknowledge 63.2% of critical trials had no conformity.

  • Thus the study could have been more of a measure of factors that led to resisting majority than those that make conformity more likely to happen.
• Evaluation of ASCH

  Beta Bias - He only used male participants and the results were generalised to other groups. Leads to ANDROCENTRISM where male viewpoint is pushout into the world.

  EAGLY and CARLIN carried a meta-analysis of research into conformity they found that women were more likely to conform than men. This means that gender could also play a part in how much people conform but this was not taken into account by ASCH when he was conducting his experiment.
• EVALUATION of Conformity and ASCH

  Bond and Smith 1996 found that in:

  • Collectivist Societies there was 37% conformity.
  • Individualistic Societies there was 25% conformity.
• What did Kim and Marcus 1999 find?

  Failing to conform is seen as a strength in Western society but in collectivist societies, this is seen as deviant behaviour.
• What are some Issues with ASCH Study?

  1. Population Validity - All the participants were young American males from the same university. This means that the results were not generalisable and only applied to male American college students.

  • Mundane Realism - The procedure was very artificial making it lack ecological validity because the participants are being asked to conform when there is clearly a right and wrong answer.
• What are some issues with ASCH study?

  • Ethical Considerations - Participants were deceived as they believed they were taking a vision test and not conformity test. Because informed consent was not gained - breech in ethical guideline. However, if participants had known - this could have brought different results. Psychological harms could have been given to participants as they may have suffered from loss of self-esteem after they figured the real intent.
• Jenness (1932) Study into NSI

  BEANS STUDY

  Jenness gave a jar of beans to individuals and told them to estimate the number of beans inside. He then group the same participants together and got them to discuss the contents (Post event discussion).

  • Later when they were seperated and asked their opinions, he found that the estimates had converged around a central figure
• What was Jenness Conclusion?

  When we are unsure about an answer we look at other for help assuming that a majority will be more reliable.
• Research Support: Crutchfield 1955 - Question Booth - Why people conform.

  PROCEDURE

  Participants sat in cubicles and questions were projected on screen.

  FINDINGS

  • One corner was given by other participants - made up and wrong

  Conformity was measured by number of times the participants go along with the incorrect answers.

  Found same level of conformity as ASCH original study
• Research Support - Lucas 2006

  PROCEDURE

  Gave participants maths questions - the harder the maths questions, the more likely pp were to conform. Supports ISI as the more difficult situation is, people are more likely to look at others for a response as they want to be right.
• LUCAS 2006 - FINDINGS

  Individual Differences between participants may be a significant variable which needs to be examined as it may have an effect on whether people conform or not.

  • They found that regardless of task effets [difficulty], participants with greater self-efficacy were always less compliant that those with less self-efficacy