AO3

• Asch conformity study:

  • Aim: examine to what extent an individual would conform to social pressure
  • Procedure:
  • 123 US undergrad men
  • signed up for a vision test
  • similarity to line test
• Eval Asch conformity:

  • Low ecological validity - line graph is not realistic
  • Ethical harm guidelines - participants were under stress
  • Reliable - controlled lab conditions
  • Gender bias - all males
• Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment:

  • Aim: to examine to what extent people would conform to social roles
  • Procedure: 24 males undergrads signed up from a newspaper for $15 a day
  • 2 roles were assigned
• Eval Stanford prison experiment:

  • Gender bias - all males
  • Ethical harm guideline - prisoners were under severe stress
  • Low eco-logical validity - set in a prison environment
• Asch's conformity test ( 1951 ): cont

  • results: 32% of people conformed to the confederate
  • over 12 trials 75% of people conformed once 25% never did
  • in the control group less than 1% gave the wrong answer
• Adorno ( 1950 ):

  • Aim - to explore what leads people to develop authoritarian personalities
  • Procedure: Adorno developed an "F scale" which consisted of 30 questions each with a 6 point scale used to evaluate the dispositions associated with the authoritarian personality
  • over 2000 middle class caucasians Americans took part
• Adorno ( 1950 ):

  • Results: Adorno found that Individuals who scored highly on the F-scale identified with ‘strong’ people and showed disrespect towards the ‘weak’.
• Elms & Milgram ( 1966 ):

  • Aim: To understand if there is a link between obedience and authoritarian personality
  • Procedure: selected 20 'obedient' participants from a previous Milgram study and 20 'defiant' participants. (Those who went to the final shock level and those that didn't)
  • Each participant completed the F scale and questioned of their relationship with their parents to measure level of authoritarism
• Nemth (1986):

  • Aim: investigate whether minority could influence majority to give more compensation to a victim of a ski lift accident
  • Procedure: 1 confederate in a group of 4 was tasked to convince others to increase rate of compensation in two conditions: inflexible - minority was firm on the rate, flexible - minority had room for negotiation
• Nemeth (1986):

  • Results: the inflexible condition had little to no influence whereas the flexible condition had higher impacts
• Milgram's situational variations:

  • Agentic state - higher
  • legitimacy of authority - higher
  • Proximity - lower
  • Location - lower
• Milgram (1963):

  • Aim: how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
  • Procedure: 40 male volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment in "learning"
  • every time the "learner" got a question wrong the teacher was instructed to shock them
• Milgram (1963):

  • Results: 65% went to the full 450 volts, and 100% went to atleast 300 volts
• Asch's study variation:

  • Task difficulty - conformity increased
  • Group size - conformity increased until 3 feds
  • Unanimity (social support) - conformity decreased
• Zimbardo Stanford prison experiment:

  • Findings: individuals conformed to 'demand characteristics'
  • The experiment had to be ended 6 days out of the 14
• Moscovici (1969):

  • Aim: To investigate the effects of a consistent minority on a majority. (reverse Asch)
  • Procedure: a group of 4 ppt and 2 feds were shown 36 slides of different shades of blue
  • In condition A, they were consistent on green every time, in condition B, they said blue 12 and green 24 times