conformity

• What is social psychology?

  "an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others" - Allport (1968)
• What is included in social influence?

  conformity, compliance, minority social influence, obedience and social norms
• What is conformity?


  • A change in a person's behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure
  • Often this occurs due to group norms
• What are norms?

  The rules established by a group to regulate the behaviour of its members
• What is obedience?

  Behaving as instructed but not necessarily changing your opinions and usually in response to individual people in positions of power
• What is the difference between conformity and obedience?

  Obedience is being directed to do something whereas conformity following others who are doing something
• What is informational social influence?


  We look to others who we believe to be correct to give us information about how to behave, particularly in new/ambiguous situations - The desire to be right
• What is normative social influence?

  We conform because we think that others will approve and accept us - The desire to be accepted
• What is independent behaviour?

  • Resisting social influences
  • True independence means following one's conscience rather than being disobedient or non-conformist
• What is anti-conformity?

  Deliberately going against prevailing norms
• Types of conformity

  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Who identified the 3 types of conformity?

  Kelman
• Types of conformity: Compliance


  Publicly going along with the majority to avoid rejection or to gain acceptance, but privately will maintain own views - Normative social influence, Ingratiational conformity
• What is ingratiational conformity?

  Doing something for another to get favour from them
• Types of Conformity: Identification

  Adopts the views and behaviours of a group both publicly and privately because values group membership Dependant on the group and no longer maintained if leave the group
• Types of conformity: Internalisation


  A true change of private views to match those of the groupYour views match the group even without them
• Who studied conformity in ambiguous situations?

  Sherif
• Aim of Sherif's study

  To investigate the level of conformity to ambiguous situations using the autokinetic effect
• What is the autokinetic effect?


  • Caused by small movements in the eye
  • A dot of light appears to move when it is not
• Method of Sherif's study

  • Participants stared at a pinpoint of light which appears to move
  • The participants were requested to give repeated estimates of how far the light moved firstly alone and then in a group
• Results of Sherif's study

  • Individually participants tended to be consistent in their estimates but there was great variation between the participants.
  • When estimating in groups of three estimates were virtually identical
• What did Rohrer et al (1954) find about Sherif's study?


  • Group estimates were remembered a year later
  • This suggests that they had been internalised
• Conclusion of Sherif's study

  In very ambiguous situations people strive to be accurate by using the judgements of others
• Limitation of Sherif's study

  Lack ecological validity as it is an ambiguous situation
• Strength (counterpoint) of Sherif's study

  There are many ambiguous everyday situations in which we are not sure of the answer and turn to others for guidance
• Aim of Asch's study

  To test conformity in unambiguous situations
• Method of Asch's study

  • 50 male students were asked to make judgments about lengths of lines
  • 6 students were in on the experiment
  • 1 real participant sat near end of row
• Task the participants had to do in Asch's study

  Match a line to one out of three others
• What did the stooges do in Asch's experiment?


  Started by giving correct answers but then switch to incorrect ones
• Results of Asch's study

  • 75% conformed at least once 32% conformed all the time
  • 26% never conformed - but they did not find it easy, signs of anxiety were clearly visible
• Conclusion of Asch's study

  People will often conform in obvious situations This can be due to either normative and/or informational social influence
• Why does the Asch studied lack population validity?

  • One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group.
  • This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people.
• Why is "Sample" a limitation of Asch's study?

  • Only used collage men
  • Not representative
  • His results may not also generalisable to other times, to other groups such as women, and to other cultures
• Why is "Perrin and Spencer" a limitation of Asch's study?

  • Found that although signs of anxiety were still present there was virtually no evidence of conformity, less than 1%
  • They argued that the result of Asch's study was a 'child of its time', due to the fact that it took place in the 1950s when people were more conforming than in the 70s
• Strength of Asch's study

  Doms and Van Avermaet
• Why is "Doms and Van Avermaet" a strength of Asch's study?

  • Low level of conformity in Perrin and Spencer study may have occurred because they used engineering students who may have been confident in their ability to make accurate judgements
  • Using students from a variety of other disciplines they found much higher levels of conformity
• How many participants are needed to make a conformity effect?

  3
• How does group size affect conformity?

  Up to 7 it increases but then it stops
• What factors can make conformity increase?

  • High ambiguity
  • Group cohesion
  • Collectivist culture
  • High status
• How does "high ambiguity" increase conformity?

  When we are not sure what the correct answer is we look to others -

  Informational social influence