Conformity

    Cards (23)

    • What is conformity?
      A change in behaviour or belief as a result if real or imagined group pressure
      • Yields group pressure
      • Majority influence
      • Reduces independence and can lead to harmful outcomes
      • Can have positive outcomes - helps society to function smoothly and predictably
      • Human needs for us to agree in order for groups to form and operate efficiently
    • What are the types of conformity?
      • Compliance
      • Identification
      • Internalisation
    • What is compliance?
      When individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of a group to be accepted or avoid disapproval. Desire to fit in; involves public, but not private, acceptance of a group's behaviour and attitudes
    • What is identification?
      When individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions to those of a group because membership of the group is desirable. Private and public acceptance, but is generally temporary and not maintained when individuals are no longer a part of the group
    • What is internalisation?
      When individuals genuinely adjust their behaviours and opinions to those of a group. Individuals are exposed to the belief systems of others and have to decide what they truly believe in. If a group's beliefs are seen as correct, it will lead to public and private acceptance not dependent on the pressure of the group
    • What is the difference between situational and dispositional factors?
      Situational factors are due to the social situation a person is in, whereas dispositional factors are due to the person's internal characteristics.
    • What is normative social influence?
      Normative social influence is the tendency to conform to the group's norms in order to fit in and gain social approval.
    • What is informational social influence?
      Informational social influence is the phenomenon where individuals conform to the opinions or behaviors of others because they believe that those others have more accurate knowledge or information.
    • Asch's aim
      To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect conformity
    • Asch's procedure
      • 123 male undergraduate students believed they were taking part in a vision test
      • Participants put in a room with 7 confederates
      • Confederates agreed in advance what their responses would be
      • Participants believed confederates to be participants
      • Each participant had to state which comparison line was most like the target line (always obvious) - real participant gave their answer last
      • 18 trials (confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 'critical' trials
      • Control condition had no confederates only one real participant
    • Asch's results
      • Conformed on 33% of critical trials
      • 25% of participants never conformed
      • 50% of participants conformed on 6 or more trials
      • 5% of participants conformed in all 12 trials
      • Control group - wrong answer 1% of the time
      • Interviews - most knew they were giving the wrong answer but did not want disapproval from the group
    • Asch's conclusion
      • Judgements affected by majority, even when the majority was obviously wrong
      • Participants motivated by normative social influence
    • Strengths of Asch's research
      • Standardised procedure - reliable
      • Practical application - if a child refused to do work, they are likely to do work if put in a room full of people that are
      • Quantitative data - objective
    • Weaknesses of Asch's research
      • Lacks generalisability - not representative of the wider population as all participants were male undergraduates
      • Lacks validity - at the time, individuals were tested on conformity and labelled as communists if they did not - conformed out of fear rather than normative social influence
      • Deviates from ethical guidelines - deceived and therefore could not give informed consent
    • Jenness 1932
      • 101 psychology students who individually estimated how many beans were in a bottle of 811
      • Divided into groups of three and asked to give a group estimation
      • Gave another individual estimation to see if they changed their answer
      • Nearly all participants changed their answer
      • Average - male changed by 256 beans, female changed by 382 beans
      • Likely the result of informational social influence
    • Mori and Arai 2010
      • Replicated Asch's line study with 104 mixed gender participants in groups of 4
      • Three participants wore identical glasses, one participant got glasses which showed them a different comparison line
      • Minority participant always went third
      • Minority participant swayed by majority 3.44 times out of 12
      • Male participants were not swayed by majority - may be due to generation or cultural differences to Asch or the fact that the participants knew each other
    • Situational factors affecting conformity
      • Group size
      • Unanimity/ social support
      • Task difficulty
    • Group size
      • 2 confederates - 14% conformity
      • 3 confederates - 32% conformity
      • No change past 3 confederates
    • Unanimity/ social support
      • One confederate disagreeing with others - conformity fell to 5.5%
    • Task difficulty
      • Conformity increased when the lines were more similar
    • Dispositional factors
      • Confidence and expertise
      • Gender / sex
    • Confidence and expertise
      • Asch - non-conformers were confident
      • Wiesenthal et al 1976 - less likely to conform if competent
      • Perrin and Spencer 1980 - replicated the study with engineering students. Conformity was lower as they had expertise in accurate observations
    • Gender/ sex
      • Eagly and Carli (1981) - meta-analysis, inconsistent sex differences
      • Eagly (1987) - men and women's social roles explain conformity - women = group harmony, men = independence
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