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'sinternal 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 genderparticipants 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 al1976 - 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