Psychology - AQA - Alevel

• Conformity is a type of social influence defined as 'yielding to group pressures'.
• Conformity is also defined as 'a change in a person’s behaviour or opinion as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people', where an imagined pressure is when there are no consequences for not conforming and a real pressure is when there are consequences for conforming.
• Kelman proposed 3 types of conformity: Internalisation, Identification, and Compliance.
• Internalisation is the strongest type of conformity, often occurring as a result of informational social influence, where an individual’s change of view is permanent, such as being brought up in a religious household and becoming religious yourself.
• Zimbardo's study lacks population validity due to sampling issues, as the participants were only American male undergraduates, and so the study was subject to gender bias.
• Identification is a temporary/short term change of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence of a group, such as acting more professional and less silly when you arrive at your office to work.
• Zimbardo's study had ethical issues such as deception, where participants were tricked into thinking the study was about perception rather than compliance, and potential psychological harm, as the participants could have been embarrassed after realising the true aims of the study.
• Zimbardo's study lacked validity due to the period it was conducted in, as it was an anti-Communist period in America when people were more scared to be different, influencing the results.
• Zimbardo's study lacked validity due to the social context of the 1950s, which may have influenced the results.
• Zimbardo's study lacks ecological validity as it was based on perceptions of lines and does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity.
• Zimbardo's study lacked temporal validity as the findings cannot be generalised across all time periods.
• Zimbardo's study had cost-benefit analysis issues, as the ethical costs were larger than the benefits of increased knowledge of the field.
• Minority influence and social influence are not always completely effective because they cannot tackle these kinds of issues.
• Social change through minority influence cannot be relied upon to bring about long-standing changes in society.
• We often take comfort knowing that so many other people also share our view, which can be unsettling when the majority view changes.
• Social change, as argued by Nemeth (1986), is a slow process and produces fragile effects.
• The majority are not exposed to the main issue at hand, which if addressed, would cause a change in norms that would appear to be too drastic.
• Bashir suggests that social barriers are largely due to the stereotypes which many have.
• Despite the obvious perks to recycling, many are still unwilling to admit that they recycle in fear of being labelled 'weird' or 'tree-hugger'.
• The process of social change takes a long time, meaning that the effects, or social change, are also delayed.
• The confederates would give the same incorrect answer for 12 out of 18 trials.
• Social change is not always as simple as portrayed, with many being quite settled in their views and unwilling to change.
• An individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group, as evidenced by Asch's study where there was low conformity with group size of confederates were less than 3, and conformity rose by 30% when group size was 3 or more.
• Mackie suggests that the role of minority influence is very limited because we are more likely to change our own views if the majority view is different to our own.
• In Asch's study, 36.8% conformed, 25% never conformed, and 75% conformed at least once.
• Asch Procedure:

  • Participants and confederates were presented with 4 lines; 3 comparison lines and 1 standard line
  • They asked to state which of three lines was the same length as a stimulus line
  • The real participant always answered last or second to last
  • Confederates would give the same incorrect answer for 12 out of 18 trials
  • Asch observed how often the participant would give the same incorrect answer as the confederates versus the correct answer
• Asch observed how often the participant would give the same incorrect answer as the confederates versus the correct answer.
• Task difficulty affects conformity, as evidenced by Asch's study where conformity increased when the task was difficult.
• In a control trial, only 1% of responses given by participants were incorrect, which eliminates eyesight/perception as an extraneous variable, thus increasing the validity of the conclusions drawn.
• The real participant always answered last or second to last.
• Asch's study investigated conformity and majority influence through a lab experiment with 123 male American undergraduates in groups of 6, consisting of 1 true participant and 5 confederates.
• Unanimity of majority is a factor in conformity, as evidenced by Asch's study where conformity fell from 32% to 5.5% when another participant or disaffected confederate joined the group, and fell from 32% to 9% when different answers were given.
• The authoritarian personality is characterized by a 'fixed' cognitive style, where individuals do not challenge stereotypes due to their tendency to adopt absolutist/ 'black and white' thinking.
• The Authoritarian Personality has little ecological validity because it cannot explain many real-life examples of mass obedience.
• The authoritarian personality is when you believe that people should completely obey or submit to their authority figures, and suppress their own beliefs.
• People with a high internal locus of control are more likely to be leaders, not followers.
• The Authoritarian Personality may not be able to explain all cases of obedience across the whole political spectrum, according to Christie and Jahoda.
• People with a high internal locus of control conform and obey less because they take more responsibility for their own actions and see themselves as having more control than someone with a high external locus of control, and so are more likely to make decisions based on their own moral code, as opposed to someone else’s.
• Dispositional explanation is an internal explanation for obedience, referring to personality factors or individual reasons why someone obeys.
• The opposite goes for those with an external locus of control - since they believe that the majority of their life events are beyond their control, this means that they are more likely to act on behalf of another (i.e as their agent) and shift responsibility onto this individual.