reasons for conformity

• Jenness (1932) found nearly all pps changed their answer to conform more closely to a group answer when given another chance to estimate the number of beans in a jar, after they had engaged in group discussion. - informational social influence
• Asch's study into conformity including variations- 123 male undergraduates took part in a visual perception task individually alongside 7 confederates acting as pps, all were shown a standard line and 3 comparison lines and had to say which one matched the original where the participant was the last one to answer, conclusion- most people do conform to fit in with a group- normative social influence
• Asch study variations- group size- changed number of confederates starting from 1 and increasing, conformity increases up until the majority group has 3 members then it plateaus, unanimity- changed the agreement of the group by having one confederate give the correct answer, conformity decreases to 5%, task difficulty- changed the lines by making them more similar in length, conformity increased
• asch- 1951- use of confederates, 75% conformed at least once
• group size- asch- up to three confederates saw a consistent increase in conformity
• conformity is a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• asch (1951)- produced a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinions of others, even in a situation where the correct answer is obvious.
• asch- 123 males, who thought they was taking part in a perception test, tested in a group of confederates, only one real participant per group
• asch- participants in the study were purposefully placed in the order of being second to last to answer
• asch's initial findings- 75% conformed at least once, on average pps conformed to an incorrect answer 36.8% of the time
• variables investigated by asch- group size, unanimity, task difficulty
• in the group size variation of asch- conformity increased with group size but only up to a certain point, varied the number of confederates from 1-15,
• group size variation of asch- 3 confederates saw a conformity of 31%, and 7 saw the highest level of conformity at 36%,
• group size variation of asch findings suggest that people are incredibly sensitive to the views of others.
• zimbardo- conformity to social roles- broke the BPS code of ethics in several ways such as concerning participant protection, potential harm- guards became aggressive and abusive and the prisoners displayed behaviours such as crying and showed others signs of stress, lack of informed consent as they did not know they would be arrested in their own homes,
• 1973- zimbardo prison experiment stanford- aim- to detemine whether or not individuals conformed to social roles, he tested this by creating a hyper-realistic mock prison in the basement of stanford uni
• sample of zimbardo- 24 psychologically stable males volunteers selected from a number of candidates, were randomly assigned prisoner or guard, prisoners arrested at home to add to the realism of the study,
• findings of zimbardo- identification occured very fast, both prisoners and guards adopted their new roles and played their part in a short amount of time, despite the apparent disparity between the social roles,
• findings of zimbardo- prisoners would only talk about prison issues, meaning they forgot about their own previous real lives, and snitch on other prisoners to the guards to please them. this is significant evidence to suggest that the prisoners believed the prison was real, and were not acting simply due to demand characteristics- strength
• strengths- this research changed the way US prisons are run eg young prisoners are no longer kept with adult prisoners to prevent the bad behaviour perpetuating. Beehive-style prisons, which are cells and under constant surveillance from a central motoring unit, are not used in modern times, due to such setups increasing effects of institutionalisation and over exaggerating the differences in social roles between prisoners and guards.
• strength of zimbardo- debrief- pps fully debriefed about the aims and results of the study. this is particularly important when considering that the BPS ethical guidelines of deception and informed consent had been breached. dealing with ethical issues in this way simply makes the study more ethically acceptable, but does not change the quality of the findings.
• ethical issues with zimbardo- lack of fully informed consent due to the deception required to avoid truly accurate pp behaviour rather than having them be a product of responding to demand characteristics.