Conformity

• What is conformity?


  When someone changes their beliefs, values, or attitudes due to real or imagined group pressure
• What is majority influence?


  When an individuals behaviour is influenced by a group
• What are the three types of conformity?

  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• What is compliance?

  Conforming publicly but not privately

  The least strong type of conformity
• What is identification?

  Temporarily adopting the behaviour of a group, eg conforming to a social role (teacher, nurse etc)
• What is internalisation?

  The view of the group becomes the view of the individual

  This is the strongest type of conformity
• Who came up with the types of social influence?

  Deutsch and Gerard
• What are the two types of social influence?

  Normative social influence and informational social influence
• What is informational social influence?


  Conforming to be right. Believes others know more than you so you look to others for guidance
• What is normative social influence?


  Conforming to be accepted to a group
• What year did Jennes’ conformity study happen?

  1932
• How many students were in Jennes’ conformity study?

  101
• What did Jennes do to investigate conformity?

  • Asked students to estimate how many jelly beans were in a jar privately
  • Then separated them into groups to give a group estimate
  • Then asked them to give another private estimate to see if they changed their initial guess
• What did Jennes find in his conformity study?

  Almost all participants changed their answers after discussing with a group
• In Jennes’ study, who conformed more, men or women?

  Women
• What are some issues with Jennes’ study?

  • Asch (1955) said it was an ambiguous situation, so doesn’t tell us about when people conform to obviously wrong answers
  • Findings lack ecological validity, as it is lab based
• What is the difference between individual and situational variables?

  Individual: Characteristics of a person Situational: Factors in the environment
• What are the individual variables that affect conformity?

  • Gender
  • Mood
  • Culture
• How does gender affect conformity?

  Jenness (1932) - females conformed more
• How does mood affect conformity?

  Tony et al (2008) - People conform more when they are in a good mood
• How does culture affect conformity?

  Smith and Bond (1993) - Conformity rate in collectivist cultures is 25-58%, but in individualist cultures it is 14-39%
• What are the situational variables affecting conformity?

  • Group size
  • Status
  • Reactance
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• How does group size affect conformity?

  Gerard et al (1968) - Adding more confederates in a study meant conformity rates increase
• How does unanimity affect conformity rates?

  Conformity rates decrease if majority influence is not unanimous

  Asch (1956) - If one person dissented then conformity rates drop from 32% to 5.5%
• How does task difficulty affect conformity rates?

  Asch (1956) - If the task was more difficult (lines were more ambiguous) then conformity rate would increase
• How does reactance affect conformity?

  When freedom of choice is restricted, people may react with rebellious anger

  Hamilton (2005) - The low reactance group were told to experiment with drugs safely and were taught the risks. High reactance group were told to never use drugs. Those in high reactance group less likely to do drugs
• How does status affect conformity ?

  Lower status people are more likely to conform

  Richardson (2009) - 2 confederates and 1 naïve participant. Naïve participants led to believe they were newcomers to the team, and were made to feel low status. The teams looked into information about two stock companies and decided which they would invest money into (one was clearly better).

  Low status people conformed to the ideas of the higher status people, even though one was clearly better