Social influence

• Conformity


  A change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• Asch's baseline procedure


  1. 1951

  2. Assess to what extent people will conform to the opinions of others, even if the answer is unambiguous

  3. 123 American men

  4. X line = standard line

  5. ABC = comparison lines

  6. Groups of 6-8

  7. Naive ppt always sat last or 2nd to last
• 36.8% of the time people conformed (around ⅓ of the time)
• 25% ppts never conformed
• Asch's variations


  1. 1955

  2. Group size - confederates varied from 1 to 15

  3. Unanimity - would the presence of a non conforming person affect the naive ppts conformity

  4. Task difficulty - would making the task harder affect conformity rates
• Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
• Conformity increased with group size
• Genuine ppt conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
• Conformity rate decreased to less than a quarter of what it was when the answers were unanimous
• Conformity increased when the task was made harder
• Informational social influence


  Desire to be right
• Todd Lucas et al asked ppts to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths questions, ppts conformed more often when qs were harder
• Also showed individual differences as those more confident in their mathematical abilities conformed less (not accounted for in Asch' study)
• Internalisation


  Genuine conformity - a person genuinely accepts the group norms, results in both a private and public change of opinions/behaviour, attitudes have been internalised so change is usually permanent, changes persist even in the absence of other group members
• Identification


  Moderate conformity - we conform to the opinions and behaviours of a group because we value something about them, we identify with the group and wish to be part of it, this means we may publicly change our opinions and behaviours even if privately we do not agree with everything the group stands for
• Compliance


  Superficial and temporary change - 'going along with others in public', but privately not changing personal beliefs or behaviours, compliance results in a superficial change so the behaviour stops as soon as group pressure stops
• Deutsch and Gerard's two-process theory


  • Proposes there are two main reasons people conform based on two human needs: the desire to be right and the desire to be liked
• Informational social influence (ISI)


  The desire to be right - we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct, we accept it because we wish to be correct as well, may lead to internalisation, if you are unsure of what behaviours or beliefs are wrong you look to others for help, ISI is a cognitive process, we follow group behaviour because we have the desire to be right, if we believe the group is more likely to be right we conform to their behaviours or beliefs, ISI is most likely to happen in unfamiliar, ambiguous or crisis situations
• Normative social influence (NSI)

  The desire to be liked - about norms (what is normal or typical behaviour for a social group), people wish to gain social approval, and fear being rejected, so they conform to social norms, this is an emotional process rather than cognitive, it leads to a temporary change in opinions/behaviour (compliance), likely to occur in situations with strangers where you fear rejection, or with people you know because you are concerned with the social approval of your friends, may be more pronounced in stressful situations where people have a greater need for social support
• Research support for NSI - Asch's baseline test showed some participants conformed because they felt self conscious giving the right answer and were afraid of disapproval, when participants wrote their answers down instead of saying them out loud, conformity fell to 12.5%, as there was no normative group pressure
• Research support for ISI - Todd Lucas et al study showed participants conformed more often to incorrect answers when the question was more difficult, when the problems were hard the situation became ambiguous (unclear), participants did not wish to be wrong so they relied on the answers they were given
• It is often difficult to separate ISI and NSI in real life conformity situations, e.g. in Asch's study the presence of a dissenter reduced conformity, but it is unclear whether this was due to the presence of a new source of information (ISI) or reassurance from a different perspective (NSI)
• Individual differences in NSI

  • NSI does not predict conformity in every case, some people are nAffiliators (have a strong need for affiliation, i.e. relate to people), McGhee and Teevan found that students who were nAffiliators were more likely to conform, there are individual differences in conformity that cannot be fully explained by one general theory of situational pressures