Conformity

• 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; yielding to group pressure – also known as majority influence
• Compliance


  When you just go along with what others are doing
• Compliance

  • The behaviour is simply to fit in with a group and be accepted
  • Once away from the group, behaviour and opinions will be back to 'normal'
  • This means there is public, but not private acceptance of the group's behaviour and attitudes
• Identification


  • Sometimes a person conforms to the behaviours of a group because there is something they value about the group
  • We identify with a group and change our behaviours publicly to be part of the group
  • Privately you may also hold these beliefs
  • However it is generally only temporary and is not maintained when individuals leave the group
• Internalisation


  • This is when a person genuinely believes and accepts a group norm
  • The change is permanent
  • There is public and privately acceptance as the views, behaviour and beliefs become part of the way they think
  • The behaviour and beliefs are present even when not with the group
• Asch's Variables


  • Group Size - The number of members within a social group
  • Unanimity - The degree to which the group members agree with each other
  • Task Difficulty - How obvious the correct answer is
• Group Size


  Conformity increases, to a certain point. As the number of confederates increased from 0 to 3, so did conformity. Increasing the number of confederates past 3 made little difference to conformity levels
• Unanimity


  Conformity reduces. If the correct answer was given, conformity dropped to 5%. If another, incorrect answer, was given, conformity dropped to 9%
• Task Difficulty


  Conformity increases. Visual perception task was made harder by making the lines more similar in length
• Aim · Asch wanted to examine how social pressure from a majority could affect someone’s behaviour. · He tested conformity using a ‘visual perception’ task.
• Procedure · 123 male students believed they were taking part in a ‘visual perception’ task. · Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed real, naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. · The real participant always sat second to last or last. · Each person had to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length. The correct answer was always obvious. · Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials.
• Findings - The real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 36.8% of the critical trials
• Findings - 75% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 25% of the participants never conformed
• Findings - Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found that less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer
• Findings - Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed. Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed
• Conclusions · Individuals’ judgements are affected by majority influence. · The participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in and avoid rejection.