conformity

• Conformity

  Going along with the majority viewpoint and behaving the same as others
• Types of conformity


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Compliance


  A person only changes their public behaviour but not their personal beliefs
• Identification


  A person will change their personal beliefs and public behaviour, but only when they are in the presence of the group they are identifying with
• Internalisation


  Personal beliefs and public behaviour both change permanently
• Explanations of why people conform

  • Normative social influence - desire to fit in with a group, even though it may not be correct
  • Informational social influence - desire to be right and an individual genuinely believes other people are supporting the correct view
• Supporting research for Normative social influence (NSI)

  • Shultz et al found that hotel guests exposed to a normative message that 75% of guests re-use their towels, and therefore the hotel guests reduced their towel usage by 25% which shows how they conformed to the message
• Supporting research for Informational social influence (ISI)

  • Lucas et al found that participants conformed more when faced with a hard maths question rather than an easy question. This is because the participants 'knew their mind' with the easy questions, yet with the hard questions they were unsure so conformed with the rest of the group for the right answer
• Asch study


  1. Aimed to find the extent to which people will conform to the opinion of others, even though the answer is unambiguous

  2. Conducted the Line Judgement Task

  3. Lab experiment with 123 American male participants, only 12 critical trials

  4. Used a line judgement task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with 7 confederates

  5. Everyone had to say the answers aloud (always obvious), yet the confederates always said the wrong answer

  6. The participant was in the penultimate position
• Findings of Asch study - genuine participants conformed to the confederates 36.8% of the time, 25% never conformed
• Variables explored by Asch


  • Group size - decreased to 5.9%
  • Unanimity - decreased
  • Task difficulty - increased
• Criticisms of Asch study - population validity - Asch used 123 American male students as participants, not representative
• Contradicting research


  • Perrin and Spencer used a study of British engineering students, where only 1 out of 396 people conformed, likely due to high IQ and critical thinking
• Zimbardo prison experiment


  1. Took place in a mock prison set up in the psychology building at Stanford University

  2. Newspaper ad intrigued 75 male volunteers, 24 were selected after researcher carried out physical and mental health checks

  3. Participants were randomly assigned to be either a prison guard or prisoner and were encouraged to conform to their role

  4. Prisoners were arrested from home and blindfolded, taken to the mock prison where they were given uniforms, a number, and were processed

  5. The 'guards' were given khaki uniforms and reflective sunglasses

  6. Guards took up their roles with enthusiasm by treating the prisoners harshly

  7. Within 2 days the prisoners rebelled by ripping uniforms, shouting and swearing at guards

  8. Guards would physically harass the prisoners

  9. 3 prisoners were released early due to psychological disturbance

  10. Experiment stopped on the 6th day instead of 14 days
• high level of control- Zimbardo


  The prison was in an artificial setting. This means that Zimbardo could’ve had high control over the variables. One way that he did this was by selecting the sample after going through physical and mental testa before randomly allocating them. As all the participants passed all the same test can be argued that all behaviour is due to the pressures of conforming to social roles. This increases the experiments internal validity.
• over exaggeration 


  According to Fromm, Zimbardo over exaggerates the power of a situation to influence behaviour. For example only 1/3 of the guards behind in a brutal manner whereas the other 2/3 either applied the rules fairly or even tried to help the prisoners and provide support. Most guards able to resist pressures, this suggests that Zimbardo’s conclusiona that the participants will conform to social roles may be overstate. The differences between the guards’ behaviours indicate that they were able to exercise right from wrong despite the situational pressures.
• lacks ecological validity - Zimbardo


  The mock prison was set up in the basement of a psychology building and did not have the same facilities a regular prison would like areas for rehabilitative activities. Furthermore the duration of the experiment lasted 6 days which is different from the length of custodial sentences therefore it’s not representative of true prisoners. The prisoners were precisely chose based of their mental stability and their unlikeliness of displaying anti-social behaviour which is not true representation of real of prisoners.