Psychology - Conformity

• A group is a collection of people who share a common identity
• Group norms are the informal rules that everyone who is part of a particular group follows.
• Three different levels of conformity:

  Compliance - the lowest form of conformity. This is when you go along with another person but privately disagree with them.

  Identification - is a deeper form of conformity. It is when an individual changes their private views as their public views, to fit in.

  Internalisation - deepest form of conformity. The beliefs of a group are taken on and become a permanent part of that persons world view.
• Informational social influence - we consider other people's views to be valid and reliable it might be because we are unsure of how to behave or what is correct and so we go along with a majority or because we perceive others to have more experience than us.
• Normative social influence - we want to gain approval from others so we go along with a certain behaviour. This concerns a need for social acceptance. We are not at doubt of the correct belief or behaviour, but we feel pressure from the groups and go along with it in order to be accepted/ fit in
• Individual factors:

  • self esteem
  • gender
  • age
• Self-esteem - believed to have an impact on whether or not a person will conform.

  Santee and Masloch (1982) found that people who have higher levels of self-esteem are less likely to conform.
• gender - historically women have been more likely to conform than men because they have taken on the role of promoting harmony.

  Mori and Arai (2010) found that women were still more likely to conform.
• age - the younger the individual the more likely to conform than older individuals perhaps due to the lack of life experience.

  Steinburg and Monahan (2007) found that conformity levels were seen to remain the same between the ages of 10 and 14. However, after this age, the conformity levels appear to continue to drop until 18.
• Situation factors:

  • group size
  • group unamimity
  • task difficulty
• Group size - Asch re-ran the same research but this time varying the amount of confederates that were used.

  • one confederate = 3%
  • two confederate = 12.8%
  • three confederate = 33.3%
• group unanimity - when there is a unanimous decision among participants there is more pressure to conform + conformity levels increase

  Asch (1951) conducted another variation of his study where he instructed one confederate to act as an ally to the true participants by disagreeing with the others
• task difficulty - when an answer is not clear conformity will increase

  Asch (1956) found that when he made the lines more simular to each other conformity levels rose
• Cultural factor:

  • collective culture
• Collective culture - values family and society more than the needs of themselves. It is believed that because of this these cultures show higher conformity levels.

  Smith and Bond (1993) found that beilagions have the lowest levels of conformity and Fijian Indians have the highest.
• Asch (1951) study:

  aim - to see if people will conform to group pressure when they do know the correct answer.

  method - he got participants in a room to do an "eye test" they judged the length of a line but the rest of the group were actors who would say the wrong answer. THe real participants went at the end to see if they would conform.

  results - 1/3 of the time. 75% conformed at least once

  strength - future research

  weakness - biased, ethical issues, confederates.
• Mori and Arai (2010) study:

  aim - to see if both males and females would conform to an unambiguous task.

  method - groups of participants wore glasses to look at a linen task. the 3rd in the group saw a different image. They were asked a question to see if they would conform.

  results - Women were swayed 4.41 out of 12 and men were not swayed.

  strength - both genders means it can be generalized

  weaknesses - lacks ecological validity
• Jenness (1932) study:

  asked participants to estimate the number of beans in a glass jar (ambiguous task). participants estimated individually the they were put into groups to provide a group estimate. After this, they were once more asked if they would like to stick with or change their initial answer.

  The majority changed their answer, providing evidence of informational social influence.