A type of social influence involving a change in a person's belief, opinion or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined group pressure
Types of Conformity
Compliance
Identification
Internalisation
Compliance
The person conforms publicly but continues to disagree privately. Shallowest form of conformity, temporary
Identification
The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group and feel a sense of group membership. Temporary
Internalisation
The person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and accepted the view of the group. It is the deepest form of conformity, permanent
Explanations for Conformity
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
The desire to be liked. Conform to fit in the group to not appear foolish or be left out. Emotional rather than a cognitive process. People prefer social approval rather than rejection. Leads to compliance. Likely to occur in unfamiliar situations or when we are concerned about the social approval of friends
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Desire to be right. Conform when unsure of the situation, so we look to others who we believe may have more information than us. Cognitive process - people generally want to be right. Leads to internalisation. Likely to occur in situations where there is some ambiguity. Decisions have to be made quickly, when we assume the group is likely to be right
Research evidence supporting NSI
Research evidence supporting ISI
Individual differences in conformity
ISI and NSI work together
Line Judgement Task (Asch)
To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform, even when the answer is unambiguous
Line Judgement Task (Asch)
Used a lab experiment to study conformity in American male students. Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates who had previously agreed what their response would be to the task. The real participant did not know this and was led to believe the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves. Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always unambiguous. The real participant gave their answer last but one. In 12 out of 18 trials the confederates gave the wrong answer
Findings of Asch's Line Judgement Task
Evaluations of Asch's experiment
Artificial Situation and Task
Limited Application
Research Support
Ethical Issues
Variables that may affect conformity
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
Social roles
Pattern of behaviour that is expected in a given setting or group
Conformity to social roles (Zimbardo et al)
Participants were all male voluntary psychology students at Stanford University in California and were tested for their psychological stability before the 2 week experiment. They were randomly allocated to two groups - prisoners and prison guards. The prison guards were there to keep order but they were not allowed to use physical force. Prisoners were stripped, deloused and given a prison uniform and prisoner number, which was the only thing they were referred by. The prison guards were given uniforms, including sticks and mirrored sunglasses
Findings of Zimbardo's Conformity to Social Roles study
Evaluations of Zimbardo's research
Control over key variables
Sample bias
Lack of realism
Obedience
Obedience is a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order. The person who gives the order usually has authority and the power to punish if the order is not obeyed
Differences between conformity and obedience
Conformity: Implicit/explicit request to change behaviour, Pressure to change behaviour is usually from a large group
Obedience: Direct request to change behaviour, Pressure to change behaviour is usually from one person
Shock Experiment (Milgram)
Voluntarymale university students were paired with another person (confederate) and they drew lots to find out who would be the 'learner' and who would be the 'teacher'. The draw was fixed so the real participant was always the teacher. The learner was taken to another room where electrodes were attached to his arms connected to an electric shock generator in the teacher's room - the real participant was led to believe this was real as he was given a small electric shock. The learner had to remember word pairs and the teacher was told to administer an electricshock every time the learner made a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. If the participant refused to administer a shock the experimenter (another confederate) was to give a list of probes to ensure they continued
Findings of Milgram's Shock Experiment
Evaluations of Milgram's experiment
Low internal validity
Good external validity
Supporting research replication
Variations of Milgram's experiment
Location
Proximity
Uniform
Agentic state
When people allow others to direct their actions and pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders - act as agents for another person's will
Autonomous state
People act according to their own values and they take responsibility for the results of those actions
Agentic shift
When a fully obedient person undergoes a psychological adjustment or 'shift' and they see themselves as an agent of external authority
Binding factors
The authority figure has greater power because they have a higher position in a social hierarchy
When acting against their moral values they experience high anxiety and moral strain as they realise that what they do is wrong but they feel powerless in disobeying
Remain in agentic state because of binding factors - aspects of the situation that mean the individual is able to take away their own moral strain and ignore their damaging behaviour
Research support
Blass and Schmitt showed a film of Milgram's study to students asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the leaner
Found that the students blamed the experimenter rather than the participant and indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority as well as expert authority (because he was a scientist)