Conformity

• Normative Social Influence is a type on conformity that occurs when people conform in order to not feel isolated. It is an example of compliance.
• Informational Social Influence is a type of conformity that occurs when people conform in order to feel a sense of certainty. This is internalization
• A type of conformity is compliance , when people do what others do because they think it is the right thing to do. It is public and first step to internalization
• A type of conformity is internalization. This is when someone privately and publicly take on the views of the group and become their beliefs.
• A type of conformity is identification. This is when part of identity belong to the group. We value in public but may disagree in private.
• The naïve participants conformed to the wrong answer 36.8% of the time when alone with the confederates over 12 trials; 25% never conformed
• There was also a control trial with no confederates to check the task was unambiguous. Mistakes were made 1% of the time far less than under the experimental condition
• The graph shows that as the number of confederates increased, the levels of conformity by the naïve participant also increased
• 75% of people conformed in Asch's study at least once
• When one confederate was present the conformity was 4%
• Asch found that there was more conformity on line A (the longest) compared to lines B & C which are similar lengths
• When 3 confederates were present conformity was 32%
• 10-15 confederates causes conformity to be 33% whereas 4-9 was highest at 35%
• Asch's study used 7-9 confederates sat in a line with one naive participant. Shown 3 lines of obvious difference in length. Asked to name longest one
• Asch concluded judgement can be swayed by majority influence.
• Asch suggest conformity is due to distortion of perception : came to see lines the same.
• Asch believes some may conform due to distortion of judgement : they doubted own judgement.
• The 36.8% conformity in Asch's study could be due to distortion of action and be compliance.
• Asch found group size effected conformity , as group sized increased so did conformity to a certain extent. After a certain point was little difference.
• Unanimity can cause difference in conformity. The presence of social support can decrease conformity.
• Task Difficulty increasing can cause conformity to increase. This is informational influence.
• Asch's study was reliable as it used a standardized procedure.
• Asch's study had internal validity as since the lines were unambiguously different the study was just measuring conformity.