conformity

• What is social psychology


  The study of how people behave in a social setting
• Conformity


  Changing one's attitude and/or behaviour to fit in with the majority, due to real or imagined group pressure, and has to be majority influence not obedience to authority
• Types of conformity (Kelman 1958)


  • Compliance (normative social influence - disagree in private)
  • Identification (normative social influence - agree in private)
  • Internalization (informational social influence - disagree in private)
• WHY DO WE CONFORM?


  NORMATIVE social influence - wanting to be liked, accepted or belong - to avoid punishment

  INFORMATIONAL social influence - wanting to be right, gain knowledge, act appropriately or not stand out
• JENNESS (1932) - informational social influence

  • presented with a jar of jelly beans - guess number
  • then discuss in groups
  • generally speaking, people‘s estimates changed
  • higher percentage change among women
• ASCH (1955) - normative social influence

  • task = decide which line was same length as stimulus given
  • answers were obviously incorrect ( 1 % of control group gave incorrect answers)
  • 123 American male participants
• ASCH results

  • 32% overall conformity rate
  • 75% conformed at least once
  • 5% conformed to all wrong answers
• ASCH conclusions

  • task difficulty increase made conformity to majority increase
  • confidence in own ability affects conformity (dispositional factor)
  • judgements are affected by majority opinions
  • there are individual differences in the amount people are affected by majority influence (dispositional factors)
  • most conformed publicly but not privately - suggests normative social influence
  • conformity increases with group size up to 9 confederates (highest = 3-9)
• EVALUATION OF ASCH (positives)

  • CONTROLLED - very few variables, lab environment
  • PRECISE - only one person being tested at a time
  • RELIABLE - each person got 18 trials
  • SIMPLE - easy task, not ambiguous
• EVALUATION OF ASCH (negatives)

  • GENERALISABILITY - only male Americans
  • ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY - low, was a lab environment
  • ETHICS - lack of informed consent
  • ETHICS - emotional distress