Conformity

• Conformity


  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.
• Compliance


  • A person might laugh at the joke that others are laughing at while privately not finding it very funny.
• Identification


  The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group and feel a sense of group membership. Temporary.
• Identification


  • A person might support a new football team every time they move to a new town.
• 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.
• Internalisation


  • A person may become a lifelong vegetarian after sharing a flat with a group of vegetarians at university.
• 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
• Normative Social Influence (NSI)


  • A group of friends laugh about something and you don't find it funny but you join in anyway wanting to fit in
• 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
• Informational Social Influence (ISI)


  • Watching what others in class are doing because you are not sure what you are supposed to be doing
• ISI and NSI work together

  • Goes against Deutsch and Gerrard’s view that behaviour is a Dual Processing system and either due to NSI or ISI
  • Asch’s research demonstrated that both NSI and ISI as reasons for conformity for instance conforming to fit in, to avoid rejection from the group (NSI) and also believing that a unanimous group conveys the impression that everyone knows better than you (ISI)
• Individual differences


  • NSI does not predict conformity in every situation
  • Some individuals have a strong need for affiliation (called nAffiliators) - a personal characteristic concerned about being liked
  • These types of people are more likely to conform
  • In the same way, other do not care about social perception and are less likely to conform
  • This shows that NSI is based in individual difference and not necessarily due to situational group pressure
• Research evidence supporting ISI

  • Lucas et al found that participants conformed more to incorrect answers when a maths question was difficult
  • This is because the hard question was ambiguous and they relied on the groups answer
  • This shows that ISI is a valid explanation of conformity because the results are what ISI would predict
• Research evidence supporting NSI

  • Asch found that many participants conformed rather than give a correct answer because they were afraid of disproval
  • When answers were written down (no normative pressure) conformity decreased
  • This shows that at least some conformity is due to the desire to be accepted by the group and not to be rejected for disagreeing with them
• Line Judgement Task - Asch

  1. Used a lab experiment to study conformity in American male students

  2. Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates who had previously agreed what their response would be to the task

  3. The real participant did not know this and was led to believe the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves

  4. Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line

  5. The answer was always unambiguous

  6. The real participant gave their answer last but one

  7. In 12 out of 18 trials the confederates gave the wrong answer
• Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view
• On average about one third (37%) of the naive participants in each trial went along and conformed to the incorrect majority
• Three quarters (75%) of participants conformed once and 25% never conformed on any of the trials
• When interviewed after, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed (NSI)
• Others said they really did believe the group's answers were correct (ISI)
• Artificial Situation and Task - Asch Evaluation


  • One limitation is the task and situation were artificial
  • Participants were in a research study and may have gone alone with the group (demand characteristics)
  • Identifying lines was trivial and there was no real reason not to conform
  • The group did not really resemble a group as experienced in everyday life
  • This means that the findings do not generalise to real world situations, lacking ecological validity
• Limited Application - Asch Evaluation

  • Asch’s research is Beta-biased and culturally biased
  • All participants were American men. Findings from other research suggests women may be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Eagly and Carli)
  • This means that Asch’s study lacks population validity and the finding do not apply to women/people from other cultures hence telling us little about conformity amongst other groups
• Research support - Asch Evaluation

  • One strength is support from studies investigating the effects of task difficulty
  • Lucas → asked participants to solve ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ maths problems
  • Participants were given answers from 3 other confederates
  • Participants conformed more of them when task was difficult
  • Supports Asch’s results in claiming that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity
  • Lucas’ study also found participants with high confidence conformed less
  • Shows individual differences can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
• Group size - Asch variation

  • Asch found that conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases
  • There is little change in conformity when group size reaches 4-5
  • With one other person in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13% and with three or more it increased to 32%
  • Because conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than three it is considered the optimal group size
• Unanimity - Asch Evaluation


  • When one other person (dissenter) in the group gave a different answer from the others conformity dropped
  • Even just the presence of one dissenter can reduce conformity as much as 80%
  • Presence of dissenter appeared to free naive participant to behave more independently
  • Influence of majority depends of unanimity→ non-conformity more likely when cracks perceived in unanimous view
• Task Difficulty - Asch Evaluation


  • When one other person (dissenter) in the group gave a different answer from the others conformity dropped
  • Even just the presence of one dissenter can reduce conformity as much as 80%
  • Presence of dissenter appeared to free naive participant to behave more independently
  • Influence of majority depends of unanimity→ non-conformity more likely when cracks perceived in unanimous view
• Social Roles definition


  Pattern of behaviour that is expected in a given setting or group
• Prison Stanford Experiment - Zimbardo


  To investigate whether people will conform to new social roles
• Prison Stanford Experiment


  1. Participants were all male voluntary psychology students at Stanford University in California

  2. Participants were tested for their psychological stability before the 2 week experiment

  3. Participants were randomly allocated to two groups - prisoners and prison guards

  4. Prison guards were there to keep order but they were not allowed to use physical force

  5. Prisoners were stripped, deloused and given a prison uniform and prisoner number, which was the only thing they were referred by

  6. Prison guards were given uniforms, including sticks and mirrored sunglasses
• Experiment was called off after only 6 days
• The guards displayed tyrannical behaviour by giving cruel punishments and had group loyalty
• The prisoners became apathetic and followed the orders of guards, having no group cohesion
• Control over key variables - Zimbardo evaluation

  • Random selection of participants who had been tested to be emotionally stable rules out individual personality differences as an expectation of the findings
  • Control over variables increased the internal validity of the study, supporting the influence of roles on conformity
• Sample bias - Zimbardo Evaluation

  • Carnahan and McFarland questioned whether self-selection may have influenced the results - participants completed personality measures
  • Volunteers for the prison study compared to the control group scored significantly higher on aggressiveness, authoritarianism, narcissism and social dominance whilst scoring lower on empathy and altruism
  • Therefore it is implied that certain individuals are drawn to and selected into situations that fit their personality, reducing the validity of the SPE findings as findings were not just due to situational factors
• Lack of realism - Zimbardo Evaluation

  • Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that participants were merely play acting than genuinely conforming to a role
  • Performances were based on stereotype of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave - guard ‘John Wayne’ based his role on a brutal character from a film
  • Findings tell us little about conformity to social roles in actual prisons