1. Social Influence Flashcards
What is conformity?
Type of social influence that describes how a person changes their attitude or behaviour in response to group pressure.
What are the types of conformity?
- compliance
- identification
- internalisation.
What is compliance conformity?
- Shallowest level of conformity.
- changes public behaviour
- not change private beliefs.
- Short-term
- Often result of normative social influence
What is identification conformity?
- Middle level of conformity.
- Changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs
- Temporary
- Normally the result of normative social influence (NSI).
What is internalisation conformity?
- Deepest level of conformity.
- Permanent
- Change private and public
- Often the result of informational social influence (ISI).
State the two reasons why people conform
Normative social influence (NSI)
Informational social influence (ISI).
What is Normative Social Influence?
- Conforms to be accepted and to feel that they belong to the group.
- Socially rewarding, or to avoid social rejection
- Usually associated with compliance and identification.
What is informational social influence?
- Conforms to gain knowledge
- Or believe someone else is ‘right’.
- Usually associated with internalisation,
What type of social influence is associated with informational social influence?
internalisation
What type of social influence is associated with normative social influence?
Compliance
Identification
Evaluate how Asch’s study helps provide evidence for normative social influence
- Asch’s (1951)
- Support normative social influence.
- Participants went along with the obviously wrong answers of the other group members.
- Participants said they changed their answer to avoid disapproval from the rest of the group.
- Shows compliance in order to ‘fit in’.
- Asch (1955) - asked to write answers - conformity rates fell to 12.5% as the fear of rejection became far less.
State Jenness’ conclusions
- Individuals changed their initial estimate due to informational social influence
- Believe the group estimates were more likely to be correct, in comparison to their own.
State the aim of Asch’s study
- Extent to which social pressure to conform from unanimous majority affects conformity in an unambiguous situation.
Explain the method of Asch’s study
- 123 male undergraduate students
- Asch used a line judgement task,
- one real (naïve) participant in a room with six to eight confederates who had agreed their answers in advance.
- Real participant seated second from last.
- Out load which line was closest to target
- 18 trials - confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called ‘critical trials’.
- Look for conformity to the majority view, even when obviously incorrect.
What is a difference between Asch’s and Jenness’ experiments?
In Asch’s the correct answer was always obvious
What were the results of Asch’s study?
- Conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials.
- 74% conformed on at least one critical trial
- 26% of the participants never conformed.
- Control group - no confederates less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.
What did Asch conclude in his study?
- When questions said to conform to incorrect in order to fit in
- Fear of ridicule
- Normative social influence - compliance only public change
State the different variations of Asch’s study
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
Explain how group size may effect Asch’s study
- Up to 15 confederates 29% conformity
- 1 confederate they conformed on just 3%
- 3 confederates conformed on 32% same as original when 6-8 used
- Participants became suspicious of the experiment and not because the pressure to conform is necessarily less in larger groups.
Explain how Asch varied unanimity in his study
- If one confederate gave correct and conformity dropped to 5%.
- If the confederate gives another incorrect answer conformity dropped to 9%.
Explain how Asch varied task difficulty
- Making a task more difficult increased conformity.
- Informational social influence
- Individuals look to another for guidance when undertaking an ambiguous task, similar to the results found in Jenness’ experiment, in order to be ‘right’.
What is conformity to social roles?
When an individual adopts a particular behaviour and belief, while in a particular social situation.
What type of conformity is associated with conformity to social roles?
- Identification
- Changes public behaviour and private beliefs
- only temporary
What study did Zimbardo do?
The Stanford prison experiment