1.1 Types of conformity Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in behaviour or beliefs as a result of real or imagined group pressure
What are the explanations of conformity?
- Normative Social Influence (NSI)
* Informational social Influence (ISI)
What are the types of conformity?
- Compliance
- Identification
- Internalisation
Who suggested the types of conformity?
Kelman
What is the order of the strengths (starting with weakest) of the types of conformity?
- Compliance
- Identification
- Internalisation
What is compliance?
- Individual aligns behaviour w maj in public
- Does not change beliefs privately
- Temporary - usually result of NSI
What is identification?
- Individual aligns behaviour and beliefs w maj
- Only when in presence of maj group - doesn’t actually agree
- Short-term - usually result of NSI
What is internalisation?
- Individual aligns behaviour and private beliefs w maj publicly and privately
- Longer lasting effect - usually result of ISI
Who proposed the explanations for conformity?
Deutsch and Gerard
What did Deutsch and Gerard propose?
- Two-process theory
- Two central human needs
- Normative social influence
- Informational social influence
What is Normative Social Influence?
- Individual wish to be liked by majority
- Go along with majority
- Following the crowd to fit in with the norm
What is Informational Social Influence?
- Individual looks to majority for information
* Majority are thought to be genuinely right
What was Asch’s aim?
To investigate the extent to which social pressure form a majority group could affect a person to conform
What was Asch’s procedure?
- Used a lab experiment to study conformity
- Used a line judgement task
- Put naïve Pp in a room with 7 confeds
- Confeds had to agree in advance what their responses would be when presented with line task
- The real Pps did not know and this would lead to believe the other 7 Pps were real
- Each person had to say their answers aloud which comparison line more like the target line
- Real Pp sat at the end and gave answer last
- 18 trials in total - confeds gave 12 wrong answers
What were Asch’s results?
Asch measured the no. times each Pp conformed to the majority view
32% of Pps in each trial went along and conformed to the clearly incorrect majority.
75% conformed on at least one trial
What did post-study interviews with the Pps reveal about why they conformed?
ISI:
• Distortion of perception (genuinely believed confeds to be correct)
• Distortion of judgement (doubtful/unsure of own judgement)
NSI:
• Distortion of action (correctly answered privately but changed publicly to avoid disapproval)
What support is there for explanations of conformity?
- Asch supports NSI - found many Pps went along w majority even on obviously incorrect answer to line judgement task - post-exp intviews Pps said they conformed bc they were afraid of disapproval from group - when Asch repeated but got Pps to write answers instead of say out loud, conf rate dropped to 13.5% - shows importance of NSI in conformity
- Jenness supports ISI - Pps asked to make independent judgements about no. jelly beans in a jar - then discussed estimates w group - Pps made second priv indiv estimate after discussion - second priv estimate moved towards group estimate (females typically conformed more) - shows ISI occurs in unfamiliar situations as Pps want to be right so gain knowledge from group
What reduces support for explanations for conformity?
- Recent research contradicts Asch - Perrin & Spencer conducted Asch-style exp - conf rate of 0.25% - perhaps Asch results lack temporal validity and do not represent modern idea of NSI - but P&S used sample of engineering & maths students - diff to Asch sample - perhaps they were influenced by their knowledge in such tasks
- Jenness validity issues - Jenness exp lacked ecological validity - giving estimate of beans in jar is mundane task, perhaps we would conform differently in a situation w more social consequences as there are v few in J’s study - may not reflect real-life behav
What are the variations of Asch’s original procedure?
- Group size
- The unanimity of the majority
- Task difficulty
How did Asch investigate the effect of group size on conformity?
- 1 confed = 3% conformity
- 2 confeds = 12.8% conformity
- 3 confeds = 30% conformity
- Increases in size of the majority did not increase conformity after 15 Pps
- Indicates size of majority is important to a certain point
How did Asch investigate the effect of unanimity on conformity?
- 1 confed instructed to give correct answer throughout = 5.5% conformity
- Even when confed gave diff answer to maj & Pp, conformity = 9%
- Shows when maj is broken, people more likely to resist pressure to conform as they do not feel alone
How did Asch investigate the effect of task difficulty on conformity?
- Asch made length of lines significantly smaller and similar and therefore more difficult to judge
- Found rate of conformity increased
What do Asch’s variations suggest about the reasons for conformity?
- Group size - people more likely to conform w large majority due to NSI
- Unanimity - people more likely to conform to unanimous maj due to NSI
- Task difficulty - shows people more likely to conform when task is difficult due to ISI
What support is there for factors affecting conformity?
- Asch group size - conf rate w 1 Pp amongst 6-8 confeds = 32% - conf rate w 2 confeds = 12.8% - conf rate w 1 confed = 3% - conf rate remained same at ~32% after 3 confeds - also after 15 confeds conformity rates dropped perhaps bc situations seems bizarre leading to DCs - therefore group size has signif impact on conf rate
- Asch unanimity - Asch investigated if presence of another non-conforming confed affected conf rate in Pp - when 1 confed gave correct answer conf rate 32% to 5.5% - when 1 confed rebelled against Pp and other confeds conf rate still dropped to 9% - unanimity important
- Asch task difficulty - in one variation Asch made length of lines more similar - so harder to judge - found conf increased - suggests ISI plays greater role than NSI when task becomes harder as ppl look for guidance - Jenness also supports ISI w task difficulty in his study where blah blah blah
