(5) Conformity

Question 1

What did Sherif (1936) and (Asch 1955) do?

Answer 1

initiated the study of conformity in social psychology

Question 2

What was the Asch, 1955, 1956 experiment?

Answer 2

• Given two cards with lines on and asked to match the lines
• Actors put in experiment group to say wrong answer
• Correct answers given when alone, correct answers decrease to 60% when in control group

Question 3

What do Asch’s results show?

Answer 3

when exposed to others making a simple mistake at an extremely high rate, people will make this same mistake even though they would not otherwise do so

Question 4

When does error rate increase?

Answer 4

The error rate increases as the group making the mistake of interest gets larger

Question 5

When does increases in error level out?

Answer 5

increases in errors seem to level out after the group reaches a certain size.

Question 6

What is conformity?

Answer 6

Increasing tendency to choose specific behaviour as the behaviour becomes more common in the social group

Question 7

What does behaviour depend on?

Answer 7

behaviour that ultimately prevails depends on initial conditions

Question 8

What did Jacobs and Campbell (1961) find?

Answer 8

how the effects of misinformation persist a while, but not that long.

Question 9

How can accurate private information effect responses?

Answer 9

Relatively accurate private information starts to take over and soon eliminates the behavioural effects of the misinformation.

Question 10

What is informal conformity?

Answer 10

that conforming to the majority choice is advantageous because the majority is likely to identify the optimal behaviour

Question 11

What is ‘wisdom of the crowd’?

Answer 11

Someone who conforms by following the majority is more likely to choose optimally than if the person simply relied on private information.

Question 12

What three questions need to be considered in terms of conformity?

Answer 12

(i) Does everyone follow the majority when doing so is advantageous?
(ii) Does anyone follow the majority when doing so is disadvantageous?
(iii) Does anyone follow the majority when doing so is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous?

Question 13

What did Efferson et al. (2016) question?

Answer 13

the experimenter manipulated whether it was best to follow the majority, the minority, or if it was impossible to tell