9.3 Peer Pressure

Question 1

What is peer pressure?

Answer 1

Pressure from people that you work with

Question 2

What is the definition of peer pressure?

Answer 2

The actual or perceived pressure a person can feel to conform to what they believe their peers expect

Question 3

Who carried out experiments investigating the nature of conformity?

Answer 3

Solomon Asch

Question 4

What did the nature of conformity experiments show?

Answer 4

• That on average participants gave wrong answers in 1/3 of the trials, by agreeing with the confederate majority
• Some participants never conformed, and some conformed all the time

Question 5

What does the chances of someone’s view being affected by conformity or peer pressure depend on?

Answer 5

• Culture (people from country X tend to conform more than those from country Y)
• Gender (men tend to conform less than women)
• Self-esteem (a person with low self-esteem is more likely to conform)
• Familiarity of the individual with the subject matter (a person is more likely to conform to the majority view if they feel that they know less about the subject matter than they do)
• The expertise of the group members (if the person respects the group or perceives them to be very knowledgeable, they will be more likely to conform to their views)
• The relationship between the individual and group members (people are more likely to confirm if they know the other members of the group, i.e., it is a group of peers)

Question 6

When is peer pressure and conformity are considered less likely to influence a person’s view?

Answer 6

If they express their opinion publicly from the outset

Question 7

What is it important for an organisation to adopt?

Answer 7

A positive approach to safety throughout their workforce so that peer pressure and conformity can be used as a force for good by perpetuating this attitude

Question 8

What is a tendency that a group can develop and what is it called?

Answer 8

Believing that their own methods are the best, this is known as the group’s or organisation’s culture

Question 9

What are the 5 different sub-cultures?

Answer 9

• Safety Culture
• Culture of shifts/work-groups
• Culture of company sites
• Business culture
• Technical culture

Question 10

What is safety culture?

Answer 10

An amalgamation of the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of all the employees

Question 11

Who is responsible for ensuring they contribute towards social culture in a positive way?

Answer 11

Everyone