AS SOCIAL INFLUENCE - CONFORMITY Flashcards
Describe each type of conformity
Compliance - conforming publicly but not privately to fit in
Identification - adjusting ideas both publicly and privately to feel a sense of membership with the group
Internalisation - publicly and privately conforming as the views of the majority have been internalised and accepted. Presence of the group is not necessary.
Give two explanations of conformity
Informational Social Influence (ISI) - desire to be right. Occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure on how to behave (i.e. occurs in ambiguous situations)
Normative Social Influence - desire to be liked. Done to gain social approval from a group and can lead to compliance.
Describe the procedure of Asch’s research
Asch used 123 male American students. Each naive ppt had 6-8 confederates in the group with them. They were presented with one card that showed a line, and a comparison card with three other lines on it. One of the lines was the same length and the other two were obviously wrong (an unambiguous situation). Each person in the group stated out loud which line they thought matched the original card. On 12 critical trials out of 18 total, the confederates gave an incorrect answer. The naive ppt would always sit so that they gave their answer last or second to last, i.e they heard all the other answers first.
Describe the findings of Asch’s research
- Naive ppt gave an incorrect answer on 36.8% of trials
- 25% of ppts didn’t conform on any trials, meaning 75% conformed at least once
- When interviewed after the experiment, ppts mostly said they conformed due to fear of rejection/ wanting to fit in with the group (NSI leading to compliance)
Describe Asch’s variations and findings of those variations
1) Group size - Asch varied the number of confederates in each group from 1 to 15. He found that between 2 and 3 confederates, conformity rose from 13.6% to 31.8%; after that, adding more confederates made little difference.
2) Unanimity - Asch introduced a truthful confedrate, or a dissenting but inaccurate confederate and found that conformity fell by a quarter, on average.
3) Task difficulty - Asch made the lines more similar lengths and found that conformity significantly rose, showing the effects of ISI as the situation becomes more ambiguous.
Evaluate Asch’s research and variations
(-) Ethical issues (deception) - Asch made the naive ppts believe that all the confederates were actually real people, and also told them that the experiment researching “visual perception”
(+) However, without deceiving the ppts, Asch could never have found these results, and the insight it gives us into majority influence is significant.
(-) Only used male students so can’t generalise to whole population as women are more interested in social bonds so would presumably conform more; low population validity
(-) Only used American students; Smith and Bond (1998) point out that some Asian collectivist cultures would show much higher rates of conformity than the western individualistic attitudes of American students
(-) Artificial task so can’t generalise findings to everyday life
(-) Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch’s study using UK engineering students and found that out of 396 trials, only 1 student conformed; 1950s America was a very conformist culture and society has changed a lot since then; suggests that the “Asch effect” isn’t consistent over time and so therefore isn’t a central component of human behaviour
Evaluate conformity
(+ NSI) Asch interviewed the naive ppts after the experiment and found that most of them gave the wrong answer due to a desire to be liked by the group; supports the idea of NSI
(- ISI) Perrin and Spencer (1980) found that UK engineering students were far less conformist, i.e. were far more confident in their precision; doesn’t apply to everyone i.e. not a general rule for human behaviour
(- NSI) McGhee and Teevan (1967) found that nAffiliators (people who have a greater need for social relationships) were far more conformist, i.e. NSI doesn’t affect everyone in the same way
(+ ISI) Lucas et al (2006) gave students easy and difficult maths problems and found that conformity rose with the difficulty of the problems, especially for those who rated their maths ability as poor; shows that in a more ambiguous situation, ISI has a stronger effect
Describe the procedure of Zimbardo’s research
Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department of Stanford University. His aim was to investigate the reasoning behind the brutality of prison guards; was it due to sadistic personality or situational variables?
Z recruited 24 emotionally stable students, and allocated them randomly to either prisoner or guard. Prisoners were arrested in their homes and taken to the prison, stripped, deloused and given a uniform and a number.
Daily routines of the prisoners were heavily regulated, and prisoners were never referred to by name, only by their numbers. Guards were given uniforms, wooden clubs, handcuffs and mirror sunglasses, and told they had complete power over the prisoners, e.g. they decided when they could go to the toilet.
Describe Zimbardo’s findings
After just two days, the prisoners had rebelled against the guards; they ripped their uniforms and shouted and swore at the guards, who retaliated with fire extinguishers. One prisoner went on hunger strike and was subsequently put into “the hole” (a small, dark, isolated cupboard). Guards enthusiastically took up their roles and often harassed the prisoners, waking them up in the middle of the night and performing headcounts.
Three prisoners were released early due to psychological disturbance and the whole experiment was stopped after just 6 days instead of the planned 14. This all shows the power of situational variables on conformity; the more the guards and prisoners identified with their roles, the more brutal they became.
Evaluate Zimbardo’s research
(+) Some control over variables; all ppts were emotionally stable and were randomly assigned to roles so increased validity.
(-) Banuazizi and Mohamed (1975) suggest that ppts were just play acting and hadn’t really internalised their roles, with one guard saying he based his behaviour on a film he had seen called Cool Hand Luke; questions the validity of the findings
(-) Reicher and Haslam (2006) replicated Z’s experiment and found that the prisoners took control; acts as contradictory evidence, lowering validity.
(-) Ethical issues; Z also played the role of the superintendent and so couldn’t remain objective and also could’t look after the psychological well-being of his ppts.
