Chapter 8 - Conformity Flashcards
What is conformity?
Changing one’s behaviour due to the real or imagined influence of others.
Why do people conform? Give 2 reasons.
1) Informational social influence
- Don’t know what to do in a confusing or unusual situation
- Rely on other people’s behavior as a cue on how to respond, and they then decide to act in a similar manner.
2) Normative social influence
- Did not wish to be ridiculed/punished for being different from everybody else
- They chose to act the way the group expected so that they wouldn’t be rejected or thought less of by group members.
What is informational social influence?
Relying on other people as a source of information to guide our behavior. We conform because we believe that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous stiuation is correct and can help use choose an appropriate course of action.
Distinguish between private acceptance and public compliance
Private acceptance: When people conform to other people’s behaviour out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or saying is right.
Public compliance: Conforming to other people’s behaviour publicly without necessarily believing in what the other people are doing or saying.
One involves true acceptance, whereas the other is just you going through the motions. But both involve you conforming to the group’s actions.
When will people conform to informational social influence? Which is the most important determinant?
1) When the situation is ambiguous -MOST IMPORTANT
2) when the situation is a crisis
3) When other people are experts
When the situation is ambiguous, why are people highly susceptible to informational social influence?
You are now unsure of the correct response, the appropriate behaviour or the right idea to tackle the situation. Hence, you will be most open to influence from others.
The more uncertain you are, the more you will rely on others.
Why is it that people are susceptible to informational social influence during a crisis? What can possibly result out of this?
A crisis is also an ambiguous situation.
In a crisis situation, we usually do not have time to stop and think about exactly which course of action we should take.
If we feel scared or panicky are uncertain about what to do, it is only natural for us to see how other people are responding and to do otherwise. However, the people we imitate may also feel scared and panicky and may not be behaving rationally. This can result in irrnational behaviour.
Why are other people so inclined to follow what experts do or say? How is this possibly dangerous?
They have a high level of expertise. The more expertise or knowledge has, the more valuable he/she will be as as guide in an ambiguous situation.
Experts can be wrong too, hence they are not always reliable sources of information.
Provide empirical evidence of how people can be susceptible to informational social influence in the lab.
Sherif, 1936.
You are seated alone in a dark room and asked to focus your attention on a dot of light 15 feet away. Experimenter then asks you to estimate in inches how far the light moves.
Creation of an ambiguous situation by Sherif
Participants were later paired with 2 other people, each of whom had had the same prior experience alone with the light.
Over the course of several trials as a group, people converged on a common estimate, and each member of the group tended to conform to that estimate.
Results indicate that people were using each other as a source of information, coming to believe that the group estimate was the correct one.
An important feature of informational social influence is that it can lead to private acceptance, when people conform to other people’s behaviour out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or saying is right.
However, Sherif thought that public compliance might prevent others from stating their private belief, which may be different from the public consensus. Perhaps done to avoid looking foolish or to avoid standing out from the crowd.
Public compliance: Conforming to other people’s behaviour publicly without necessarily believing in what the other people are doing or saying
He then asked people to judge the lights one more time, but this time back on their own.
Even though the participants no longer had to worry about looking silly in front of other participants, they continued to give the answer the group had given earlier.
One study even found that people still conformed to the group estimate when they participated individually a full year later.
These results suggest that people were relying on each other to define reality and came to privately accept the wisdom of the group
Provide empirical evidence about how information social influence can be used to create private acceptance in real life.
Energy Conservation in households and hotels
1) Households
- Gave a sample of California residents information urging them to save electricity
- The household members received one of 4 messages: 3 presented basic reasons to conserve (to protect the environment, to benefit society, to save money). The last one contained information designed to promote conformity. In this case, the participants were told that the majority of their neighbours conserved electrical energy.
- The researchers then measured actual energy usage from the homes’ electrical meters.
- Found that the 4th message, containing behaviour of one’s neighbours, caused people to conserve more energy than did the other 3 messages.
2) Hotels
“Reuse your bath towels and save energy” vs “Majority of the guests in this very room had reused their towels”: the latter was significantly more effective in increasing hotel guests’ compliance
Provide empirical/real-life evidence about how the perceived/real level of importance of something can lead people to conform.
(smth related to what you learn in PL3233!)
Eyewitness Testimony. - The more important the decision is, the more susceptible you are to social influence, and the more likely you are to conform.
Research participants were first shown a slide of a man - the perpetrator.
They then saw a slide of a lineup composed of 4 men, one of whom was the perpetrator.
IV1: In the lineup, the perpetrator was sometimes dressed differently than he had been in the prior slide. The participant’s job was to pick him out.
Task was made difficult, and more importantly, ambiguous, by presenting the slides extremely quickly.
Study took place in a group consisting of the participants and 3 confederates. Each of the 4 said their answers out loud after viewing each pair of slides.
On the critical 7 trials, where informational social influence would be measured, the three confederates answered before the participant - and all the confederates gave the same wrong answer.
IV2: The researchers also manipulated how important it was to the research participants to be accurate at this task
High-importance condition:
Participants were told that the upcoming task was a real test of eyewitness identification ability and that police departments and courts would soon be using it to differentiate good eyewitnesses from poor ones → participants’ scores would therefore establish standards against which future eyewitness performance would be judged
Those who were most accurate at the task would receive a $20 bonus from the experimenters.
Hence, participants in this condition were motivated to do well and earn their $20.
This condition mirrors the concerns of many situations in everyday life.
The more important the decision is, the more susceptible you are to social influence, and the more likely you are to conform.
Participants conformed to the confederates’ judgements on 51% of the trials.
Low-importance condition:
The research participants were told that the study was a first attempt to study eyewitness identification and that the slide task was still being developed.
Participants in this condition saw this as just a basic research study like any other, and their performance didn’t seem like it was all that important.
Participants conformed to the confederates’ judgements on 35% of the critical trials.
Why are eyewitnesses intereviewed individually by investigators and they view a lineup individually as well?
Because if you let them view it with other people, they might be susceptible to informational social influence, and there is this risk that they might point the wrong person out LOL what if the innocent go to jail :( recall how it’s an important decision to be made, and the more important a decision is, the more likely people are to conform.
Evidence:
In a different eyewitness study, pairs of eyewitnesses each watched separate videos of what they believed to be the exact same event.
Unbeknownst to participants, each member of the pair viewed a slightly different video.
Among pairs that were allowed to discuss the video before each eyewitness took an individual memory test, 71% of witnesses went on to mistakenly recall personally having seen items that only their partner had actually seen.
We conform to the group’s ______, which refers to implicit and explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviours, values and beliefs. We conform to this to be liked and accepteed by other people.
social norms
The presence of social norms allows groups to place expectations on a group member about what?
They have certain expectations about how their members should behave, and members in good standing conform to these rules. Members who do not are perceived as different, difficult and deviant.
Why is normative conformity so powerful in the social media era?
These norms are transmitted faster than ever.
How is the impact of normative conformity exacerbated in collectivistic societies?
Eg: Bullying in Japan → Japan has a highly cohesive, group-oriented culture. A whole class or even an entire school will sometimes turn against one student perceived as different. Can result in suicide. Hikikomori: Teenagers (mostly male) who have withdrawn from all social interaction. Some of these teenagers were severely bullied before they retreated to a state of withdrawal from social interaction.
We can also be susceptible to normative social influence out of a ________ need for __________.
Explain how this works, and what the lack of fulfillment of this need can lead to
fundamental human; social companionship
We humans are by nature a social species.
Through interactions with others, we receive emotional support, affection and love, and we partake of emotional experiences.
Other people are extraordinarily important to our sense of well-being. Research on individuals who have been isolated for long periods of time indicates that being deprived of human contact is stressful, traumatic and psychologically painful.
Private acceptance + public compliance = ________
Public compliance only = _________
informative social influence
normative social influence
Describe the Asch study
1) Hypothesis + Assumptions.
2) Method
3) Results
4) Implications
Asch devised the studies assuming that there are limits to how much people will conform.
Since the situation presented was unambiguous, Asch expected that people would act like rational, objective problem solvers. When the group said or did something that contradicted an obvious truth, surely people would resist social pressures and decide for themselves what was going on.
To test his hypothesis better, Asch told his participants that his experiment was on perceptual judgement, and they’ll be taking it with 7 other students (they were actually confederates and you are the only participant).
Experimented showed everyone 2 cards, one with a single line on it and the other with three lines labelled 1, 2 and 3.
He asks each of you to judge and then announce out loud which of the 3 lines on the 2nd card is closest in length to the line on the first card. You are the last one to answer.
Confederates will say the correct answer at the first few trials, but say the incorrect ones at some later trials (12/18 trials → wrong answer).
Asch set up a situation to discover if people would conform even when the right answer was absolutely obvious.
Expected that people wouldn’t be inclined to conform given that the correct answer was obvious
Found that 76% of the participants conformed and gave an obviously incorrect response on at least one trial.
Can say that normative pressures came into play.
When people in a control group made the judgements by themselves, they were accurate 98% of the time → right answers were very obvious, so it couldn’t have been the ambiguity of the situation that led people to conform.
Even though the other participants were strangers, the fear of being the lone dissenter was so strong that most people conformed, at least occasionally.
Normative pressures usually result in public compliance without private acceptance.
People were concerned about looking foolish even in front of complete strangers.
According to the Asch study, conformity for normative reasons can occur simply because we do not want to risk social disapproval, even from complete strangers we will never see again.
When participants were asked to write down their responses instead, what happened?
Since they no longer had to worry about what the group thought of them because the group would never find out what their answers were, conformity dropped drastically, occurring on an average of only 1.5 of the 12 trials.
What are the main difference between studies studying informational social influence and studies examining normative social influence?
Informational social influence: Need to make situation ambiguous or make the situation appear very important
normative social influence: don’t need. make your task ridiculously easy.
What results were obtained when the slides in Asch’s line judging task were shown for 5 seconds instead?
Manipulated the importance of the participants being accurate.
Half were led to believe that it was very important that they give the right answers, and half were told that it really didn’t matter how they did.
Confederates then gave the obviously wrong answer on some of the trials
Participants in the low-importance condition conformed to the group on 33% of the critical trials - very close to the rate in Asch’s line judgement task.
Participants in the high-importance condition did conform less. Only conformed on 16% of the trials.
These findings underscore the power of normative social influence: Even when the group, the right answer is obvious, and there are strong incentives to be accurate, some people still find it hard to risk social disapproval, even from strangers.
Explain the consequence of resisting normative social influence with the use of an example.
Stanley Schachter’s study: How a group responds to an individual who ignores normative influence
Asked groups of college students to read and discuss a case history of Johnny Rocco, a juvenile delinquent
Most students took a middle-of-the-road position about the case, believing that Rocco should receive a judicious mixture of love and discipline.
However, unbeknownst to the participants, Schachter had planted an accomplice in the group who was instructed to disagree with the group’s recommendations.
The accomplice consistently argued that Rocco should receive the harshest amount of punishment, regardless of what the other group members argued.
The deviant/accomplice became the target of the most comments and questions of the real participants throughout most of the discussion, and the near the end, communication with him dropped sharply.
The other group members had tried to convince the deviant to agree with them. However, when it appeared that this wouldn’t work, they ignored him altogether.
In addition, they punished him.
After the discussion, they were asked to fill out questionnaires that supposedly pertained to future discussion meetings of their group.
Participants were asked to nominate one group member who should be eliminated from further discussions if the group size had to be reduced.
They nominated the deviant.
Were also asked to assign group members to various tasks in future discussions. They assigned the unimportant or boring jobs, such as taking notes, to the deviant.
Which theory can help predict when people will conform to normative social influence?
Social Impact Theory
What does it propose?
The idea that conforming to social influence depends on the group’s importance, immediacy, and the number of people in the group.
Strength: How important is this group to you?
Immediacy: How close is the group in space and time during the attempt to influence you?
Number: How many people are in the group?
Social Impact Theory predicts conformity will increase as strength and immediacy increase.
The more important a group is to us and the closer group members are to us physically, the more likely we will be to conform to its normative pressures.
It is ALWAYS the case that as group size increases, conformity will increase too. True or false?
False. it only acts as a general guideline.
Conformity increases as the number of people in the group increase, but once the group reaches 4 or 5 other people, conformity does not increase much.
What do you earn if you conform to an important group consistently and for a decent amount of time?
idiosyncracy credits. the tolerance a person earns, over time, by conforming to group norms; if enough credits are earned, the person can, on occasion, deviate from the group without retribution.
Why is it dangerous to get a close-knit group to make decisions?
Normative pressures are much stronger when they come from people whose friendship, love and respect we cherish because there is a large cost to losing this love and respect.
One consequence of this conclusion is that it can be dangerous to have policy decisions made by highly cohesive groups because they care more about pleasing each other and avoiding conflict than arriving at the best, most logical decision.
