Conformity Flashcards
Conformity
A change in behaviour due to real or imaginary pressure from other people
Compliance
Superficial agreement with the group - going along with it publicly but holding a different view privately
Identification
Conforming to the group because we value it - prepared to change views to be part of it
Internalisation
Conforming to the group because you accept its norms -You agree privately as well as publicly
Who identified the three ways that people conform?
Herbert Kerman (1958)
What are the three ways that people conform
Compliance, identification, internalisation
Unanimity
The extent to which all members of the group agree
Who study conformity with lines?
Solomon Asch (1951)
Asch’s baseline procedure
- 123 American men Whitworth were tested
- each were in a group with other fake participants
- they sat two large white cards one card had a standard line
- the other card had three comparison lines where one was clearly the same length as the original
- the other lines were substantially different
- the participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same as the original line
- the participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8
- only one was a genuine participant
- the participant was always stated last in the group or next-to-last
- all other were Confederates of ash and gave the same incorrect answer every time
Asch’s baseline procedure findings
- on average participants agreed with the confederate incorrect answers 36.7% of the time
- 25% of participants never conformed, never gave the wrong answer
Asch’s study aim
To assess the extent to which people will conform to the opinions of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain
What were the variables investigated by Asch?
- Group size
- Unanimity
- Task difficulty
Group size aim
To find out whether the size of the grimy o would be more important than agreement of the group
Group size investigation
Asch varied the number of confederates from one to 15
Group size findings
- Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
- conformity increased with group size, but only to a point
- which three confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%
- but more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate levelled of
Group size conclusions
Most people were very sensitive to the views of others, as one or two confederates could swat their opinion
Unanimity aim
To find out if the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the participants conformity
Unanimity investigation
- Asch introduced a confederate who disagreed with eh other confederates
In one variation this person gave the correct answer - another variation he gave a wrong answer
Unanimity findings
- the genuine participants conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
- the rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
- this happened even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant
Unanimity conclusions
- the influence over the participant depends largely on the others being unanimous
- non-conformity is more likely when the majority is not unanimous
Task difficulty aim
To find out whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity
Task difficult investigation
- Asch increased the difficulty by making the original line and the comparison line more similar to each other in length
- because of this it because harder for the genuine participants to see the difference between the lines
Task difficulty findings
- conformity increased when the task was harder
- this is because it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is
- it is normal to assume that the majority re right and you are wrong
- informational social influence
One limitation of Asch’s reserach
- the situations and tasks were artificial
- participants knew they were in a research study so may have done what was expected
- demand characteristics
- there was no reason not to conform
- they also did not resemble groups that we experience in everyday life
- we cannot generalise these findings to real-world situations, especially where there are important consequences of conformity
Another limitation of Asch’s research
- participants were American men
- other research suggests that women may be more conformist
- the US is an individualist culture - people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group
- other studies were conducted in collectivist cultures such as china, and conformity rates were higher
- therefore, Asch’s findings don’t tell us much about conformity in women and people from some cultures
One strength of Asch’s reserach
- it is supported from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
- e.g. Todd Lucas
- this study shows that Asch was correct, task difficulty is and variable that affects conformity
Todd Lucas (2006)
- Participants solved easy or hard maths problems
- they were given fake answers from other students
Lucas findings and conclusions
- the participants conformed more often when the problems were harder
- this shows that Asch was correct when he claimed that task difficulty affects conformity
Limitation of Asch research - Lucas
- conformity is more complex than Asch suggested
- participants with high confidence in their maths ability conform on hard tasks more than those with low confidence
- this shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity
- Asch did not research individual factors
Ethical issues with Asch’s reserach
The participants were deceived
