conformity

Question 1

gDescribe the meaning of conformity

Answer 1

Yielding to group pressure

Question 2

What is the meaning of compliance?

Answer 2

Publicly but not privately going along with the majority influence to gain approval or avoid ridicule

Question 3

Is compliance temporary or permanent?

Answer 3

Weak/temporary and only shown in the presence of the group

Question 4

What is the meaning of internalisation?

Answer 4

Public and privately accepting majority influence through adoption of the majority group’s belief system

Question 5

Is internalisation temporary or permanent?

Answer 5

A stronger permanent form of conformity as its maintained outside of the group’s presence

Question 6

What is the meaning of identification

Answer 6

Public and private acceptance of majority influence in order to gain group acceptance

Question 7

Is identification temporary or permanent

Answer 7

A stronger form of conformity but still temporary, they don’t always agree with the group

Question 8

Explain Informational social influence

Answer 8

• a cognitive process that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it to be correct
• we accept it because we too want to be right and so both our private and public views change to be consistent with the majority

Question 9

Explain the normative social influence

Answer 9

• an emotional process that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we wish to be liked or accepted
• we want to gain social approval
• they may change their public views but will privately disagree

Question 10

Who took part in Asch’s experiment?

Answer 10

• one participant (the testee) was asked the line length in comparison to the others
• confederates who were asked to say the wrong numbers

Question 11

What did the participants in Asch’s experiment have to do?

Answer 11

they had to look at the line and match it to another line which had the same length

Question 12

What did Asch find in his experiment?

Answer 12

That 37% of participants conformed to majority due to social influence and 75% of participants conformed at least once

Question 13

What do Asch’s findings tell us

Answer 13

• That most people will go along with the majority of the group, due to social pressure
• No one wants to look different in the eyes of participants who changed their answers

Question 14

Does Asch’s experiment show that people conform?

Answer 14

Yes, the experiment shows that there are people who will conform to avoid ridicule but actually don’t believe what they are saying

Question 15

What is temporal validity

Answer 15

A type of external validity that refers to the ability to generalise the results of a study over time

Question 16

Give one weakness of Asch’s experiments to do with validity

Answer 16

It lacks temporal validity (it is only been done once years and years ago)

Question 17

Give another weakness of Asch’s experiment to do with temporal validity which was proved later

Answer 17

When Perrin and Spencer repeated the study, they repeated it with a group of engineering students and 1 in 396 students conformed. This infers that people are less likely to conform in recent years - it lacks temporal validity

Question 18

Give another weakness of Asch’s experiment to do with the characteristics of the experiment

Answer 18

• Demand characteristics (behaving according to how they thought they should behave)
• trivial - not very difficult/realistic
• they cannot be generalised, as there were only male participants

Question 19

Give another weakness of Asch’s experiment to do with gender

Answer 19

• In the 1970s, it was suggested that women would be more conformist because they’re more concerned with social relationships (wish to please)
• sex differences were inconsistent in a meta-analysis (reanalysis)
• clearest difference between men and women was group pressure from an audience

Question 20

What did Fiske say about Asch’s experiment and when did he say it?

Answer 20

“Asch’s groups were not very groupy” meaning the groups didn’t really know each other.
he said it in 2014

Question 21

What are the three reasons people conform in terms of Asch’s experiment

Answer 21

• Distortion of perception- came to see the lines in the same way as the majority
• Distortion of judgement- felt doubt about the accuracy of their judgement so sided with the majority
• Distortion of action- continued to trust their own judgement and perception but changed behaviour to avoid disapproval

Question 22

Give some research support for ISI

Answer 22

• students were asked to give answers to maths questions that were easy or more difficult
• greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were more difficult - low self-efficacy

Question 23

Give some research against NSI

Answer 23

• less concerned with being liked are less likely to be affected by NSI than those who care about being liked
• they’re described as being nAffilators
• research showed students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform

Question 24

What is a social role

Answer 24

The parts that people play as members of various social groups for example parents or students. These are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role

Question 25

Give the baseline of Zimbardo’s experiment

Answer 25

• male students locked up in a mock prison (randomly assigned roles of prisoner or guard)
• guards and prisoners adapted to the social roles quickly
• it was a controlled experiment but it was an artificial environment so the results cannot be generalised to real-life situations
• most participants (prisoners mainly) found the experience very distressing and the experiment had to end early

Question 26

What are three critisisms that Zimbardo’s experiment received and what was his response?`

Answer 26

• didn’t give informed consent
• prisoners were humiliated
• ‘end’s do not justify the means’ Savin 1973

response:
- he spoke to the participants (apparently they were ‘fine’)
- he claimed the participants were receiving longitudinal care
- he claimed the purpose of the experiment was to make the people feel uneasy

Question 27

What were the effects of Zimbardo’s experiment on the prisoner’s mental health?

Answer 27

• prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious
• 1 prisoner had to be released after one day as he showed symptoms of psychological distress
• two more were released on the 4th day
• one prisoner went on a hunger strike which led to him being even worsely treated and being put in ‘the hole’

Question 28

What was Reicher and Haslam’s experiment about?

Answer 28

It was a controlled experiment in a mock prison which was being filmed for BBC (15 male volunteers - divided into 10 prisoners and 5 guards)
However, the prisoners knew one of them chosen at random would be a guard in 3 days

Question 29

What were the ethics like of Reicher and Haslam’s experiment?

Answer 29

They had daily tests to measure levels of depression, anxiety, stress and compliance with rules and an ethics team had the right to stop the experiment at any point if they felt necessary

Question 30

What were the results of the Reicher and Haslam experiment?

Answer 30

• guards found it hard to identify with the role as they didn’t feel comfortable exercising the power
• after one prisoner promotion, they became more united and the unequal system collapsed as the guards were not strong enough and the prisoners were too strong
• the guards were not as empowered as in Zimbardo’s experiment

Question 31

What are some similarities and differences between Zimbardo’s experiment and Reicher and Haslam’s experiment

Answer 31

sim:
- an artificial situation so results cannot be generalised to real life again
diff:
- belief that the participants played up to the camera
- there was informed consent
- they were debriefed and there was counselling afterwards
- protected by the ethics committee