conformity

Question 1

what is conformity?

Answer 1

conforming to a group norm

Question 2

what is sherif’s study on conformity to group norms? explain it

Answer 2

sherif 1936 - he had a group of participants in the lab that believed they wee taking study on visual perception
- they were shown a light in a completely dark room
- they had to estimate how far it had moved from the previous time
- the light did not in fact move at all, when the participants were guessing in a group setting instead alone, the variation of guessing became smaller and participants tended to agree on a common distance
- this shows the influence other people have/conforming to what other people think

Question 3

how did asch paradigm examine conformity when decision certainty was high? (1952) explain the experiment

Answer 3

• ran 123 groups of seven people
• each group did a visual discrimination task
• the participants had to guess which line was most similar to the standard line that was shown
• at first, most of the participants were saying line 1
• but the Confederates started saying line 2 or 3, which many people conformed and went with what they said
  results: 25% made no errors, 28% made 8/12 errors, 47% made 1-7 errors

Question 4

why do people conform according to deutsch and gerard 1995?

Answer 4

informational and normative influence
- the need to be right but also the desire to want to be liked/fit in
- informational influence: conformity due to greater confidence in the perceptions of the group, alyne our response with the group
normative influence: we rely on other people to maximise potential help and minimise sources of conflict
disagreeing with other = rejection from group (motivated to conform)

Question 5

name … studies on conformity

Answer 5

• sherif 1936
• asch 1952
• wilder 1977
• allen and levine 1971