Conformity

Question 1

Conformity definition

Answer 1

a change in a

Question 2

Three types of conformity

Answer 2

Compliance, identification, internalisation

Question 3

Compliance definition

example

Answer 3

Agreeing publicly while disagreeing privately

laughing at the jokes of a friend you dont find funny

Question 4

example of compliance

Answer 4

pretending to like a movie that you don’t because of a group that loves it

Question 5

Identification definition

example

Answer 5

Changing private views as well as public behaviour
but upon leaving the group, the original behaviours and beliefs return

supporting a new football team every time you move town

Question 6

identification example

Answer 6

adopting the same music taste as your friendship group. when you leave the group you revert back to your old music taste

Question 7

Internalisation definition

example

Answer 7

Beliefs of a group are taken on and made permanent

becoming a vegetarian

Question 8

internalisation example

Answer 8

becoming vegan

Question 9

asch’s study into conformity:
procedure

Answer 9

123 male participants put in groups between 7 and 9 confederates
shown sets of lines and asked which was closest to the original line
the confederates would give the wrong answers first before the participant answered
in the control experiments the participant gave the answers alone

Question 10

asch’s study into conformity:
results

Answer 10

participants conformed to the group consensus 32% of the time
- 75% of participants conformed to at least one incorrect answer
- 5% of participants conformed to every incorrect answer
error rate of 0.04% in control trials

Question 11

strength of Asch’s conformity experiment

Answer 11

practical applications: demonstrate the extent to which humans follow the herd

Question 12

weaknesses of Asch’s conformity experiment

Answer 12

ecological/external validity - guessing the length of the lines is an unusual task and would not be done in the real world
gender bias/beta bias - all the participants in Asch’s study were male so is not clear if findings are valid in females as well
ethical concerns - did not give informed consent on the study, thought they were participating in a visual field test

Question 13

what were Asch’s three variations

Answer 13

Group size, unanimity, task difficulty

Question 14

asch’s investigation into group size on conformity

Answer 14

conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases.
Conformity does not increase with more than four confederates, this is considered optimal group size.

Question 15

asch’s investigation into unanimity

Answer 15

when one other person in the group gave a different answer from the confederates, conformity dropped
The presence of even one confederate that goes against the majority can reduce conformity by 80%

Question 16

asch’s investigation into task difficulty.

Answer 16

asch made the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length. Conformity increased as it was harder to judge the correct answer
When we are uncertain we look to others for confirmation so the harder the task the greater the conformity

Question 17

weakness of aschs study (temporal validity)

Answer 17

In the 1950s when asch did his study, America was very conformist. Due to the rise of McCarthyism and fear of being labelled pro-communist, people conformed more to counteract this. Conformity helped people to survive.
People are less conformist today - demonstrated by a study on engineering students in the UK. Found that only 1 person in around 400 trials conformed to the wrong answer.

Question 18

weakness of asch’s study (artificial situation)

Answer 18

participants knew they were in a research study and subject to demand characteristics.
Also the study lacks ecological validity as measuring lines has very little application in the real world.

Question 19

ethical problem with asch’s study and

Answer 19

deception. Asch deceieved the volunteers claiming he was doing a study of vision, but the real purpose was to see how the naiive participant would respond to the behaviour of the confederates.
This is unethical but could be argued that deception was necessary to produce valid results.

Question 20

Weakness of aschs study (males)

Answer 20

Only men were tested by Asch. Other research suggests women might be more conformist than men as they are more concerned about social relationships. Beta bias as it assumed women would respond the same way