conformity Flashcards
what is conformity?
a type of social influence that describes how a person changes their attitude or behaviour in response to group pressure.
what are the three types of conformity?
- compliance
- identification
- internalisation
what is compliance?
when an idividual changes their public behaviour but not their private veliefs. this type of conformity therefore results in a short-term change.
what is identification?
when an individual changes their public behaviour and private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group. this type of conformity therefore results in a short term change.
what is internalisation?
when an individual changes their public views and their private beliefs. they have actually accepted the groups point of view or beliefs. this type of conformity therefore results in a long-term change.
what are the two explanations for conformity?
- normative social influence
- informational social influence
what is normative social influence?
argues that we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked.
what is informational social influence?
argues that we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it to be correct.
what was the aim of asch’s study?
to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform.
what was the procedure of asch’s experiment?
- line judgement task
- naive ppt in room with 7 confederates
- confederates agreed on repsonses in advance
- naive ppt did not know this, believed confederates were real ppts
- each person had to state aloud which comparison was most accurate to target line
- answer was always obvious
- naive ppt sat at the end of the row and gave answer last
- in some trials the confederates gave the wrong answer
- 18 trials in total, confederates gave wrong answers on 12 of them.
what were asch’s findings?
- he measured each time the ppt conformed to the majority view
- on average, the real ppts (naive) conformed to incorrect answers on 32% of trials
- 74% of ppts conformed on at least one critical trial
- 26% of ppts never conformed
- when he used a control group, with one real ppt and no confederates, less than 1% of ppts gave an incorrect answer
what was the conclusion from asch’s experiment?
When interviewed after, most said they did not believe their conforming answers but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed. A few of them said that they really did believe the groups answers were correct.
what were asch’s 3 variations?
group size
unanimity
difficulty of task
explain asch’s group size variation.
- involved seven confederates to determine whether group size would affect conformityy, he conducted multiple trials with different numbers of confederates
- with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, when more were added it made a slight difference to rates of conformity
- suggests a small majoritry is not sufficient for conformity to occur, groups of more than 3 do not increase rate of conformity
explain asch’s unanimity variation.
- defined as agreement by all involved, asch wanted to investigate whether another non-conforming confederate woulf affect the naive ppts conformity
- to test this, he introduced a dissenter, another confederate who disagreed with the others, he varied between giving the correct and incorrect answer
- when the dissenter gave correct answer, conformity dropped to 5%, in conidition where dissenter gave a different incorrect answer to majority, conformity dropped to 9%.
- suggests influence of majority depends on the group being unanimous.
