Conformity Flashcards
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Internalisation
Identification
Compliance
Explain Internalisation
- Internalisation occurs when a person genuinely accepts and agrees with group norms
- Results in a public and private change in opinions and behaviour
- Likely to be permanent
- Changes persist in the absence of the group
Explain Identification
- Conforming to the opinions/behaviours of the group because there is something about the group we value
- Results in a public change of opinions/behaviour in order to be a part of the group
- Privately might disagree with some things that the group stands for
Explain Compliance
- Conforming with others in public
- No change in behaviour or opinions in private
- Superficial change
- Changes in behviour/opinion do not persist in absence of group members
Which types of social influence are described in the theory Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerrard came up with
- Normative social influence (NSI) THE NEED TO BE LIKED
- Informational social influence (ISI) THE NEED TO BE RIGHT
Describe ISI
- Who has the better information?
- People are not sure which opinions/behaviours are correct
- Use the majority as a source of information
- We agree with the opinion of the group because we believe it to be correct, and we want to be correct as well
- May lead to internalisation
- Cognitive process
Describe NSI
- What we feel is normal behaviour for a social group
- Want to be accepts rather than rejected
- Occurs when you don’t know the group very well
- Leads to compliance
- Emotional process
What is research support for ISI?
Lucas (2006) found that participants conformed more often to incorrect answers they were given when the maths problems were difficult.
Therefore showing that conformity is more likely when we don’t know the correct answer and so we use the majority as an information source, and agree with their answer because we believe it to be correct
What is research support for NSI?
Asch’s interview his participants and found that some conformed
because they felt self-conscious giving the correct answer and they were afraid of disapproval.
When participants wrote their
answer down, rather than saying it aloud, conformity fell to 12.5%
Therefore showing that conformity is the desire to not be rejected by the group
Define affiliator
People who are more concerned and affected by being liked by others. They have a greater need for ‘affiliation’.
Who carried out experiments on conformity?
Asch
What was Asch’s procedure?
- Participants: 123 American male undergraduates
- Each placed in a group of between 6-8 confederates and 1 participant (who was unaware of the confederates)
- Participants showed a standard line and then 3 comparison lines. 1 of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard, the other 2 were different.
- Group asked to state which line matched the standard line on 12
- Confederates instructed to give the same wrong answer.
- 18 trials in total. 12 “critical trials” were the confederates gave the wrong answer.
What were Asch’s findings?
- Participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
- Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any of the trial, therefore 75% conformed at least once.
- Participants said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI)
What were Asch’s variations?
- Group size (With 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8% - any additional
confederates made no difference) - Unanimity (The presence of a confederate who said the right answer decreased conformity by 25%)
- Task difficulty (Conformity rose is the task was more difficult)
What are the weaknesses of Aschs study?
- Culturally bound (different results might be seen in collectivist countries eg: China) and USA has an individualistic culture
- Lacks population validity (all pps are men - not generalisable)
