conformity

Question 1

what is conformity?

Answer 1

-yielding to group pressure (majority influence)
-generally has positive outcomes, though can be a negative force
-3 types of conformity

Question 2

what are the three types of conformity? who identified them?

Answer 2

-kelman 1958
-compliance
-identification
-internalisation

Question 3

what is compliance?

Answer 3

-adjusting your behaviours publicly but not privately, to be accepted/avoid disapproval
-fairly weak and temporary
-eg supporting a football team with your friends but actually having no interest in football

Question 4

what is identification?

Answer 4

-public and private conformity to gain acceptance (membership in the group is desirable)
-generally temporary, stops if an individual leaves the group
-eg in the army adopting military beliefs, but losing them once you leave

Question 5

what is internalisation?

Answer 5

-‘true conformity’
-public and private conformity, adopting the groups beliefs if they are seen as correct
-isn’t dependent on the group for maintenance
-eg joining a religion

Question 6

what are the 2 explanations of conformity? who identified them?

Answer 6

-ISI (informational social influence)
-NSI (normative social influence)
-deutsch and gerard 1955

Question 7

what is ISI?

Answer 7

-informational social influence
-people feel uncertain about something, so they turn to others around them to see what to do
-generally occurs in unfamiliar situations or ambiguous situations
-generally leads to internalisation
-jenness 1932 study
-may have an evolutionary basis (looking to others has a survival value)

Question 8

what is NSI?

Answer 8

-normative social influence
-wanting others to accept/respect them, so they agree with others
-Asch 1955 study
-likely to result in compliance or identification

Question 9

research on NSI and ISI

Answer 9

-ISI-abrams et al 1990 - we’re only influenced by others that we share characteristics with, so more likely to internalise the opinions of friends and family than strangers
-NSI- Asch

Question 10

what is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 10

-an unpleasant feeling of anxiety created by simultaneously holding two contradictory ideas
-festinger - altering these cognitions will reduce cognitive dissonance, which is best achieved through conforming
-support = some examples of conformity cannot be explained by NSI or ISI, only through cognitive dissonance

Question 11

what are situational variables? what are the 3 studied?

Answer 11

-features of an environment that affect the degree to which people yield to group pressures
-group size
-unanimity
-task difficulty

Question 12

how does group size affect conformity?

Answer 12

-the bigger the group, the more likely someone will conform, but there is a point where further increase doesn’t effect conformity
-Asch 1956 variation - 1 p + 1 confederate had low conformity, 2 cs had 13% conformity, 3 had 32%, adding extra (up to 15) had no further effect
-gerard et al 1968 found that it did still increase the more you added, but the rate of increase got smaller as more were added

Question 13

how does unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 13

-conformity rates decline when majority influence isn’t unanimous
-asch 1956 variation - if there was one confederate that goes against majority, conformity dropped from 32% to 5.5%, if the rebel went against majority AND the participant, it dropped to 9%

Question 14

how does task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 14

-more conformity in difficult tasks, as the right answer becomes less obvious
-people look to others for the answer, so ISI is the driving force
-Asch 1956 variation - made the lines more similar, made ps more likely to conform

Question 15

what are the 3 individual variables affecting conformity?

Answer 15

-gender
-mood
-culture

Question 16

how does gender affect conformity?

Answer 16

-females conform more
-could be bcs they’re socialised to conform more, eagly et al 1981 - females learn to focus on quality of relationship and take greater care in maintaining them (NSI), while males are taught to be dominant
-could be biologically programmed to be conformist, taylor 2000 - tend and befriend instead of fight or flight
-most studies were conducted on men in male-type tasks, creating ISI for women - sistrunk + mcdavid 1971 - tasks with male bias made women conform more

Question 17

how does mood affect conformity?

Answer 17

-research suggests we conform more if we’re in a good mood, or when moving from fear to relaxation
-tong et al 2008 - more likely to conform to wrong math answers when in a positive mood rather than neutral or negative

Question 18

how does culture affect conformity?

Answer 18

-collectivist cultures more likely to conform because it’s socialised and expected
-smith + bond 1993 - conformity in collectivist cultures was 25-58%, but 14-39% in individualist cultures

Question 19

what are social roles and social norms?

Answer 19

-roles = the part a person plays in a social group, which meets expectations
-norms = expected ways of behaving, varying in situations

Question 20

how do social roles and norms lead to conformity?

Answer 20

-teach people how to behave
-learned social roles become internal mental scripts
-involves identification, not internalisation, as people may behave differently in private than public
-useful for predicting social behaviour
-zimbardo