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AS Psychology - Social Influence > Conformity > Flashcards

Conformity Flashcards

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1
Q

What is conformity?

A

When the behaviour of an individual or small group is influenced by a larger, more dominant group
>The tendency to change our behaviour or attitudes in response to the influence of others or social pressure.
>This pressure can be real or imagined.

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2
Q

Define Conformity according to Myers 1999

A

‘Conformity is a change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined pressure.’

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3
Q

What is compliance?

A

Publically conforming to the behaviour or views of others in a group but privately maintaining one’s own views
>E.g. what football team you support

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4
Q

What is Identification?

A

Adopting the views or behaviours of another group both publically and privately because you value membership of that group
>However, new attitudes and behaviours are temporary and may not be maintained when leaving the group.
>E.g. new school; new style

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5
Q

What is Internalization?

A

Conversion or true change of private views to match those of the group
>Distinguished from identification because new views and attitudes become part of your value system; you are not dependant on the presence of the group.
>E.g. finding God/ religious conversion when searching for a greater meaning of life, resulting in private worship as well as public

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6
Q

Who devised the conformity model and when?

A

Dutch and Gerard (1955)

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7
Q

What does the conformity model split conformity into?

A

Normative and Informational Social Influence

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8
Q

What is Normative social influence?

A

> Based on our desire to be liked

> Conforming for approval/acceptance

> Often referred to as compliance

> E.g. phoning a friend to see what they’re wearing to a party

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9
Q

Out of compliance, identification and internalization; which links to normative social influence?

A

Compliance

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10
Q

Who did the research into Normative Social Influence, entitled ‘Social Impact Theory’ and when?

A

Latane 1981

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11
Q

What is Latane’s (1981) Social Impact theory into Normative Social Influence?

A
  • We respond to most normative influence when the group is important to us and we spend a lot of time with it
  • Effect of group size = less clear cut
    > Does not take a large group to produce optimum normative social influence
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12
Q

What is Informational Social Influence?

A

> Based on our desire to be right

> We look to others who we believe to be correct

> May be particularly strong when we move from one group to another = situational ambiguity

> Most common situations of use:

  • In an emergency
  • In the presence of an expert
  • If the situation is ambiguous
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13
Q

What are the 3 most common situations where Informational Social Influence is used?

A
  • In an emergency
  • In the presence of an expert
  • If the situation is ambiguous
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14
Q

Who conducted the study, ‘The emergence of group norms’ and when?

[links to informational social influence]

A

Sherif (1935)

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15
Q

Sherif’s ‘The emergence of group norms’ (1935) study used the Auto-kinetic effect, what is this effect?

[links to informational social influence]

A
  • the optical illusion when a person is placed in a totally dark room in which a stationary point of light appears to move because the person’s perceptive system has no frame of reference for it, when in fact, the light remains stationary.
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16
Q

What was Sherif attempting to prove with this 1935 study, ‘the emergence of group norms’? (3)

[links to informational social influence]

A

> Individuals develop unique personal norms
Groups converge on unique group norms
Group norms persist in later individual judgements

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17
Q

What was the procedure of Sherif’s 1935 study, into the emergence of group norms?

A
  • Sherif showed subjects a single pinpoint of light in a dark room
  • Subjects asked to estimate how far the light moved from its original position
  • After the initial individual attempt subjects were then asked to communicate their estimates until they reached a consensus
  • The diversity of estimates diminished and consensus was reached quite easily
  • In reality, the light was not moving at all
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18
Q

Link Sherif’s study to informational social influence

A

Need for certainty
↓
Subjective uncertainty - situation is ambiguous
↓
Need for information to reduce uncertainty
↓
Comparison with others
↓
INTERNALIZATION - Private and Public acceptance

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19
Q

Who conducted the key study into conformity and when?

A

Asch (1951)

20
Q

Asch’s 1951 Conformity study

A

Aim
To see if participants would conform to a majority social influence and give incorrect answers in a situation where the correct answers were always obvious

Procedure

  1. 7 male student participants looked at two cards, the ‘test card’ = one vertical like and the other ‘card’ = 3 vertical lines of different length
  2. The participants were asked to call out, in turn, which of the three lines matched the test card – the answer was always obvious!
  3. All the participants were accomplices of the experimenter, except one, who was always second from last
  4. Accomplices gave unanimously wrong answers as 12 out of 18 trials = critical trials
  5. In total Asch used 50 male college students as naïve, genuine participants in this study

Findings
• When all the confederates gave the right answer the participants made almost no errors
• When the confederates gave the wrong answer the participant went along with in 32% of the time
• Of the participants:
- 75% conformed at least once
- 5% conformed every time
- 26% never conformed
• Some participants said they conformed to fit in (normative influence) some said they wanted to be right and started to doubt their judgements (informational social influence)

Conclusion
Even in ambiguous situations, there may be strong group pressures to conform, especially if the group is a unanimous majority
However, after interviewing his participants Asch concluded different reasons for conformity:
- normative social influence: felt compelled to conform to their mistakes for fear of rejection (socially)
- Informational social influence: doubted their own judgement – desire to be right

21
Q

How many naïve, genuine participants did Asch use in his conformity study? (all male)

A

50

22
Q

What percentage of participants conformed at least once in Asch’s conformity study?

A

75%

23
Q

What percentage of participants conformed every time Asch’s conformity study?

A

5%

24
Q

What percentage of participants never conformed Asch’s conformity study?

A

25%

25
Q

Asch varied some of the situational factors in his original study. What changes did he introduce? (5)

A 
A non-unanimous majority
The size of the Majority
Losing a partner
Gaining a partner
The nature of the task
26
Q

What changes did Asch observe when he introduced a non-unanimous majority?

A

levels of conformity dropped to just 5% when just one other person agreed with the naïve participant

27
Q

What changes did Asch observe when he changed the size of the majority?

A

Optimum conformity = majority of 3 (32%)
 increasing size above 3 did not increase conformity rates
 when only one confederate was used, no conformity effects were found
 When only two confederates were used, conformity rates dropped to 12.8% of their original judgements

28
Q

What changes did Asch observe when he introduced ‘losing a partner’?

A

– naïve participants started with a ‘partner’ who responded correctly to begin with but ‘deserted’ to the majority half way through proceedings.
- This resulted in conformity levels of 28%

29
Q

What changes did Asch observe when he introduced ‘gaining a partner’?

A

When a naïve participant gained a partner half way through it reduced conformity to 8.7%

30
Q

What changes did Asch observe when he changed the nature of the task?

A

The level of conformity increased as the tasks were made more difficult

31
Q

Who conducted two additional extensions to Asch’s study and when?

A

Crutchfield 1955

32
Q

What additional extensions did Crutchfield (1955) do to Asch’s study?

A
  1. When participants can’t see each other

2. Individual differences

33
Q

What was Crutchfield’s 1955 extension to Asch’s study ‘when participants can’t see each other’ ?

A

> He felt the face-to-face element was what influenced conformity
- Therefore, he arranged his participants in separate booths, out of sight
- He controlled the lighting but told people that they were other peoples answers
Conformity levels were 30% using Asch’s line technique
> As the activities got harder, conformity levels rose

34
Q

What was Crutchfield’s 1955 extension to Asch’s study ‘ individual differences’ ?

A

> Found that participants (business and military men on 3 day courses) with high scores on intelligence and leadership studies displayed less conformity
However, there is insufficient evidence from subsequent research that this is the case that there is a ‘conforming personality’

AO2 – criticised for artificial setting

  • no ecological validity
  • can’t be generalised
  • other factors (e.g. laziness) could’ve influenced conformity
35
Q

What research was done, other than Asch and Crutchfield’s an by who?

A

Furman and Duke (1988) – Confidence and conformity
• Music and non-music students were asked to state a preference for a version of an excerpt.
• When confederates stated a different preference only non-music students were significantly affected and conformed
• Music students were not influenced to change their already stated preference

36
Q

We can evaluate conformity research with two other AO2 points - what are they?

A

Historical differences

Cultural differences

37
Q

Evaluate conformity research using cultural differences

A

Smith and Bond (1998) – meta-analysis of studies in different cultures using Asch’s procedures
• They concluded:
- Collectivist cultures = higher levels of conformity as people emphasise loyalty to the group
- Individualistic cultures = more concerned of individual initiatives

38
Q

Evaluate conformity research using historical differences

A

Perrin and Spencer (1980) – Used British students in 396 trials
• They concluded that cultural changes over 30 years lead to reduction in the tendency of students to conform.
- factor that might have influenced = all were from maths, chemistry or engineering courses (may have learned how to not conform under pressure)

Perrin and Spencer (1981) – Youths on probation as pps and probation officers as confederates
• Demonstrated similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch in 1952
• Concluded that conformity still exists, regardless of the perceived costs to individuals (e.g. in this case, prison)

39
Q

Zimbardo’s Prison Study = Conformity to social roles

A

Aim – To investigate how readily people would conform to the new roles by observing how quickly people would adopt the roles of guard or prisoner, in a prison life stimulation at a mock prison, ‘Stanford’.
Zimbardo wanted to find out if the brutality recorded among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (dispositional explanation) or had more to do with the prison environment (situational explanation)
Procedure
1. Well adjusted, healthy males were paid $15 a day to take part in a two week simulation
2. Volunteers randomly allocated to the roles of prisoners and guards
3. Local police arrested 9 ‘prisoners’ at their homes, they were taken to Stanford, blindfolded and dehumanized with prison smocks and numbers etc.
4. 3 guards on each shift
5. No physical aggression was permitted
Findings
• The guards harassed and humiliated the prisoners and conformed to their new roles
[• People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of prison guards]
• Prisoners rebelled against the guards after just two days – guards quelled the rebellion with fire extinguishers
• Some prisoners became distressed and anxious
Findings
[• People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of prison guards]
• Conformity can be explained on terms of situational factors rather than dispositional (personality) factors
• The roles people may play shape their attitudes and behaviours

40
Q

Evaluate Zimbardo’s Prison Study

A
  1. Zimbardo was wrong to act as both superintendent and as chief researcher as this produced conflict in his role: need for independent surveillance. Need for aesthetic distance.
  2. ETHICS
    >Harm to Participants – criticised for humiliation of participants: Had to be stopped after 6 days due to emotional and behavioural effects.
    DO FINDINGS JUSTIFY PROCESS? Savin says no; Zimbardo says yes: no lasting negative effects in subsequent interviews and we learned valuable lessons
    >Deceiving Participants – Some say it was not necessary in research and is unethical when they are made to feel foolish and humiliated. More ethical methods should be used. However, it eliminated demand characteristics.
41
Q

Who conducted the BBC Prison study and when?

A

> Haslam and Reicher (2005)

42
Q

What did the BBC prison study do which Zimbardo didn’t in order to be more ethically correct?

A

> Similar to Zimbardo’s study however, the researchers remained independent and an ethics committee regulated investigation
Systematic observation and unobtrusive filming for 10 days

43
Q

What were the 2 aims of the BBC Prison Study?

[Haslam and Reicher (2005)]

A
  1. Would guards abuse power?

2. Wold prisoners succumb to rebel against oppression?

44
Q

What are the findings of the BBC Prison Study?

A

Guards were uncomfortable about exercising power and became divided and powerless – they never developed a group identity
• On the other hand, prisoners = unhappy about inequalities they faced so shared a social identity and challenged the guards authority
• A commune of ex-guards and ex-prisoners was established, only to be broke down by those who wanted to instate a more tyrannical power system – at this point the experiment was ended

45
Q

‘Guards were uncomfortable about exercising power and became divided and powerless – they never developed a group identity
• On the other hand, prisoners = unhappy about inequalities they faced so shared a social identity and challenged the guards authority
• A commune of ex-guards and ex-prisoners was established, only to be broke down by those who wanted to instate a more tyrannical power system – at this point the experiment was ended’

Are the findings from the BBC Prison study, what can we conclude from this?

A

‘Shared social identity can create social power and lead to positive outcomes. Individuals are not slaves to their social roles; rather they contribute the social norms and values of the group to which they belong.’ Haslam and Reicher (2005)

46
Q

Evaluate the BBC Prison Study, Haslam and Reicher (2005)

A

Turner (2006) has praised Haslam and Reicher’s study for challenging the negative views of groups to which Zimbardo and others have long subscribed

AS Psychology - Social Influence (8 decks)

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