Conformity Flashcards
Why do people conform?
An individual is said to conform if they choose a course of action that is favoured by the majority to gain public acceptance.
What is compliance?
Individuals go along with a group to gain approval and adjust their behaviour to fit in with them.
It does not result in any change of their personal/private thoughts, only in their actions in public
What is internalisation?
Individuals may go along with a group of an acceptance of their views. When someone is exposed to someone else’s views, they examine their own beliefs to see if they or the other person is right.
Can change their attitude privately and publicly.
What is identification?
Individuals might accept influence because they want to be associated with a person/group.
Has elements of both compliance and internalisation as they accept the behaviour because they think it is right, but the purpose was to fit in.
What is normative social influence?
Humans have a need to feel accepted and causes us to want to gain approval and acceptance. For this to occur, the individual has feel like they are under surveillance.
People tend to conform in public but don’t internalise in private. - compliance
What is informational social influence?
Humans feel the need to be right, and occurs when an individual accepts information from others.
Is more likely to occur in an ambiguous situation or where others are experts.
It involves changing their public and private behaviour. - internalisation
What are the ethical issues in psychological research?
Informed consent Deception Right to withdraw Protection from harm Confidentiality Privacy
What does dispositional mean?
If you do something depending on characteristics/genes
What does situational mean?
You do something based on the environment/situation you are in
What does conformity mean?
It is a form of social influence that results from exposure of the majority position and leads to compliance with that position.
It is the tendency to adopt the behaviour, attitudes and values of other members of a reference group.
Why is it difficult to distinguish between compliance and internalisation?
It is assumed that an individual who publicly agrees with a majority yet disagrees in private must be demonstrating compliance.
But it is also possible that acceptance can occur in public, but then dissipates later when in private because they have forgot information or have found out new information.
What research supports normative social influence?
Schultz et al (2008) found that hotel guests exposed the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day (rather than requiring fresh ones) reduced their own towel use by 25%.
These studies support the claim that people shape their behaviour out of a desire to fit in with their reference group.
What research supports informational social influence?
Some studies have demonstrated how exposure to other people’s beliefs has an important influence on social stereotypes.
Wittenbrink and Henley(1996) found that participants exposed to negative information about African Americans (which lead them to believe the view of the majority) later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual.
What was the aim of Asch’s experiment?
The purpose of the study was to see how the lone ‘real’ participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.
What was the procedure of Asch’s experiment?
123 male undergraduates were tested and asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths.
Took turns to call out which of the three line they thought was the same length as the ‘standard’ line with the real participant always answering second to last.
On 12 of the 18 tasks, the confederates were told to give the incorrect answer.
Asch did this as he was interested in whether the ‘real’ participants would stick with what they thought was right, or cave in to pressure of the majority and go along with their decision.
What was Asches findings?
On the 12 critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33%, i.e participants agreed with the incorrect response given by the other group members, on average, on one-third of the trials.
What contributed to high conformity rates is Asches experiment?
The study took place in a time where people were being surveyed. Creating more pressure to conform.
The culture these people lived in caused the conformity rates to be higher. Collectivism culture when they depend on other people.
What was the aim of the Stanford prison experiment?
Philip Zimbardo questioned if ‘ordinary’ people were placed in a simulated prison environment where some of them were designated as guards or prisoners, how would they behave in their new social rules?
What was the procedure of the Stanford prison experiment?
Male volunteers from the US were physically and psychologically screened and the 24 most stable and randomly assigned them to either guard or prisoner.
The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’ they were given a prison uniform and assigned an ID number.
The guards only referred to the prisoners by their number throughout the duration of the experiment. The guards were given uniforms,clubs, whistles and reflective sunglasses to prevent eye contact.
The study was supposed to last 2 weeks.
What was the findings of the Stanford prison experiment?
Over the first two days of the study, the guards began to become abusive towards the prisoners.
The participants seemed to forget that it was only a psychological study. Even when they knew they were being watched, they still conformed to their role of guard and prisoner.
The study demonstrated that both guards and prisoners conformed to their social form. The guards became increasingly cruel and the prisoners because passive.
What was the aim of the BBC prison study - Reicher and Haslam, 2006.
To see how the participants adapted to different social roles following the Stanford prison experiment.
They did this experiment to see if the results would differ or stay the same.
It says that the groups were based on personality variables which suggests that they wanted to find out whether certain personality traits can affect how they comply towards their assigned social role.
What was the procedure of the BBC prison study?
Like the Stanford prison experiment, the BBC prison study randomly assigned 15 men to the role or a guard or prisoner and examined their behaviour.
15 males were split into 5 groups of 3 who were closely matched on key personality variable.
1 from each group was assigned as guard and the other 2 as a prisoners.
The study lasted for 8 days.
What was the findings of the BBC prison study?
The key findings was that the participants did not conform automatically to their roles.
Over the course of the study, the prisoners increasingly identified as a group and worked together to challenge the authority of the guards and established a more egalitarian set of social relations in the prison.
The guards failed to identify with their role and made them reluctant to impose their authority on the prisoners.
What were the evaluations of research of social roles?
- Conformity to roles is not automatic
- There is a problem with demand characteristics
- Were these studies ethical?
Explain how the conformity to roles is not automatic
Zimbardo believed that the guards’ drift into sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role.
However, in the SPE, guard behaviour varied from sadistic to, for a few, being good guards. These guards did not degrade or harass the prisoners and even did small favours for them.
Haslam and Reicher (2012) argue that this shows the guards chose how to behave rather than blindly conforming to their social role.
Explain how demand characteristics is a problem
With experiments like the Stanford prison experiment, it has been said to reveal problems with demand characteristics.
The participants knew they were being experimented on, which may have caused them to act differently to how they normally would.
Demand characteristics can completely alter the results and make them invalid as they are not presenting the researchers with their true reactions.
However, in the SPE , the results showed that some of them forgot that they were in a experiment and started to show evidence of them believing they were real prisoners.
How were the SPE and BBC studies unethical?
Zimbardo’s experiment was considered to be ethical as it followed the guidelines of the Stanford University ethical committee that had it approved.
However the participants were not told in advance that their usual rights would be suspended. This shows that although the study was approved by the ethics committee, it was proven not to be ethical as participants were experiencing emotional distress throughout the experiment.
Zimbardo attempted to make amends by carrying out debriefing sessions for several years after and later concluded that there were no lasting negative effects.
How was the Stanford prison experiment relevant to Abu Ghraib?
Same conformity to social role effect that was evident in the SPE was also evident in Abu Ghraib.
The guards who committed the abuses were the victims of situational factors that made abuse more likely.
Lack of training, unrelenting boredom and no accountability to higher authority were present in both Abu Ghraib and SPE.
So, in both situations, the participants conforming to the role of the guards led to to prisoner abuses in both situations.
What variables affect conformity?
1) Group size
2) Difficulty of the task
3) Status of majority group
4) Social support
How does group size affect conformity levels? - relating to Asches experiment
- Conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases.
- However, there is little change in conformity once the group size reaches 4-5. With one other person (i.e. confederate) in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13% and with three or more it was 32%.
- As conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four, this is considered the optimal group size.
How does difficulty of the task affect conformity? - relating to Ashes experiment
- When the (comparison) lines (e.g. A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased.
- When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task the greater the conformity.
How does status of majority group affect conformity? - relating to Ashes experiment
- If someone is of high status (e.g. your boss) or has a lot of knowledge (e.g. your teacher), they might be more influential, and so people will conform to their opinions more (e.g. informational influence).
- The higher the status of the group the higher the level of conformity.
How does social support affect conformity? - relating to Ashes experiment
- When one other person in the group gave a different answer from the others, and the group answer was not unanimous, conformity dropped.
- Asch (1951) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity as much as 80%.
- This suggests that individuals conform because they are concerned about what other people think of them (i.e. normative influence).
