Conformity Flashcards
What are the three types of conformity?
Compliance
Identification
Internalisation
What is compliance conformity?
When individuals adjust their behaviour and opinions publicly but not privately and once they leave the group these behaviours change
What’s identification conformity?
Views change publicly and privately when they are in the group but when they leave the behaviours change back
What’s internalisation conformity?
When your behaviours publicly and privately change permanently e.g change religions
What are the explanations for conformity?
Informational social influence and normative social influence
What is informational social influence and a study to support it?
Conforming out of the desire to be right
Study -Jenness sweet study
Participants asked how many sweets they thought in a jar privately then in a group
After group discussion they found participants changed their opinions
What’s normative social influence?& and study to support it?
Complying out of the desire to be liked
Study - Aschs line study 1951
What was Aschs method in the main study?
A Male undergraduate student entered a room with 6 other participants (who were actors)
- They were asked to say there perception of the length of a line and were sat at the end of each row
- The actual answer was obvious but the participant copied the others and answered 12 out of the 18 trials incorrectly
How does Aschs study support normative social influence?
In the follow up interviews the participants said that they knew they were answering correctly,yet didn’t want to be ridiculed
How does Aschs study support informational social influence?
75% who answer incorrectly said they did this as they thought the others would know better than they did and they began to doubt their own judgement
what are the KEY GRAVES evaluation points of Ashs study?
Generalisability-not realistic as 64 yrs old
Reliability- results won’t be the same when repeated
Application- participants shows signs of compliance conformity & could be used when teaching teachers about how pupils act in a group
Validity- risk of demand characteristics
Ethics-may feel anxious and put off
Sample-not representative as only males from specific age
What were Aschs three follow up studies?
Group size
Unamity
Task difficulty
How did Asch change the group size of his experiment?
Used one actor rather than 6
-conformity decreased to 3% as less people involved so less pressure felt
How did Asch change the unamity of the group?
Rather than 6 actors in agreement he used 5 and one gave the correct answer
-conformity decreased to 6% as there is not as much pressure to conform
How did Asch adapt the difficulty of the task?
Made the lines more similar
-conforming increased as people were more unsure
