Conformity

Question 1

What is the aim of social psychology?

Answer 1

to understand and explain how cognition, emotion and behaviours are influenced by the presence of other people.

Question 2

What is conformity?

Answer 2

following norms

Question 3

What are norms?

Answer 3

Belief systems about how to behave reflecting the expectations of a group. Guides to action rather than laws.

Question 4

Why are norms important?

Answer 4

reduce uncertainty about how to behave even in new situations as we can draw on similar situations.
they help to coordinate individual and group behaviour.

Question 5

Descriptive norms

Answer 5

what people typically do in a similar situation

Question 6

Injunctive norms

Answer 6

what people ought to do - sense of moral obligation

Question 7

How do norms emerge?

Answer 7

from interactions with other people, especially those in the same social group.
Can be passed on through explicit instruction or demonstration or implicitly through non-verbal behaviours and standards or inferred from others behaviour.
Must be some level of communication of norms for them to have an effect on behaviour.

Question 8

Are norms absolute and universal?

Answer 8

different norms exit in different contexts and are not universal across social groups and cultures.
it is possible for multiple norms to apply at once - if they conflict then we tend to turn to other individuals for information about how to act.

Question 9

Normative influence

Answer 9

people conform out of a desire to be liked and not disliked.
not following norms can leave to ridicule and ostracisation.
illustrated by Asch’s line-length studies.

Question 10

Informational influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955)

Answer 10

people conform out of a desire to be right.
other people can provide a frame of reference in ambiguous circumstances.
Illustrated by Sherif’s Autokinetic effect studies.

Question 11

Referent informational influence

Answer 11

desire to feel part of a group so look to others to know the group norm.
combines normative and informational.
argued for by Turner

Question 12

How is coordination a reason to conform?

Answer 12

sharing a common perspective optimises group performance.
practical reason.
illustrated by behaviour of people in lifts for example.

Question 13

What was the aim of Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Studies (1935;6)

Answer 13

Sherif was interested in the problem of truth and reality and wanted to investigate how people come to see particular views of the world as correct with an emphasis on the role that other people play in this process.

Question 14

What is the autokinetic effect

Answer 14

an illusion observed by astronomers where if you look at a dot of light against a dark background, such as a star, it appears to move.
this is due to saccadic eye movements and the absence of a frame of reference.
ideal for studying how people make sense of ambiguous stimuli and situations.

Question 15

What was the experimental procedure in Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Studies?

Answer 15

Participants were placed in a dark room and shown a flash of light, 5m away for a few seconds.
they were asked to provide an accurate estimate of how much it moved.
There are two phases, individual and group, and participants are either in the individual-to-group condition or the group-to-individual condition.
Individual phase: 100 successive trials where participants make their judgements alone over 3 days.
group phase: participants make judgements aloud in groups of 3 for 3 days.

Question 16

What were the results of Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect studies?

Answer 16

those who started in the individual phase developed their own persoal norms: a median estimate which they fluctated around with decreasing range in answers. large variation of 7” between individuals’ norms.
once put in a group personal norms converge to form a new group median/norm around which all their estimates fluctuate slightly.
for those who started in the group phase, group norms emerged straight away and persisted when they moved to the individual phase with only small variation found to persist when in new groups and when tested again a year later.

Question 17

What did Jacobs and Campbell study in 1961?

Answer 17

They investigated how long the group norms developed in Sherif’s studies persist.
They placed a confederate with very high judgements in the room.
The same convergence was observed, although now higher than before.
The median persisted as every member of the room was replaced up until the 4th/5th generation.
Can extrapolate this to norms in society that exist despite no longer applying.
However MacNeil and Sherif found that more random and inaccurate norms decay faster.
Importantly this shows that for ambiguous stimuli, the norms can be adapted implicitly and develop until they are ultimately internalised.

Question 18

What can we conclude from Sherif’s Autokinetic effect studies?

Answer 18

New norms arise to provide a social frame of reference for ambiguous situations to calibrate our own perceptions.
They are social products that continue to have meaning and influence long after being established.
This is generalisable outside the lab to everyday uncertain situations that lead to the creation of new norms that fit e.g covid - we wear masks to protect other people, especially the vulnerable/ make sure we don’t pass on corona. People who don’t do this are seen as selfish.
In terms of social psychology, he established that larger social structure must be considered in order to make sense of individual behaviour.
Ultimately layed the groundwork for social identity approach.

Question 19

How did Alexander and colleagues (1970) criticise Sherif’s AKE studies?

Answer 19

Argues that the experimenter sets up the expectation that the stimuli actually moves and that there exists an objective correct answer.
Therefore it would be rational to expect agreement.
If one were to remove this expectation then no norm will arise.
They recreated Sherif’s experiments but told the participants about the AKE and that they should therefore not expect to agree with others.
They found that participants reported direction and distance with no evidence of convergence to a norm or reduction in variation.

Question 20

How do Pollis and colleagues (1976) respond to Alexander et al.’s (1970) criticism of Sherif?

Answer 20

Argue that Alexander induced people to diverge, or at least not converge, by saying and therefore instilling the expectation they should not expect the same answers.
To demonstrate this they repeated the experiment but only told participants about the AKE.
They produced very different results to Alexander that reinforced Sherif’s original interpretation that participants converge to form norms.

Question 21

What inspired Asch’s line-length studies (1951)?

Answer 21

Thorndike’s studies where people were asked to give their opinion on a topic and were then confronted with an authority figure or group of peers saying the opposite.
Asch wanted to understand why people typically shift their views towards peers/authority despite them presenting no arguments to support their views.
Investigates whether people will conform when responding to a numerical majority.
Also a response to Sherif’s studies as he believed that conformity was only observed because the stimulus was ambiguous and therefore wanted to observe what would happen when responding to an unambiguous stimulus that requires no clarification.

Question 22

What is the experimental procedure in Asch’s line-length studies (1951)?

Answer 22

Participants were shown a reference line on one sheet of paper and three lines of different length on another. They had to identify which of the three was the same length as the reference aloud.
However the room was actually full of 4-7 confederates and only one naive participant.
The confederates all gave consistently wrong answers on key trials.
The naive participant always gave the penultimate answer.

Question 23

What were the results of Asch’s (1951) line studies?

Answer 23

Participants notice the discrepancy between their judgements and the others in the room and seek to understand why as they begin to doubt their own answer.
This resulted in 1/3 conforming with the incorrect majority to say the wrong answer.

Question 24

Why did participants conform in Asch’s line studies?

Answer 24

Some individuals actual perception of the lines changed as a result of hearing the group answers.
Some became convinced that they must be wrong so change their judgements.
Others change their answers so as not to contradict the group but still believe their answer was correct.
This is evidence of normative influence.
The experience of being the minority and being confronted with a majority appear to be seeing something different to you is unsettling as evidenced by film footage showing participants distress.

Question 25

How do Deutsch and Gerard demonstrate normative influence as a factor (1955) ?

Answer 25

variation on the original experiment where naive participants are able to record their answers in private rather than say them aloud.
This eliminates the possibility of ridicule and therefore normative influence.
Found a significant decrease in conformity.

Question 26

Does desire to be accurate make people conform in Asch’s studies?

Answer 26

Asch found that increasing the inaccuracy of the answer decreases conformity.
This shows that accuracy still plays some role and perhaps supports the idea that individuals perceptions change so that they think they are giving the right answer.

Question 27

Explain the example of Tycho Brahe.

Answer 27

A man who always star gazes and believes he knows every star. One night sees a new star and is convinced it isn’t real. Concedes that it is after confirmation that others see it too.
Illustrates that we can only know reality by agreeing with others about it, therefore it is unsurprising that we turn to others for confirmation and equally rational to doubt ones own perceptions if someone sees otherwise.

Question 28

How does group size affect conformity in Asch’s line studies (1951)?

Answer 28

Found that conformity peaks and plateaus at 35% when there are three people in the group. Actually decreases after 15.

Question 29

How does unanimity affect conformity in Asch’s line studies?

Answer 29

key factor is the unanimity of a majority.
illustrated by further variations of Asch’s experiment.
When there is a single dissenter in the room along with the NP who gives the correct response reduces conformity by 75%
However the same effect of reduced conformity is still observed even if the dissenter is inaccurate and provides a different response from the majority but one that is still incorrect
Allen and Levine 1971 further showed that even an unreliable dissenter, one who gives a judgement that obviously cannot be trusted but that differs from the majority, still reduces conformity. Although not to as great an extent this still shows that the key is breaking unanimity and almost forming a new group rather than accuracy of answer.
Used a male confederate with thick-lensed glasses who loudly informed the experimenter that his eyesight was too poor for distance vision and failed to read a sign - told to answer randomly.

Question 30

What evidence does Asch provide to support the claim that people don’t conform for rewards but rather to avoid the negative consequences of not following group norms.?

Answer 30

The strong desire to conform even when it requires going against one judgement and doing something obviously wrong persists when there is no reward
‘fear’ of what happens if someone doesn’t follow group norms.
Asch placed a single confederate who was instructed to make consistently wrong judgements on certain key trials within a group of 16 NP.
Groups answers were unaffected by the confederates responses and he was met with incredulity, which became sniggers and comments until even the experimenter laughed at the confederate.
Social ridicule is the cost for not conforming to group norms. Given this evidence, the fears participants had of expressing deviant positions were well founded.

Question 31

Conformity originates in the need to agree with ingroup members in order to validate one’s responses as correct, appropriate and desirable (Hogg and Tuner, 1987)

Answer 31

The opposition by the majority
Find oneself in the midst of a group affects us and we become concerned about what others around us think.
Giving into the majority pressure shows that individuals are mindful of the views of others around them. Shows they are interested in maintaining harmony within the group and willing to go along with what others think is right.
Through the acceptance of social influence from others, groups are able to function effectively and maintain cohesion.
When surrounded by members of the same group experiencing the same thing as you, those people become valid sources of information, telling us how to interpret the world (turner,1991).
Conformity appears to be an entirely appropriate response
Asch (1952): ‘The group is part of the given conditions. Not to take it into account, not to allow oneself to be in any way affected by it, would be wilful.’

Question 32

How has the experimental design of Asch’s study been criticised?

Answer 32

Created a situation in which the feature of the task and the social context made it difficult to resist conformity pressure despite it being clear that this meant giving the wrong answer.
No need to gather information from other people about what the right response would be - no discussion. Unrealistic in every day life.
Conformity is rarely all or nothing in every day life - subjective judgements
The obviousness of the answer led to such high conformity (ross et al. 1976) as participants were so overwhelmed by the bizarreness of the situation so the easiest solution was to conform
It is inconsequential to the individual whether or not they give the right answer as there is nothing to gain or lose. Participants reported saying ‘If it had been a political question, I don’t think I’d have agreed.’
Participants must give an immediate response - no time to establish why the majority is giving the wrong response.
Bidirectional influence is key to dissent - Asch’s studies don’t allow participants to answer back. This is because there is no room for debate or a two-way dialogue where resistance could be expressed as would have been the case in a real life environment.
Moscovici (1969) - the minority are more focused on getting the majority to adopt their point of view as evidenced by the history of ideas and behavioir. It is clear that group conformity is not the only force influencing behaviour because this would imply people would come to increasingly agree with each other which is not the case.
People change their minds and they do not always conform. This is an active move away from the crowd rather than passively following and has historically lead to mass change of thought and paradigm shifts.

Question 33

In what sense is the conformity observed in Asch’s line studies rational?

Answer 33

Conformity is associated with the ‘dark side’ of humanity - inability to resist even though they know the majority is wrong - however can be seen as the normal and sensible thing to do rather than being mindless and blind.
People rationalised their actions to justify their conformity
Went along with the group because they didn’t want to appear foolish/ stand out - sometimes vital to be part of a group to survive - normative influence.
Believed they were acting in everyone’s best interests by going along with the majority - didn’t want to spoil the study results
Believed that the first person had a visual impairment and everyone conformed so as to not make that individual stand out.
Believed they were victims of an optical illusion so changed their private beliefs given how inconceivable it is for so many people to be wrong.
Majority must be right - likelihood one person is right and everyone else is wrong.

Question 34

What has Asch failed to acknowledge in his evaluation of the line studies?

Answer 34

The studies actually generate more resistance than conformity so cannot ignore this different social phenomenon just because that suits the study more
Argument against fear of ridicule - rebels who go against a misguided majority are viewed favourably
Theory is underdeveloped - current lack of understanding - societal change relies on minority dissent.
Neglected the human capacity for independence that means that social pressure doesn’t necessarily imply uncritical submission.

Question 35

Why are Asch’s line study significant?

Answer 35

Offer some explanation for when people appear to go along with the majority as sheep/ individuals are not able to resit peer pressure and become slaves to collectivism e.g Crandall (1988) bulimia (people are not able to resist the majority pressure of thinness) and crowd violence like football hooliganism (LeBon, 1895)
Highlights the importance for people to be validated by others as in many contexts other people are the most useful and important sources of validation.
Conformity and resistance are both equally rational and understanding them helps us to understand the history of our society.

Question 36

Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren (1990) study conformity outside the laboratory and how it can influence antisocial behaviour. What did they find?

Answer 36

Investigated whether the descriptive norm of littering will increase littering.
Car park by hospital - filled with litter every two hours and then cleared away for the next two
Flyers left on car windows so as to provide something to litter
Increased the salience of the descriptive norm by having a confederate walk by and litter in from of the naive participant being observed
In non litter condition confed walks by and does not litter
Results showed that when there is lots of litter around - clear evidence of others disregarding the injunctive/ social norm to not litter - individuals are more likely to litter. This correlation is strengthened when the salience of the descriptive norm to litter is increased.

Question 37

What is broken windows theory (Wilson and Kelling)?

Answer 37

environmental cues/ descriptive norms indicating disorder encourages criminal behaviour and causes it to spread. Therefore tidying up areas should reduce crime
Takes Cialdini’s study even further and extends it to all forms of antisocial behaviour
Need to be clear in what constitutes disorder and what makes it spread
In the mid 1990s New Yorks mayor and police commissioner adopted a quality of life campaign based on BWT
The focus was on fighting signs of disorder and petty crime
They found that crime rates dropped after the introduction of the campaign and it went on to inspire similar approaches worldwide
However the National Research Council concluded that there is a lack of evidence to support that the BTW policing caused a decrease crime

Question 38

What did Keizer et al. find in their broken window studies (2008)?

Answer 38

Generated hypothesis about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments - finding that when people observe that others have violated certain social norms or legitimate rule they are more likely to violate other norms or rules which causes disorder to spread.
Injunctive norms affect behaviour as they provide info about which behaviour is most appropriate in a given setting.
Extent to which they affect behaviour depends on how much their on someone’s mind.
Descriptive norms affect behaviour by providing info about which behaviour is most common in a given setting
The more conspicuous the descriptive norm the more strongly it influences behaviour.
Injunctive and Descriptive norms can be in conflict which can feature in settings described in BWT as disorderly
Attached advertising flyers to all bicycles locked in an alleyway which had no bins
Injunctive norm: sign specifically says graffiti is prohibited
Descriptive norm: some days the wall was covered in graffiti; others its painted over.
Observers covertly recorded whether participants discarded the flyer or took it home
Just over 30% littered in the orderly environment
Almost 80% litter in the disorderly environment
Observed violation of anti graffiti norm more than doubles the extent of littering
Subsequent studies show that pedestrians were twice as likely to keep a fiver found poking out of a mail box when there was graffiti/litter than not.
Clear evidence that in a realist context, violation of one norm weakens conformity to other norms and increases antisocial behaviour

Question 39

What did Crandall find in his (1988) study of the norm-transmission process associated with bulimia?

Answer 39

Reward of social popularity was powerful enough to elicit seriously health-threatening behaviour.
Most prevalent in groups where it is an accepted means of weight control (dance troupes, cheerleading squads and sororities).
Those who hadn’t initially binged, began to, and the practise increased dramatically within the sorority in the first year.
In the sorority where binge eating was positively correlated with popularity, the most popular binged more.
In the other, the most popular binged a moderate amount, at the rate established by the groups norms.
Dramatic illustration of social influence via norms in pursuit of goal building and maintaining social relationships.

Question 40

What did Zimbardo et al’s (2000) Stanford Prison Experiment reveal?

Answer 40

demonstrated that normal people could be brought to behave in extremely antisocial ways, in part by assigning them to specific roles of mock prisoners and mock guards in a simulated prison establishment in the basement of the psychology department at stanford university.
Halted after 6 days due to ‘sadistics; (Zimbardo et al. 2000) as punishment by the guards to prisoners was deemed unacceptably great (stripping prisoners naked, depriving them of food, humiliating them and subjecting them to solitary confinement).
Extreme behaviours were the result of individualisation: a state in which individuals are deprived of their sense of individual identity and are more likely to behave in an extreme manner, often antisocially and violating norms. Guards and prisoners wore role-consistent clothing and were deprived of their sense of individual identity and responsibility.
The contrived situation encouraged the development of new norms of behaviour, therefore disinhibiting traditionally disapproved ways of treating others without explicit influence from experimenters.
Support: Treatment of Iraqui prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison by US army personnel: norms were terrorising prisoners with dogs, forcing them to simulate sex acts with each other and degrading them in other ways which violated the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war (Hersh, 2004)
Criticism: replicated by Reicher & Haslam, 2006 yielding different results, raising the problem of repeatability.
Criticism: Appears to have been strongly influenced by demand characteristics