Conformity Flashcards
what is conformity?
behaving, acting, being like the particular individual/ group in order to not stand out and adjust to the social norms
what two types of conformity are there?
- informational
2. normative
What did Sherif do?
He replicated Asch’s paradigm in a different scenario using the autokinetic effect, where the light would look like it has moved, however in reality it did not. This way Sherif could investigate if the participants would conform to the majority once other people were around to express their opinions as well.
The procedure of Sherif?
One person was placed in a dark room and was asked to estimate how much the white dot has moved, then later three more people were brought in and had been asked the same thing but now it is a total of four people in the room.
Lastly, each participant was once again retested on their own to measure to what extent if any did the groups’ answers affect their final one
The findings of Sherif?
Found that when participants were alone, they had developed their own stable and widely varied answers, however, once they were in a group, the estimations tended to become more alike.
Lastly, once they were individually retested, Sherif found that their final answers had been influenced by the group as the estimates were more like their group estimates than their original guesses.
Conclusion of Sherif?
Participants were evidently affected by the groups’ estimates and a group norm had developed. Estimates converged because participants were not sure or did not know the correct answer so they used information provided by others - INFORMATIONAL CONFORMITY/INFLUENCE.
