conformity and obedience: conformity Flashcards
conformity
it results form peer pressure but we can also feel pressured to go along with groups of strangers and media
types of conformity
kelman (1958) proposed 3 types of conformity: compliance, identification, internalisation
compliance
conforming to gain something, people who comply may not actually agree with the norm but will go along with others to gain approval e.g. laughing at a joke others laugh at while not finding it funny
identification
conforming because that person approves of the person displaying that behaviour, these attitudes are not strongly held and are usually motivated by a desire to be like someone else e.g. only recycling when flatmates are around
internalisation
conforming as that person agrees with the social norm and they believe it is the right thing to do and are likely to perform that behaviour on their own e.g. becoming a vegetarian after sharing a flat with a group of vegetarians
why do people conform
normative social influence, informational social influence, individual factors, situational factors, cultural factors
normative social influence
when a person is influenced by social norms, the pressure comes from the group based on a need to be liked and accepted
informational social influence
exerted by the majority on the minority to get them to change their behaviour and attitudes, designed to convince the minority that the majority is genuinely right and to produce internalisation, rather than compliance
normative social influence, conform to be
liked
informational social influence, conform to be
right
asch aim
asch (1956) investigated whether people would conform to others incorrect estimates if the task was easy and the correct answer was obvious
asch participants
50 american men who were told that this was an experiment into visual perception
asch method
the participants entered a room with 10 others and were shown a picture of three lines of differing lengths and were asked which line matched the length of the fourth line, the answer was always obvious
asch findings
the majority group had a large influence, over all the trials 32% were incorrect, asch believed this was due to people not wanting to be ridiculed by the majority. even when they gave correct answers they seemed embarrassed as they are still influenced by the majority. in the control group with no pressure to conform, less than 1% gave the wrong answer
asch evaluation
low ecological validity as done under experimental conditions, ethical breach, the culture of 1950’s america encourage conformity and can’t be generalised to other places
perrin and spencer (1981)
replicated the asch study using british engineering students and found much lower levels of conformity showing cultural norms have an effect on conformity
individual factors
age, gender, personality, cognition
age
studies report conformity is static between 10 and 14 after which decreases up to 18 and then stays constant
personality
santee and maslach (1982) found that people who have higher self esteem were less likely to conform
situational factors
task difficulty, group size, unanimity of the majority, secrecy of response, similarity of the group
task difficulty
in asch when the difficulty was increased where the difference between lines was smaller conformity increased, this suggests people may have been internalising rather than complying
group size
in asch when there was only a small majority conformity was nearly zero, when the majority was three it jumped to about 30% suggesting the size of majority is important
unanimity of the majority
in asch when one confederate gave a different wrong answer conformity dropped to 9%
