Conformity and variables affecting conformity Flashcards
What is conformity?
The tendency to change what we do, think or say in response to the influence of real or imagined pressure from others,
Who did research on conformity?
Asch
What did Asch do?
Tested conformity by showing participants 2 large white cards at a time, with lines on them. The participant was asked to compare the second card with 3 options to the first card and state which line A, B or C was the same length as the one on the first card (the correct option was always clear)
Describe Asch’s procedure
- 123 American, male undergraduates were tested individually with a group of 6-8 confederates
- the naive participant was not aware that the others were confederates
- initially, the confederates gave the right answers but then started making errors. All confederates gave the same wrong answer
Describe Asch’s findings
The naive participant conformed to the wrong answer 36.8% of the time.
Overall, 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials, which means that 75% conformed at least once.
When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid rejection (normative social influence)
The term Asch effect has been used to describe this result - the extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous
What 3 variables were investigated by Asch?
Group size
Unanimity
Task Difficulty
Describe group size
Asch wanted to test whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. He varied the number of confederates from 1-15. He found that with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. Adding more confederates made little difference.
Describe unanimity
Asch wanted to see if the presence of another non-conforming person would affect the participant’s conformity. He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others.
Conformity reduced by a quarter.
Presence of a fellow dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently. This suggests the influence of the majority depends upon the group being unanimous
Describe task difficulty
Asch made the line task more difficult by making the comparison line and stimulus line more similar in length. He found that conformity increased under these conditions. This suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong.
Give some negatives about the research
Androcentric - only focuses on males
Gender and culture bias - a lot of the research used white, male American students - this means the findings should not have been applied to the whole population. For example, women and people from collectivist cultures may not have responded in the same way.
