SI: 1, Conformity

Question 1

Define compliance

Answer 1

agreeing with the group publicly but disagreeing privately to be liked

Question 2

Define internalisation

Answer 2

agreeing with the group publicly and privately

strongest form of conformity

leads to long-term change

Question 3

Define identification

Answer 3

temporarily adopting the behaviour of a role model or group to fit in with them

may conform to the expectations of a role model

Question 4

Outline 2 explanations for conformity

Answer 4

Informational Social Influence: occurs in ambiguous situations where people look for guidance & want to be correct, leads to internalisation

Normative Social Influence: occurs in situations where people are uncertain about a group’s norms & want to be accepted, leads to compliance

Question 5

Outline research support for explanations of conformity

Answer 5

1 - ISI: Lucas et al (2006):
- participants showed higher levels of conformity in response to harder maths questions compared to easier ones, supports ISI as they did not want to give the wrong answer publicly

2 - NSI: Asch (1951):
- participants who gave a wrong answer to an unambiguous line-length task were likely succumbing to NSI as giving a different answer to the group would have risked rejection from the group

Question 6

Evaluate explanations for conformity

Answer 6

✅ Research support (Lucas et al / Asch)

✅ NSI has good application to global/historical events, used to explain the behaviour of normal German people in the Holocaust

❌ Difficult to differentiate between the two, e.g in Asch’s experiment both explanations could apply

❌ Does not explain why some people resist conformity, lacks explanatory power

Question 7

What was the AIM of Asch’s 1951 study?

Answer 7

To examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority could affect a person’s likelihood to conform

Question 8

What was the PROCEDURE of Asch’s 1951 study?

Answer 8

• Line judgement task with one standard line, 3 comparison lines
• Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8 with one genuine participant and confederates
• participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the length of the standard line
• confederates gave an incorrect answer on 12/18 trials

Question 9

What were the FINDINGS of Asch’s 1951 study?

Answer 9

On average, participants agreed with the confederates’ wrong answers 36.8% of the time

75% of the sample conformed to a wrong answer at least once

Question 10

What was the CONCLUSION of Asch’s 1951 study?

Answer 10

Participants conformed due to NSI & the desire to fit in

Question 11

Evaluate Asch’s 1951 study

Answer 11

✅ Research Support:
Lucas et al 2006, supports asch’s theory of task difficulty being an important variable in conformity
↳ ❌although lucas et al also suggests conformity is more complex than asch suggests, factors like confidence impact conformity, asch did not investigate individual differences, suggests his theory is oversimplistic

❌ Artificial:
- task/setting is artificial with a lab environment, could lead to participants acting in a way that pleases the researcher (demand characteristics), cannot be generalised to real world situation, lacks internal & external validity

❌ Unrepresentative:
- sample consisted of all American & males, androcentric & ethnocentric, if generalised to women or other cultures it would be beta bias, unrepresentative & ungeneralisable

❌ Ethical Issues:
- participants were deceived to think the confederates were genuine participants, could not give fully informed consent which raises ethical concerns
↳ ✅ could be argued that the ethical costs do not outweigh the importance of the findings

Question 12

What was the AIM of Zimbardo’s SPE? (1973)

Answer 12

To examine conformity to social roles in a mock prison environment in the basement of Stanford University

Question 13

What was the PROCEDURE of Zimbardo’s SPE?

Answer 13

• Newspaper ad to collect volunteer sample where 75 volunteered but only 24 US males were selected after being tested to be “emotionally stable”
• randomly allocated participants into role of prisoner or guard
• prisoners were arrested from their homes: stripped, deloused, identified by number
• guards wore khaki uniforms & mirror sunglasses to prevent eye contact

Question 14

What were the FINDINGS of Zimbardo’s SPE?

Answer 14

• within 2 days, prisoners rebelled against guards (swearing at them, ripping their clothes)
• participants adopted behaviours of their social role quickly, e.g prisoners snitching on each other to guards
• experiment ended after 6 days instead of the intended 14 due to the poor conditions

Question 15

What was the CONCLUSION of Zimbardo’s SPE?

Answer 15

people quickly conform to social roles even against their moral principles

Question 16

Evaluate Zimbardo’s (1973) Stanford Prison Experiment

Answer 16

✅Highly Controlled -> participants were carefully selected using psychological screening to ensure they were healthy, psychologically stable & without criminal records, they were also randomly allocated to their role -> important because it shows that the behaviours recorded were the result from conformity to social roles & the prison environment rather than dispositional factors -> high internal validity

❌ Zimbardo took on the dual role of principal investigator and the prison superintendent -> his involvement may have led to experimenter bias where his presence may have influenced the participant’s behaviour -> demand characteristics are likely to have occurred leading to reduced validity of observed behaviour -> lack of external&internal validity

❌ Psychological harm -> participants were not protected from stress, anxiety, embarrassment -> a prisoner had to be released after the first day due to signs of psychological disturbance -> raises ethical concerns -> deemed unacceptable in modern standards

❌ Lacks population valdity -> the sample consisted only of American male students -> findings cannot be applied to other genders, cultures -> for example, in collectivist cultures like China or Japan may be more conformist toward their social roles because their culture values the needs of the group over the needs of the individual -> findings may be culture-bound

✅ Provides insight into how social roles influence behaviour & explains cruelty in institutional settings -> e.g Abu Ghraib where the guards performed highly abusive behaviours towards prisoners -> this recognition of situational factors on human behaviours had led to practical application of oversight in law enforcement settings to prevent abuse -> useful in improving the criminal justice system