Social influence

Question 1

What are the 3 types of conformity?

Answer 1

• Compliance
• Internalisation
• Identification

Question 2

Explain what is meant by compliance?

Answer 2

Compliance is where you go along with the group to fit in even if you don’t really believe their view point, for example, in Asch’s study, many of the naïve participants went along with the wrong answer so as not to look stupid.

Question 3

What is meant by identification?

Answer 3

• The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group and they feel a sense of group membership
• The change of belief or behaviour is often temporary

Question 4

Explain what is meant by internalisation?

Answer 4

Internalisation is where you accept the group’s beliefs as yours . You change both your public and private views and it is a permanent change as you continue to think this even when not in the group.

Question 5

What are the two explanations to WHY people conform?

Answer 5

Informational social influence - The individual assumes the group has better information
Normative social influence - The individual does not want to be left out/unpopular

Question 6

What is meant by normative social influence?

Answer 6

This is a type of conformity where people go along with the behaviour of the group to avoid rejection despite public behaviour and private opinion not matching, in order to fit in.

Question 7

Explain what is meant by informational social influence.

Answer 7

Informational social influence is where someone conforms because they do not know what to do, but they want to be correct. They follow the majority because the assume that the majority know what is the right thing to do. This type of social influence tends to involve internalisation.

Question 8

What was Asch’s conformity experiment?

Answer 8

To study the effects of group pressure in a lab environment, Asch (1951,1956) investigated whether participants judgements on a simple visual perception task will be affected by group pressure. The sample consisted of 123 male, American undergraduate students.

Question 9

Asch’s conformity experiment: procedure

Answer 9

Asch used an unambiguous visual perception task to measure conformity. The experimental stimuli consisted of a standard line and three comparison lines. Participants had to make judgements about which comparison line matches the length of the standard line.

Question 10

Asch’s conformity experiment: results

Answer 10

In the absence of the group, when participants made judgements alone they were correct over 99% of the time, suggesting that the task was obvious.
Most participants (75%) conformed to the group at least once in the experimental condition. On average, 37% of participants conformed in each of the 12 critical trials.

Question 11

Asch’s conformity experiment: evaluation

Answer 11

+ Lab experiment, allowed to control potential cofounding variables and therefore has high internal validity and minimal issues with extraneous variables.
- However, it has been criticised for low ecological validity. The task used is artificial and different from how we experience conformity in out daily lives.
- Bias. Only male, American undergrad students, limiting the findings generalisability to the wider population and might not reflect conformity across cultures. Androcentric and ethnocentric.
- Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated study on UK engineering students, only 1/396 trials conformed. Some argue that Asch’s findings are limited to his time.

Question 12

Asch’s conformity experiment: ethical issues

Answer 12

• Deception. Participants were deceived about the character of the study and the other group members weren’t participants. However the deception was necessary for the experiment
• Lack of protection from harm. The experience of being the only one that perceives the lines differently was distressing to most participants. Most participants reported experiencing fear of rejection or anxiety related to the pressure to conform.

Question 13

Asch’s conformity experiment: variations

Answer 13

• Group size - Ranging from 2-15. When only one confederate was resent, conformity dropped to 3%, when two were present it increased to 14%, then to three where conformity reached 33% and mostly levelled off
• Anonymity - Participants wrote down answers privately without disclosing them privately. Only 12.5% of the participants conformed in this variation, however some still were influenced.
• Task Difficulty - As the comparison lines were much closer together in length, matching the standard line became harder. Asch reported that when the task’s difficulty increases, conformity also increases. This effect can be attributed to the informational social influence.