Social influence Booklet 1: Conformity

Question 1

What are the three types of conformity?

Answer 1

Internalisation- Permanent
Compliance- Public
Identification- Private

Question 2

What is the main study into conformity?

Answer 2

Asch

Question 3

What was the method of Asch study?

Answer 3

-123 Male American undergraduates tested, participants were seated in a room and asked to look at three lines of different lengths. Then asked to state which of the three length as the standard line, participants always questioned same order
-Confederates were prompted to give the same incorrect answer on 12 of the 18 trials, Asch interested in whether people would stick to what they believed to be right, or cave in to the pressure of majority and go along with decision

Question 4

What were the results of the Asch study?

Answer 4

On the 12 critical trials the following results found:
-32% of “real” participants conformed to the incorrect unanimous decision of the other group members on all ALL trials
-75% of participants conformed at least once
-Only 25% of participants never conformed on any of the trials

Question 5

What are the three variables affecting conformity as studied by Asch?

Answer 5

-Group Size
-Unanimity
-Difficulty of Task

Question 6

How was Group Size manipulated?

Answer 6

1. Majority was just one or two individuals
2. Majority was by three or four individuals

Question 7

How did group size affect conformity?

Answer 7

1. The smaller the group there was lower pressure, so less levels of conformity (12.8%)
2. The bigger the group there was more pressure, so more levels of conformity (32%)

Question 8

How was unanimity affected?

Answer 8

Asch asked one of his confederates to give a different answer to the majority/rest of the confederates to break the unanimity

Question 9

How did unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 9

conformity levels decreased to 5.5%, as opposed to 75% before altering unanimity - as they felt more confident in their answers

Question 10

How was difficulty of task affected

Answer 10

Asch made the lines more similar in length so it was more difficult to see which line was most similar

Question 11

How did difficulty of task effect conformity?

Answer 11

Conformity levels increased the harder the task was, this being because the more uncertain the participant was of their answer, the more likely they were to rely on others for guidance

Question 12

What are the evaluations of research into conformity?

Answer 12

😊Helps us to understand real life events, contribute to change to avoid conformity (1992 rodney king)
😊Lab experiment (Asch study, standardised procedures)
😒Asch experiment unethical (deception)
😒Asch study lack ecological validity (artificial task)
😒Gender Bias (Asch only used males, Neto)
😒Asch study out of date (child of time, conducted 1950’s, Perrin and Spencer)
😒Culturally bias (Bond and Smith’s)

Question 13

What was found in the 1992 rodney king case?

Answer 13

Beaten by police officers in LA. Assault was videotaped by a local resident and shown to jurors in court as evidence of the attack. Despite evidence, all officers acquitted. After trial, one of the jurors admitted that she had changed her vote from guilty to not guilty because of pressure from other members

Question 14

What was found in Neto?

Answer 14

Women were more likely to conform than men, due to them carrying more about social relationships and the opinions of a group

Question 15

What was found in Perrin and Spencer?

Answer 15

Asch study was repeated over 20 years later with engineering students in the UK, found very different results as only 1 student conformed to the wrong answer, showing that the level of conformity is very different in today’s society compared to the 1950’s

Question 16

What was found in Bond and Smith’s?

Answer 16

Conformity rates in Chinese students were much higher than Asch’s findings

Question 17

Who proposed the Dual process dependency model?

Answer 17

Deutsch and Gerard

Question 18

What types of conformity does the dual process model explain?

Answer 18

NSI - Compliance
ISI - Internalisation

Question 19

What is normative social influence? (NSI)

Answer 19

The person conforms because they want to seek approval from the group and avoid disapproval, the group has power to exclude us. However the individual may still retain their own beliefs in their heads, contrary to how they act around the group
-THIS IS CONFORMING DUE TO THE NEED TO BE LIKED

Question 20

What is informative social influence? (ISI)

Answer 20

In certain situations a person conforms with others because they believe them to be right and they don’t have confidence in their own knowledge in that area. This leads to a both public and private belief, but possible not permanent
-THIS IS CONFORMING DUE TO THE NEED TO BE RIGHT

Question 21

Why is it called the “dual process dependency model”?

Answer 21

Because we are dependant on the people around us…
NSI - dependant on others as they have the ability to exclude us from the group
ISI - dependant on others as we lack the knowledge and seek help from those around us

Question 22

What are the evaluations of the dual process model?

Answer 22

😊Evidence to support (Asch)
😊Evidence to support (Lucas et al)
😒Doesn’t account for individual differences (low intelligence/self-esteem)
😒Too simplistic (difficulty to identify which/ if not both)
😒Might be other, more important factors rather than need to be right or liked (Abrams)

Question 23

What was found in Lucas et al?

Answer 23

He asked students to answer a range of easy and difficult math problems. He found that there was more conformity amongst the group when students were answering difficult math questions, compared to easy ones

Question 24

What was found in Abrams?

Answer 24

Found that there was seven times as much conformity when the group members, were part of the participants in-group rather than just out-group

Question 25

What is conformity to social roles?

Answer 25

-Whilst we previously looked at conformity to the majority
-Here is looking at the “parts” people play as members of society/groups. e.g. parent, child, student or passenger
-These roles are accompanied by expectations we and others have of what is appropriate behaviour in each role
-Area is to see what extent we conform to the expectations others have of us

Question 26

What is the main study into conformity to social roles?

Answer 26

Zimbardos

Question 27

What was the aim of Zimbardos study?

Answer 27

To see whether the prison guards/ prisoners will conform to their social roles

Question 28

What was the method in Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 28

-To create a mock prison in the basement of the university and randomly assign role of guard and prisoners to mentally stable students selected from a volunteer sample. Issuing 12 prisoner and 12 guards
-Experiment tried to imitate the real procedures of an arrest of the students and they were each given a number to be referred to and were deloused / strip-searched
-Guards enforced 16 rules and had complete control over prison, equipped with uniform and weapon

Question 29

What were the results/findings of Zimbardo’s?

Answer 29

-The guards overused their power and their behaviour became psychologically and physically threatening towards the prisoner (so much so experiment stopped after 6 days)
-When prisoners rebelled the guards harassed them showing aggressive and brutal behaviour by using obscene methods to punish
-Guards began enjoying having their own rules and when prisoners released - subdued, depressed and anxious

Question 30

What was the conclusion of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 30

-The study revealed power of the situation on behaviour and how both the guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles

Question 31

What are the evaluations of Zimbardo’s research?

Answer 31

😊High internal validity (Lab experiment)
😒Unethical (deception, psychological harm)
😒Ecological validity (artificial setting, unrealistic task)
😒Evidence to contradict (BBC Prison study)
😊Evidence to support (Abu Ghraib)

Question 32

What happened in the BBC Prison study?

Answer 32

Replicated zimbardo’s study and found that prison guards did not conform to social roles and were instead nice to prisoners, rather than abusive

Question 33

What happened in Abu Ghraib?

Answer 33

During Iraq war some US army committed a serious of human right violations against PoW by carrying out violent abusive acts on them. Demonstrates conformity of social roles