Social Influence - Conformity Flashcards
What are the three types of conformity?
Compliance, internalisation and identification
What is the compliance type of conformity?
When you go along with the majority, even if you don’t share their views.
You do this just to appear ‘normal’ — going against the majority might lead to exclusion or rejection from the group.
This type of influence is called normative social influence.
What is the internalisation type of conformity?
When might this happen?
When you go along with the majority AND believe in their views — you’ve accepted and internalised them so they’re now your own too.
This might happen if you’re in an unfamiliar situation, where you don’t know what the ‘correct’ way to behave is. In this situation, you’d look to others for information about how to behave.
This type of influence is called informational social influence.
What is the identification type of conformity?
When you conform to what’s expected of you to fulfil a social role.
This means changing your behaviour because you want to fit a specific role in society, or trying to imitate the behaviour of a role mode.
Who tested the effects of normative social influence?
Asch (1951)
Briefly outline the method of Asch’s 1951 study of conformity.
- Lab experiment
- Independent groups
- Participants judged line lengths by saying out loud which comparison line (1, 2 or 3) matched the standard line.
- Each group contained only one real participant — the others were confederates. The participant always went last, or second to last, so they heard the others’ answers first.
- Each participant did 18 trials. On 12 of these (the critical trials) the confederates all gave the same wrong answer.
- There was also a control group, where the participants judged the line lengths in isolation.
Outline the results of Asch’s 1951 study of conformity.
In the control trials, participants gave the wrong answer 0.7% of the time.
In the critical trials, participants conformed 37% of the time.
75% conformed at least once.
Afterwards, some participants said they didn’t really believe their answers, but didn’t want to be different.
What was the conclusion of Asch’s 1951 study of conformity?
The control conditions showed that the task was easy to get right, however 37% of the answers were incorrect on the critical trials.
Therefore, they had conformed to the majority due to normative social influence.
Evaluation for Asch (1951)?
Lab experiment:
(+) good control of variables:
- Minimised effect of extraneous variables
- Also means it can be replicated easily to see if you get the same results
(-) lacks mundane realism
- Participants weren’t in a natural situation so the study lacks ecological validity
- Whether they were right or wrong didn’t matter much to the participants — they might’ve been less likely to conform if their answer had real-life consequences.
Ethics:
- Participants were deceived and might have been embarrassed when they found out the true nature of the study.
What type of factors were Asch’s participants influenced by?
Situational factors.
Simply state the 3 situational factors that influenced Asch’s participants in his repeat studies.
Group size, unanimity / social support, task difficulty
What happened with the change in group size in Asch’s study?
With two confederates, the conformity rate was only 14%.
With three confederates, conformity rose to 32%.
There was little change to conformity rates after that — no matter how big the group majority got.
What happened when unanimity of the majority was broken in Asch’s study?
Having a fellow dissenter broke the unanimity of the group and made it easier to resist pressure to conform.
The rate of conformity fell to 5.5%.
What happened when the task was made more difficult in Asch’s study (by making the lines more similar)?
The conformity levels increased.
People are more likely to conform if they’re less confident that they’re correct.
