social influence : conformity Flashcards
outline asch’s study into conformity
A - to Investigate the extent to which people conform to social pressure by seeing whether they would conform to an obviously wrong answer
P - using a sample of 123 American students, who believed they were taking part in a vision test, place one real(naïve) participant in a room with six to eight confederates. The naïve participant was lead to believe that the other people were also real participants, and was always seated second from last. He tasked them to say out loud which line(A,B or C) was most likely the target line in length
Each participants completed 18 trials and the confederate gave the same incorrect answers on 12 trials (critical trial)
F- (32%) of the participants went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed. On interviewing them after the task, he found that some people conformed because they did not want to “rock the boat” or they thought other people must be right
C-people will conform to a majority for two reasons. Firstly because of a distortion of behaviour or because of a distortion of judgement.
what are the variations for asch’s study
task difficulty
unanimity
group size
how does task difficulty affect conformity
P : individual is more likely to conform when the task is difficult
E : alter the comparison lines, making them more similar is length, harder–> conformity increases
E : task is difficult –> more uncertain of our answer so we look to others for confirmation
L : informational social influence is major mechanism for conformity when situation is ambiguous individual does not have enough information/knowledge to make a decision independently –> they look to others rely on them
how does unanimity affect conformity
P : individual is more likely to conform when the group is unanimous(
E : when joined by another participant or disaffected confederate who gave the correct answer, conformity fell from 32%–>5.5%. If different answers are given 32% –> 9%
E : the more unanimous the group is the more confidence the participant will have that they are all correct and therefore the participant’s answer is more likely to be incorrect –> conform
E : unanimity is vital in establishing a consistent majority view which is particularly important by providing normative social influence through preventing any conflicting views arising
how does group size affect conformity
P : individual is more likely to conform in a large group setting
E : conformity was 3% when there’s 1 confederate –> 13%;2 –> 33%;3 (did not increase much afterwards regardless of number of confederate
E : a person is more likely to conform if all members of the group are in agreement and gives the same answer, because it will increase their confidence in their own answer. Conformity does not seem to increase in groups large than four so this is considered to be the optimal group size.
L : shows the majority must be at least 3 to exert an influence but an overwhelming majority is not needed in all instances to bring about conformity
strength of asch’s study to explain conformity
P- high internal validity
E-Strict control over extraneous variables(e.g. timing of assessment, type of task used)
A- Participants did the experiment before without confederates to see if they actually knew the correct answer –> removing the confounding variable of a lack of knowledge
C/E- Suggesting that valid and reliable “cause and effect” relationships can be established, as well as valid conclusions
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P- lab experiment
E-Extraneous and confounding variables are strictly controlled, meaning that replication of the experiment is easy.
E-Successful replication increases the reliability of the findings because it reduces the likelihood of the findings being a “one-off” and due to chance
weakness of asch’s study to explaining conformity
P -low ecological validity
E- FISKE(2014) found out that the groups Asch’s study did not really resemble groups that we experience in real life, task of identifying lines is trivial therefore no reason not to conform as it does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity
E- I.e there are many other confounding variables and majorities exert influence irrespective of being a large group, lowers the ecological value of the experiment as findings cannot be generalised to real-world context
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P- lacks population validity due to sampling issues
E-Participants were only American male students
E- Study is subjected to gender bias where it is assumed that findings from male participants can be generalised to females
A- BOND AND SMITH(1996) found that people from different cultures for example collectivist culture(china) cares more about the group hence conform more ;NETO(1995) found that women are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted. weakness<– limited application lowers the population validity of the original findings which means we cannot generalise to the general public
