Social Influence - Conformity Flashcards
What is conformity?
Giving into group pressure, when a person adopts the beliefs, attitudes or behaviours of people in a particular group in response to real or imagined pressure
What are the 3 types of conformity?
- Internalisation
- Compliance
- Identification
What is internalisation?
A type of conformity where a person genuinely accepts the group norm.
What is compliance?
When a person changes their behaviour to fit in with a group norm
What is identification?
A type of conformity where a person changes their behaviour to fit in with a group and be accepted
What are the 2 explanations of conformity?
- Informational social influence
- Normative social influence
What is informational social influence motivated by?
The need to be right in order to look competent
When does informational social influence happen?
When in new/ambiguous situations where we are unsure what the correct way to behave is so we look to others to see what they’re doing and copy it
What is informational social influence likely to result in?
Internalisation
What is normative social influence motivated by?
The desire to be accepted
When does normative social influence happen?
When we think a group can reward (accept) us or punish (reject) us
What does normative social influence result in?
Compliance
What was the aim of Asch’s baseline procedure?
To see if participants would conform to majority social influence and give incorrect answers on a task even when the correct answer was always obvious
What sampling technique were Asch’s participants recruited through?
Volunteer sampling
What test were Asch’s participants told that they were taking part in?
Vision
When did the genuine participant call out their answer in Asch’s study?
Second to last
When Asch interviewed the participants afterwards why did they say they conformed?
To avoid rejection
What did Asch conclude that the participants exhibited?
A distortion of action
What were the 3 variables affecting conformity?
- Group size
- Unanimity
3 task difficulty
Did conformity increase or decrease in group size?
Increased but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than 3
Did conformity increase or decrease when there was a prescence of a dissenter?
Decrease
Why did conformity decrease with the prescence of a dissenter?
It freed the naive participant to behave more indepandtly
Did conformity increase or increase when task difficulty was harder?
Increase
What are 3 limitations of Asch’s research?
- Low population validity
- Low ecological validity
- Ethical issues
