Social Influence: Conformity Flashcards
What is compliance?
Publicly, but not privately going along with majority influence to gain approval / avoid ridicule, weak / temporary and only shown in presence of group (This can be explained by NSI)
What is Internalisation
(True conformity) Public and private acceptance of majority influence, through adoption of the majority’s belief system, stronger, permanent form of conformity as it is maintained outside of the groups presence (This can be explained by ISI)
What is identification
Public and private acceptance of majority influence in order to gain group acceptance, stronger form of conformity, but still temporary, as don’t always agree with the group (More ISI than NSI, but a bit of both can explain)
What are the two explanations of conformity (proposed by Deutsch & Gerard, 1995 (Dual-process dependency model)
Informational social influence and Normative social influence
What is Informational social influence
ISI is a cognitive process because it is to do with what you think. ISI is an explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well, we change both our private and public view points to be consistent with the majority
When might ISI happen?
If we are uncertain, if we agree with the majority and believe that it is right, we want to be right, can happen in situations of ambiguity, crisis situations, situations new to a person, or if someone is being regarded as an expert
What is Normative social influence
NSI is an emotional process rather than a cognitive one. NSI is an explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked. People do not like to appear foolish. We want to gain social approval, the person may publicly change their behaviour but will privately disagree
When might NSI happen?
When we want to agree with the opinion of majority to be accepted or gain approval / be liked, situations with strangers, occur with people you know, pronounced in stressful situations
Describe and explain Asch’s study (1951)
Asch (1951), American male undergraduates, laboratory experiment with independent groups design, one naive participants, who usually answered towards the end, the rest were confederates, a control group where they judged the line lengths without confederates. Participants were shown three lines on a card and a comparison line, confederates started off correct but later started answering wrong
What were the findings in Asch’s study?
Naive participants gave the wrong answer 37% of the time, yet in controls only 0.7%. 75% of naiive participants conformed at least once, whereas in control only 12.5%
What can we conclude from Asch’s study?
Most said they conformed to avoid rejection, and the control condition showed that the task was easy to get right. This means 75% of participants conformed to the majority due to NSI.
What is a situational factor
Due to the situation that a person is in
What is a dispositional factor
Where someone is influenced by their own internal characteristics
What are the factors that Asch found to impact how often someone conformed?
Group size (up to 7, as small minorities are easier to reject), Conformity increases with task difficulty (as line sizes got harder, ISI took place as situation was more ambiguous ), Social support (presence of a dissenter led conformity rate to drop to 5.5%, a dissenter with another wrong answer still dropped rates to 9%)
Evaluations for Asch’s study
Positive: It shows how NSI and ISI can work together and aren’t independent, as NSI can decease and ISI can increase with a dissenter showing a different wrong answer. Shows support for ISl, as results indicated people conform when they don’t know the answer. Support for NSI, as participants said after that they were scared of disapproval, control group also showed that without a confederate conformity rates dropped to 12.5%.
Negative: Sex bias (men), culture bias (Americans), Methodological issues as deception, Lacks temporal validity as results may change over time (Perrin and Spencer (1980), repeated this and found this to be true 1 out of 396 conformed), artificial situation, Doesn’t say how NS is affected by individual differences, as some people desire a greater need for ‘affiliation’ (to be accepted)
What are the three reasons people conformed in Asch’s study
Distortion of judgement (assumed that the confederates were correct, and that they were failing to see what they were seeing), distortion of action (avoided disapproval although they continued to trust their own judgement), distortion of perception (participants genuinely believed the confederates were giving correct answers)
What is the asch effect?
The tendency of individuals to conform to the opinions and behaviours of a group, even when those opinions or behaviours are clearly incorrect
