Social Influence - Conformity

Question 1

What are the 3 types of Conformity (Kelman 1958)?

Answer 1

• Compliance
• Identification
• Internalisation

Question 2

What are the 2 explanations for conformity and briefly explain them (Insko et al, 1985).

Answer 2

Normative social influence - when humans have a desire to be right and fit in. We crave social companionship and fear rejection.

Informational social influence - when we all possess a desire to be right. To do or say the wrong thing will result in us looking foolish in front of others. We want to feel confident that our concepts and beliefs are correct.

Question 3

Research support for Normative social influence?

Answer 3

Schultz et al (2008) did a study on hotel guests, found hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day reduced the hotel guests towel use to 25%.

Question 4

Research support for Informational Social Influence?

Answer 4

Fein et al, judgements of candidates performance in US presidential debates could be influenced by knowledge of other reactions. Participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of their fellow participants on screen during a presidential debate. The produced a large shift in participants’ judgements of the candidates’ performance.

Question 5

What are the 3 variables that affect conformity?

Answer 5

1. Group size
2. Unanimity of the majority
3. Difficulty of task

Question 6

Explain Asch’s study on conformity.

Answer 6

A naive participant is brought into a lab with 6 stooges, they’re all asked to sit round a large table. The naive participant was sat 2nd to last. In the men were asked to make a judgement a

Question 7

Who’s the main researcher into conformity to social roles?

Answer 7

Zimbardo’s Prison experiment

Stanford prison experiment

Question 8

Evaluation (SPE) - conformity to social roles is not automatic

Answer 8

Zimbardo believed that the guards sadistic behaviour was an automatic consequence of them embracing their role - this caused them to be unable to identify that what they were doing was wrong. However, guard behaviour changed from being fully sadistic to being ‘good guards’ and doing favours for them.
Haslam and Reicher argues that this shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than blindly conforming to their social role.

Question 9

Evaluation (SPE) - problem of demand characteristics

Answer 9

Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that they didn’t behave in that way because they were conforming to social roles but because of demand characteristics. Demand characteristics is when you guess the purpose of the study and act accordingly. The prison experiment was presented to a large group of students and the vast majority of the students correctly guessed the purpose of the study.

Question 10

Evaluation (SPE) - relevance to the Abu Ghraib.

Answer 10

Real world application.
Were the US guards at the Abu Ghraib simply conforming to social roles when they committed their acts of torture and abuse on the Iraqi prisoners. Zimbardo said that they were victims of situational factors that made the abuse more likely.