Social Influence-Variables Affecting Conformity Flashcards
How many people (Easy as 🅰🅱C..) were tested and gender? 👫
➡️123 male US graduates
Asch (1956)
What was the nature of the task?
➡️Student volunteers asked to take part in a visual discrimination task.
What was the purpose of the study? 🔬
➡️ to see how the lone ppt would react to the behaviour of the confederates
Asch (1956)- Procedure
How were groups arranged?
➡️groups of 7 (1 Naive ppt & 6 Confederates)
What were participants asked to do? 🏷🏷🏷
➡️ppts were seated around a table
➡️asked to look at different line lengths ‼️
(1 Standard line and 3 comparison lines)
➡️took turns to call out which of the 3 lines was the same length as the standard line
➡️Real ppt always gives answer second to last
How many trials were there in total and how many of these were critical trials*?
(*what happens in critical trials
➡️18 trials in total
➡️12 out of 18 = Critical Trials
↪️Confederates instructed to give the same incorrect answer 🚫📢
What did Asch observe? 👀
➡️Asch observed whether the “real” ppts. would stick to what they believed was right ✅ or cave in to the pressure of the majority ⚠️
Asch (1956) Findings
Conformity rate of the Critical trials? %%% %%%
➡️ On the 12 critical trials = Average conformity rate was 3️⃣3️⃣%
Individual differences in terms of conformity? 👫
Individual differences:
➡️1/4 of ppts never conformed on any of the critical trials
➡️1/2 conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials
➡️1/20 of ppts conformed on al 12 critical trials
Control Condition?🔬🔬
Asch conducted a control condition without the distraction of confederates
↪️in this condition he found ppts. made mistakes about 1% time.
↪️confirmed the stimulus lines were indeed unambiguous
What did the post-experiment interview reveal? ✨
➡️Asch interviewed ppts. afterwards
↪️discovered that the majority of ppts who conformed had continued to privately trust their own judgement… But changed public behaviour to avoid disapproval from other group members (I.e. Showing compliance)
Asch-variables affecting conformity (Variations of Asch’s original study)
Group size 👬👫
Conformity with 1-2 confederates?
➡️majority consisted of 1 or 2 confederates = very little conformity
How much did conformity increase with a majority of 3 confederates? ⬆️
➡️majority of 3 confederates = 3️⃣0️⃣% increase in conforming responses
What happened to conformity levels of the majority size increased?
➡️Further increases in the size of the majority did not increase level of conformity substantially
✳️Indicates size of the majority is important but only up to a point
Asch-variables affecting conformity (Variations of Asch’s original study)
The unanimity of the majority 💪🏾
What happened to conformity when a real participants was given support with a person answering correctly?
➡️Confomrmity reduced from 3️⃣3️⃣% to 5️⃣.5️⃣%
What happened to conformity when a person gave an answer both different from the majority and different from the trials answer?
What did Asch conclude from this in terms of conformity reduction?
➡️Conformity rates dropped to 9️⃣% (Just as influential as a person who answered correctly)
➡️Asch concluded that breaking the groups unanimous position was a major factor in conformity reduction
Asch-variables affecting conformity (Variations of Asch’s original study)
Difficulty of the task ⛏
What did Asch do to the lines in this variation?
Made the difference between the lines smaller hence making the correct answer more ambiguous ☠
What happened to conformity levels?
Increased ⬆️
What did Lucas et al. (2006) find out about the influence of task difficulty?
The influence of task difficulty is moderated by “Self-efficacy” 🌸
What happened when Lucas’s participants were exposed to difficult maths problems?
High self-efficacy participants remained more independent than low self-efficacy participants
What are two important factors determining conformity drawn from Lucas’s study?
Situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy)
Evaluation
Asch’s research may be a “Child of its time” 👶🏼
What was prominent in the US in 1956? 🔴🐻
McCarthyism (strong Anti-Communist period)
Why was this significant?
People were scared to go against the majority = More likely to conform
What type of participants did Perrin & Spencer (1980’s) use in their 2 studys?
Study 1️⃣: use science and engineering students
Study 2️⃣: youths on probation and probation officers as confederates
