Social Influence-Variables Affecting Conformity

Question 1

How many people (Easy as 🅰🅱C..) were tested and gender? 👫

Answer 1

➡️123 male US graduates

Question 2

Asch (1956)

What was the nature of the task?

Answer 2

➡️Student volunteers asked to take part in a visual discrimination task.

Question 2

What was the purpose of the study? 🔬

Answer 2

➡️ to see how the lone ppt would react to the behaviour of the confederates

Question 3

Asch (1956)- Procedure

How were groups arranged?

Answer 3

➡️groups of 7 (1 Naive ppt & 6 Confederates)

Question 4

What were participants asked to do? 🏷🏷🏷

Answer 4

➡️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

Question 5

How many trials were there in total and how many of these were critical trials*?

(*what happens in critical trials

Answer 5

➡️18 trials in total

➡️12 out of 18 = Critical Trials
↪️Confederates instructed to give the same incorrect answer 🚫📢

Question 6

What did Asch observe? 👀

Answer 6

➡️Asch observed whether the “real” ppts. would stick to what they believed was right ✅ or cave in to the pressure of the majority ⚠️

Question 7

Asch (1956) Findings

Conformity rate of the Critical trials? %%% %%%

Answer 7

➡️ On the 12 critical trials = Average conformity rate was 3️⃣3️⃣%

Question 8

Individual differences in terms of conformity? 👫

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Control Condition?🔬🔬

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What did the post-experiment interview reveal? ✨

Answer 10

➡️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)

Question 11

Asch-variables affecting conformity (Variations of Asch’s original study)

Group size 👬👫

Conformity with 1-2 confederates?

Answer 11

➡️majority consisted of 1 or 2 confederates = very little conformity

Question 12

How much did conformity increase with a majority of 3 confederates? ⬆️

Answer 12

➡️majority of 3 confederates = 3️⃣0️⃣% increase in conforming responses

Question 13

What happened to conformity levels of the majority size increased?

Answer 13

➡️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

Question 14

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?

Answer 14

➡️Confomrmity reduced from 3️⃣3️⃣% to 5️⃣.5️⃣%

Question 15

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?

Answer 15

➡️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

Question 16

Asch-variables affecting conformity (Variations of Asch’s original study)

Difficulty of the task ⛏

What did Asch do to the lines in this variation?

Answer 16

Made the difference between the lines smaller hence making the correct answer more ambiguous ☠

Question 17

What happened to conformity levels?

Answer 17

Increased ⬆️

Question 18

What did Lucas et al. (2006) find out about the influence of task difficulty?

Answer 18

The influence of task difficulty is moderated by “Self-efficacy” 🌸

Question 19

What happened when Lucas’s participants were exposed to difficult maths problems?

Answer 19

High self-efficacy participants remained more independent than low self-efficacy participants

Question 20

What are two important factors determining conformity drawn from Lucas’s study?

Answer 20

Situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy)

Question 21

Evaluation

Asch’s research may be a “Child of its time” 👶🏼

What was prominent in the US in 1956? 🔴🐻

Answer 21

McCarthyism (strong Anti-Communist period)

Question 22

Why was this significant?

Answer 22

People were scared to go against the majority = More likely to conform

Question 23

What type of participants did Perrin & Spencer (1980’s) use in their 2 studys?

Answer 23

Study 1️⃣: use science and engineering students

Study 2️⃣: youths on probation and probation officers as confederates

Question 24

How many conforming responses did they receive out of a total of 396 trials where a majority unanimously answered incorrectly in the science/engendering students group? 🔬

Answer 24

1 out of 396

Question 25

Conformity level found in the probation students?

Answer 25

Similar to that of Asch’s study in the 1950’s

Question 26

What did these results confirm?

Answer 26

Conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high (the case in the McCarthy era)

Question 27

Problems with determine the effect of group size: Bond (2005)

What did Bond suggest was a limitation of conformity studies?

Answer 27

Bond suggests studies used only a limited range of majority sizes

Question 28

How did Asch’s conclusion that a majority size of three was a sufficient number for maximum influence affect subsequent studies?

Answer 28

Late studies also used Asch’s majority of three

Question 29

What did Bond find out in regard to subsequent studies majority size?

Answer 29

No studies other than Asch used a majority size greater than 9 and other studies used a narrower majority size of 2-4

Question 30

What does this mean in regard to our knowledge of the effect of conformity size?

Answer 30

We know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels

Question 31

Independent behaviour rather than conformity 💪🏾

Answer 31

Only about 1/3 of the trials produced conforming responses… Meaning 2/3 of the trials participants resolutely stuck to their original judgement despite being faced with the overwhelming majority expressing a different view.

Question 32

What did Asch feel this showed about human behaviour?

Answer 32

Humans were not necessarily “over-conformist” but humans also showed a tendency to show independent behaviour