Types of conformity

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

The tendancy for a person to change their behaviour and/or beliefs in response to pressure from other people in a group

Question 2

What are the three types of conformity?

Answer 2

• Complience
• Identification
• Internalisation

Question 3

Explain complience.

Answer 3

Individuals publicly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. It is linked to a need to be accepted. It’s superficial and often temporary.

Question 4

Explain identification

Answer 4

Individuals adopt the behaviour of the group becaus we value the group and group membership. We do not nessarily agree with everything the group stands for. This is a moterate type of conformity that lasts as long as the group membership.

Question 5

Explain internalisation

Answer 5

Individuals take on the expressed view publicly and privately as they accept it as correct. The deepest form of conformity and leads to far reaching and permanment change in behaviour.

Question 6

What was the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 6

To see if people would conform to an incorrect majority even when the correct answer was so clear.

Question 7

What was the procedure in Asch’s study?

Answer 7

123 male students from US university. Each pp was in a group of 7-9 individuals. The pp didnt know all other people in the group were confederates. The task was to identify which of the three lines was the same length as reference line. Group members started sayinh their answers real pp was 2nd to last. Confederates told to say wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials.

Question 8

What were the results of Asch’s study?

Answer 8

Ps conformed to incorrect majority on 36.8% of the trials
75% of pps conformed to the majority on at least one of the 12 critical trials
5% of the pps conformed in all 12 trials

Question 9

Conclusions of Asch’s study.

Answer 9

Individuals aere suprisingly conformist to the behaviour of a majority, even when this is clearly incorrect.

Question 10

What were Asch’s variations?

Answer 10

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Task difficulty

Question 11

Results of Asch’s group size variation.

Answer 11

He found that conformity reaches its highest when there are only 3 confederates. (32% conformed)

Question 12

Results of Asch’s unanimity variation.

Answer 12

If you break the groups unanimous position then conformity is reduced even if the answer provided by the supporter is still incorrect.

Question 13

Results of Asch’s task difficulty variation.

Answer 13

When the task is more difficult he found that conformity increased this may be due to informational social influence.