Types of conformity + asch research

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

When a persons private or public attitude has been influenced by majority
- this can be change in attitude or forming a new attitude

Question 2

What are 3 types of conformity? + what type are they?

Answer 2

1. compliance= person conforms publically but not privately to be accepted by group and avoid social rejection.
   weak type
2. identification= when person publically and privately conforms they look up to someone but attitudes and behaviours are not long lasting. medium type
3. internalisation = when a person publically and privately agree because they believe majority are right and their attitudes and behaviours are long lasting. strong type

Question 3

What are 2 EXPLANATIONS for conformity?

3 evaluations

Answer 3

Normative = they want to be liked and accepted so people do what is considered normal so they are accepted by group leads to compliance

informational = people conform because they are unsure or they cant think so they look at majority because we think they are correct. leads to internalisation.

evaluation:
strength for normative : research to support nsi as explanation for why people conform. for Asch research demonstrates how indivual conformed even though they knew there answers were incorrect in order to avoid standing out from the group or to be liked. this is a strength as shows nsi explanation is valid assumption to why people conform i.e. group approval.

weakness for nsi= indivual differences
nsi does not affect everyone behaviour some people are less concerned with being liked.

support for isi = Lucas et al 2006 gave students mathematical problems that were easy or difficult. conformity increased when they were difficult. this is true for students who rated their mathematical ability as poor. this supports isi as people conform in situations when they feel they don’t know answer or feel like we are wrong and we look at other people assuming they know better than us and they are right.

Question 4

Asch research

What is procedure?

what was the findings?

what was Asch variations/ variables?

Answer 4

Procedure:
- tested for conformity
- showed pp two large white cards at time
- on one card was a “standard line” and other card there were 3 comparison lines.
- asked participants which of the 3 lines matched standard line.

• 123 male undergraduates each pp was tested indivually with group between 6-8 confederates. they were not aware they were confederates.
• first few trials confederates gave right answer but then they started making errors.

findings:
- pp gave wrong answers 36.8% of time
- 25% did not conform
- 75% conformed at least once
- when they were interviewed after they said they conformed to avoid rejection.

variables
1. group size =
indivual is more likely going to conform when in a larger group.
- there was low conformity when participants were less than 3 and any more than 3 conformities rose by 30%.
- this shows majority must be at least 3 to exert influence.

2. unamity of majority= induvial more likely to conform when group gives same answers
   - when joined by another participant who gave correct answer conformity fell from 32 to 5.5%
   - the more unanimous the group is the more confident the participant will have if they all correct. therefore, participant answer is more likely to be incorrect.
3. task difficulty = indivual is more likely to conform when the task is difficult
   - e.g when Asch altered the lines and made it similar it was hard to judge so it increased conformity as participants looked at others for answer.
   - this suggest that informational social influence is major mechanism for conformity.

Question 5

Asch research

evaluation

Answer 5

evaluation:
lack population validity:

Asch used biased sample of 123 male undergraduates. therefore we cant not generalise the results to other populations for e.g female students. we are unable to conclude whether female students would have conformed in a similar way to male students. as result lacks population validity and further research is required to determine whether females or males conform differently

lacks ecological validity: Asch test of conformity is a artificial task which does not reflect conformity in everyday life. consequently we are unable to generalise findings to other real life situations such as why people smoke and drink around friends and therefore results are limited to application of real day life.

ethical issues: Asch broke several ethical guidelines such as deception and protection from harm. Asch deceived his participants and said they were taking part in a vision test and not experiment on conformity. although it unethical to decieve Asch study required deception in order to achieve valid results. if he told the participants the true aim they would have displayed demand characteristics. in addition Asch participants were not protected from psychological harm and many participants reported that they were stressed when they disagreed with majority. However Asch interviewed all his participants following the experiment to overcome this issue.