Unit 2-social Flashcards
Compliance
1st type of conformity
- when a person conforms out loud with the views or behaviours expressed by others in the group
- but continues privately to disagree
- their personal views on the subject do not change
Conformity
Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group.
Identification (2nd type of conformity)
- an individual adopts the views or behaviour of a group both publicly and privately
- however the new attitudes and behaviour are temporary and not maintained after leaving the group
Internalisation
3rd type of conformity
- occurs when an individual truly alters their behaviour and opinions to those of a group
- the new attitudes and behaviours have become part of your value systems and are not dependent on the presence of the group (opinions remain the same even when they are no longer with the group)
Conformity to majority- Ao1 study
- Asch 1956
- participants
- procedures
-123 American male student volunteers
- believed they were taking part in a study of visual perception
- individuals were placed in groups of 7-9 people who were confederates
- task was to say which comparison line A,B or C was the same as the stimulus line
- was a control group with no confederates to see if it was possible for participants to make a mistake
Conformity to majority- Ao1 study
- Asch 1956
- findings
- on the 12 critical trials there was a 32% conformity rate to wrong answers
- 75% of participants conformed to at least one wrong answer
- 25% of participants never conformed in any trial
- control group only had an error of 0.04>stimulus lines were unambiguous
Conformity to majority- Ao1 study
- Asch 1956
- conclusions
The judgments of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are wrong
Variations in Asch study
1.) Difficulty of the tsk
- when Asch made the lengths of the lines much smaller> the levels of conformity increased
- suggests that we are more likely to conform to a majority when we are unsure about something
Variations in Asch study:
2.) Size of the majority
- little conformity when the majority consisted of 2 or 3 individuals
- when the majority was 3 conformity rate increased to 30%
- further increases in the size of the majority did not make a difference
Variations in the Asch study
3.) The unanimity of the majority
- when the real participant was given support by another real participant or a confederate conformity levels decreased
- errors decreased from 32% to 5.5%
- Asch concluded that it was breaking the groups consensus that caused a decrease in conformity
Asch- conformity AO2 (strength)
-Jenness (1932)
- asked participants to guess the number of beans in a jar
- after allowing participants to discuss their estimates with others
- found that their estimates converged to the group norm
Asch-conformity AO2 (strength)
- reliability
- control group error rate
- high in reliability because the research was carried out in a laboratory environment
- suggests that the research can be tested and re-tested if replicated at a later date
-control group had an error rate of 0.04% (3/720) increasing the validity
ash- conformity- limitations AO2
-lacks population validity
- only used on American male students
- Problem because it makes the study difficult to generalise to other populations
- e.g conformity rates could be lower if he used ,ale professionals
ash- conformity- limitations AO2
-Lacks mundane realism
- carried out in an artificial setting
- using unrealistic task
- conformity rates would be lower if participants were tested in their natural environment with a more realistic task
ash- conformity- limitations AO2
ethical issue: deception
- participant did not know the real purpose of the experiment
- participants did not know that the other participants were confederates
ash- conformity- limitations AO2
-research contradicting -Perrin 1980
- repeated the study in England with science and engineering students
- 1 conforming response out of 396
- suggests that Aschs findings are unique to the 1950s America when people were scared to be different
Culture and conformity- Smith and Bond
aim and procedure
aim: investigated cultural differences in conformity
Procedures: -carried out a meta-analysis of 134 studies which used the same/ similar procedure to Aschs original experiment
- usa&uk are classified as individualistic
- Japan and Fiji are classified as collectivistic