AO1 Types of conformity: internalisation, identification and compliance. Explanations for conformity: informational social influence and normative social influence, and variables affecting conformity including group size. unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch

Conformity

A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure

Compliance

Publicly conforming to the behaviours or views of others but privately maintaining one’s own view.

Internalisation

When there is a real change of private views to match those of a group

Identification

Adopting the views or behaviours of a group publicly and privately, but only temporary and not maintained after leaving the group

Normative social influence

The need to be accepted by other people, we want to liked and respected

Normative social influence

The need to correct, we feel unsure so rely on others

Research to support ISI

Lucas et al asked students to give answers to math problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult than when they were easier. This was most true for students who rated their math ability as poor. This shows how people will conform when they are in situation where they don’t know the answer, supporting ISI.

Individual differences in ISI and NSI

Not everyone’s behaviour is affected in the same way. Asch found students were less conformist than other types of people. Also people who are less concerned about being liked are less likely to conform than those who are concerned about this.

Support for the NSI explanation

Asch found when asking participants why they conformed, they said they didn’t want to be disapproved of or disliked by the group, supporting NSI. Asch also found that in a variation where participants wrote down their answers conformity dropped to 12.5%

Asch’s method

A participant is seated with a group of 6 - 8 confederates, they are shown a display of three vertical lines labelled A, B and C. They are then shown a single line and asked which of the three lines is the same length. The lines are organised so there is no doubt which is correct. Each person gives their answer in turn and the participant is placed last or second to last. All the participants where white males

Asch’s findings

In the control trials the error rate was 0.7%, whereas in the critical trials this rose to 32% and 74% of participants conformed at least once. In the debrief participants said they didn’t want to spoil the experiment and didn’t was to ridiculed by the rest of the group.

Asch concluded

When faced with a task where the correct answer is certain, the need to fit in with the majority can cause an individual to give the same answer as the group on a significant number of occasions. However, majority of participants still continued to give the correct answer.

Affect of group size

When the majority consisted of only 2 people, conformity dropped to 12.8%. Increasing the size of the majority didn’t cause conformity to go beyond 32%, this could be due to suspicion on the part of the participant.

Affect of unanimity

if one confederate in the group gave an answer that was different from the other confederates’ answers, conformity by the real participant dropped to 5%.

Affect of task difficulty

When the task was made more difficult by making the lines more similar in length, conformity increased.

Experiment and variation lack ecological validity in Asch

Behaviour is not representative of that in the real world, as not often do people sit around making judgements on a simple task where the answer is obvious and everyone is unanimously giving the incorrect answer.

Ethnocentrism in Asch’s study

Only white American were studied, therefore the research is ethnocentric. There are large cultural differences in rates of conformity, collectivist cultures show much higher levels than individualistic ones. This suggest the research is culture biased.

Gender bias in Asch’s study

Only males were studied in the original experiments. Therefore it is beta biased as it assumes that females would have behaved the same way. Meaning it is androcentric and gender biased

Ethics in Asch’s study

Asch’s work has been criticised for being unethical as participants didn’t provide full informed consent, however this would have not allowed conformity to be correctly measured. Participants were also deceived.

Experimental validity in Asch’s study

Asch has been criticised for lacking experimental validity, some participants reported that they conformed because they didn’t want to ruin the experiment. However most participants were taken in by the deception as they showed signs of embarrassment.