Social Influence

what is conformity and 2 types of conformity

conformity: yielding to group pressure. The pressure may be real or unspoken or imagined. Conformity is highly functional in society as without it we wouldn’t be able to predict how people will behave causing chaos and uncertainty

internalisation: from informational social influence. It is the most permanent form of conformity. Both public behaviour and private opinions change. Since they believe in the group norms, the behaviour will continues even when the group pressure is removed.

compliance: from normative social influence. Going along with the group without a change in attitude. Public behaviour changes but private opinions don’t. If the group pressure is removed, the behaviour stops.

what are 2 explanations for conformity

informational social influence: the need to be right
when there is no obvious or correct answer we turn to others for information. The more uncertain people are bc of a lack of information, the more likely they are to conform e.g following others when the fire alarm goes off at your first day in a new school

normative social influence: the need to be liked
the need to be accepted/fit in to a group, even if they are strangers. You may not change your private opinions or agree with the group, but there must be the appearance of harmony or agreement

outline Asch’s line study

Aim: to discover whether the power of the group is enough to make a person give an obviously incorrect answer to an easy task
Procedure: American male undergraduate students were shown a pair of cards. One card has a test line and the other card had 3 lines of different lengths. They were told it was to test line perception. The ps were asked to state aloud which line was the the same length of the test line, and the correct answer was always obvious. The naive participant was second to last around a table with 6 confederates who gave the same incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials.
Findings: on 32% of the critical trials, participants conformed and 74% conformed at least once. In a control w no confederates, all ps answered correctly
Conclusion: group pressure is so strong that people will answer an obvious task incorrectly

weaknesses of Asch’s line study

• ethnocentric bias-sample was all american→individualistic society so findings may not generalise to collectivist societies which have higher levels of conformity

• unethical- breaks ethical guildlines bc they were decieved→told it was about line perception when it was about social influence, told confederates were real ps, and not protected from harm→stress and embarrassment

• lacks population validity and has an androcentric bias- sample was all men so results may not generalise to women who are slightly more conformist than men. However later research shows women only conform more when the researcher was male or it was male centered

• lacks ecological validity- the task is trivial and not important to ps beliefs so findings do not generalise to real word behaviour. However Crutchfield replicated this study but used statemtns that college students would otherwise disagree w such as ‘life expectancy of american males is only 25yrs’ or ‘free speech is a privelege not a right’. Since it was less artificial and had similar findings, it suggests Asch’s study doesn’t lack ecological validity

• social climate/lacks temporal validity- findings are specific to the particula r historical time bc it was during the very conservative, anti-left wing McCarthyism era so findings are not relevant today. This is supported as Perrin&Spencer repeated this study with British students only 1 out of 396 conformed. However this study used maths, chemistry and engineering students, who may’ve learnt knowledge and skills to resist conformity so this could be the reason rather than the time period

factors affecting conformity

Asch carried out variations of his study to see other factors affecting levels of conformity

increases conformity: more difficult task- when Asch made the lines closer in length, it was harder for ps to know the correct answer, so conformity increased

decreases conformity: 

• size of the majority- when only 2 people were the majority, conformity dropped to 12.8%. When only 1 confederate was used, there was no conformity. 3 was the optimum size of the majority, but increasing it did not affect conformity, although it was suggested that people may suspect collusion past 3 or 4.

• a non-unanimous majority- when just one other participant dissented from the majority and supported the naive participant, conformity levels dropped to 5%