Conformity

What is conformity?

When a person changes their beliefs or behaviour to match those of a group

What are the three types of conformity

Compliance, identification and Internalisation

What is compliance?

• The weakest form of conformity

• When an individual accepts or agrees with the behaviour of beliefs of a group in public but has different views privately

• Associated with NSI

Example of compliance

A friend group decides to take part in a charity fun run. One friend doesn’t particularly want to go but goes regardless because they ask him to go along

What is identification?

When an individual changes their beliefs and behaviours to match a group because they identify with the group

Social support from the group

Example of identification

Someone started to support a football club due to their friends being fans. They begin to watch the matches ad wear the shirts despite a lack of interest. If they stop hanging with that group of friends, they are likely to stop following the team

What is internalisation?

The strongest type of conformity

When a person’s public and private and behaviour changes to match a group

Associated with ISI

Example of internalisation

A student joins a basketball club where everyone promotes a healthier lifestyle. Over time they come to value their health and fitness more and continue to do so even after leaving the club

Who found the 3 types of conformity

Kelman (1958)

Found that Compliance was shallow, Identification was Intermediate and Identification was Deep

What are the two explanations for conformity

Normative Social Influence and Informational Social Influence

What is NSI?

Conformity driven by the human drive to be accepted and the fear of ostracisation/rejection. The want to be seen as part of the majority and to be liked

Occurs in unambiguous situations

NSI is superficial and is a temporary change in behaviour

What is ISI?

Conformity driven by the desire to be correct. We look towards the majority or whoever seems to be the most knowledgeable in the situation. Assumes people have more knowledge on a situation

Occurs in Ambiguous environments

Example of NSI

A teenager wearing nike and not Skechers because they want to fit in with all the kids at school

Example of ISI

A fire drill happening at school and the new kid is uncertain so they look and see the group of kids following the teacher. They follow the kids following the teacher as they seem to be the most knowledgeable about the situation

What is the two step approach?

An approach that suggests that conformity is not either ISI or NSI and that it may be a combination of both

Example of the two step approach

A fire drill occurring and being unsure on what to do so you follow someone who seems to have more experience with fire drills (ISI). That person then sees others moving in a different direction and feel pressured to follow that group to avoid standing out (NSI)

Research on conformity

• Asch 1951

• 123 Caucasian male college students

• Placed in group 8-10- Only one real ppt the rest were confederates

• Ppts were given a line judgement task

• 18 trials

• Real participant placed in the second to last place

• In the 12 critical trials, the confederates gave the same incorrect answer

Findings

• 75% of ppts conformed at least once

• An average conformity rate of 32%

• 26% of ppts didn’t conform at all

• 5% of ppts conformed each time

  Study gives supporting evidence for NSI: people conform to fit in

Strengths of the study

• Controlled environment

• High internal validity

• Gives clear findings showing conformity

• Easy replicability

Limitations of the study

• Lack of ecological validity due to being an artificial task

• Ethical issues due to deception being involved (Asch didn’t tell the pts the true aims of the study) and therefore a lack of informed consent

• Not generalisable to the population due to the sample being gender-biased, ethnocentric and age-restricted

• Does not account for Dispositional factors (personality)- some people may be nAffiliators so they conform each time compared to someone with high confidence or internal locus of control who are less likely to conform

• Lacks temporal validity due to being carried out in the 50s which was a highly conformist era due to the cold war (American Society at this time had a strong emphasis on social conformity)

  When this test was repeated in the 70s, it was found that the conformity rate dropped to 14%

What are the variables affecting conformity?

Group size, Unanimity and Task difficulty

Research on group size affecting conformity

Asch carried out a variation of the original study where he varied the number of confederates from 1-16

• With one confederate, the conformity rate was 3%

• With two confederates, the conformity rate rose to 13%

• With 3, the conformity rate rose to 33%

  The conformity rate plateaued after 3 confederates with the conformity rate being 31% at 16 confederates

Findings on group size as a factor affecting conformity

• Asch concluded that a group size of 3 people is sufficient to get the highest rate of conformity

• After three individuals, the conformity rate plateaus

  This suggests that social pressure is strongest when the group is large enough to provide support for the majority view

Research on unanimity as a variable affecting conformity

Asch carried out a variant of the original study where he had a confederate to break the unanimity by giving a different answer to the group (Even if the other incorrect answer)

Findings on unanimity as a variable affecting conformity

• The conformity rate dropped from 32% in the original study to 5.5%

  Shows that the presence of a dissenter reduces social pressure from the group to conform. This social support plays a key role in reducing conformity

Research on task difficulty as a variable affecting conformity

Asch carried out a variant of the original study where he changed the distance between the lines. This therefore increased the difficulty of the task and making the task more ambiguous

Findings on task difficulty as a variable affecting conformity

• When the task difficulty increased, the conformity rate increased by 50-60%

• When it becomes more difficult to determine the correct answer, the true ppt looked to the group for guidance

  Links to ISI as people are more likely to conform in a more ambiguous situation.

Other variation

Asch had another variation of his original study where he had ppts write down their answer instead of reading them out aloud

He found that the conformity rate dropped to 12.5% which could be due to the social pressure being relieved slightly

Studies to criticise/support Asch’s all the studies

• Perin and Spencer 1981: Repeated the study and found conformity in 1/396 trials. They talk about low temporal validity- societal changes towards more individualistic values

• All American sample however a meta-analysis was completed of 133 studies across 17 countries (Bond 1996) and found support for Asch’s original findings, however, found higher conformity rates in collectivist cultures which prioritise consensus (general agreement/collective opinion) compared to individualistic societies that value independence and personal freedom. This suggests pressure to conform is not universal

What was the aim of Zimbardo’s SPE

To see how people conform to social roles in an environment

What are social roles?

A socially defined pattern of behaviour that is expected of a person who has a certain social position or belongs to a particular social category

Example of a social role

A teacher is expected to:

• Manage a classroom

• Maintain discipline

• Educate students and help them learn

• Provide guidance and support to students both academically and emotionally

• Follow a code of conduct and adhere to the rules

Why did Zimbardo perform this study?

He believed that the intense aggression within the U.S prison system was not due to dispositional variable but due to situational environment and that prisoners and guards acted in certain ways due to their expectations of how they should act. These expectations come from stereotypes

Where did Zimbardo carry out his study?

He created a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University

How did Zimbardo collect his ppts?

• Put out an advert in a newspaper asking for people to volunteer to take part in a 7-14 day study

• They were promised $15 per day and for their

• Applicants were given psychological testing to ensure they were mentally stable and also did checks to ensure they had no previous prison history

Research on conformity to social roles

• Sample gathered from newspaper

• $15 offered per day

• Psychological test took place to ensure mental stability

• 24 college male ppts

• Ppts were randomly assigned guard or prisoner

• Prisoners were arrested at home, booked, deloused and given a uniform with an id number

• Prisoners had rules to follow and had rights

• Each cell had 3 prisoners

• Guards were given a whistle, a club and reflective sunglasses to establish authority

• Zimbardo oversaw the experiment as lead investigator and superintendent

Findings of the SPE

• Ppts quickly lost individual identies and adapted to social roles

• Prisoners immediately attempted to resist by barricading themselves in their cells

• Guards crushed the rebellion and prisoners became passive

• Throughout the experiment, prisoners showed significant distress- study ended early- after 6 days

What is the lucifer effect?

Developed by Zimbardo

The belief that good people do evil things when placed in positions of power

Strengths of the SPE

• Highly controlled which reduced the likelihood of ppts variables

• Real life application: helped to explain the behaviour of soldiers in Iraq who were highly abusive towards their prisoners of war

• Somewhat realistic: ppts were arrested at home, deloused, given a humiliating uniform, id number and were strip searched- this dehumanisation is somewhat accurate of a real life arrest scenario

Limitations of the SPE

• Zimbardo took on a dual role- experimenter bias- his presence most likely influenced the behaviour of ppts- cause them to display demand characteristics

• Lack of realism: could be argued that ppts were rather acting instead of conforming to social roles- this was supported by the account of one of the guards who claimed he based his role upon a movie character

• Ethical issues due: 3 ppts had to be released due to being psychologically disturbed- one released on day 4, two released on day 5, a prisoner went on hunger strike- some prisoners had psychosomatic symptoms: one prisoner fainted, one prisoner had a seizure, some prisoners had emotional breakdowns, prisoners lost their identity- had to refer to each other via id number