1 psychology: CONFORMITY

Asch (1951) baseline study

The Asch baseline study aimed to explore how social pressure influences conformity. In the procedure, participants (123 males)were placed in a group with confederates who intentionally gave incorrect answers to a line-matching task. Many participants conformed to the majority's wrong answers, showing the strong effect of group pressure on individual judgment.

Zimbardo (1973) Stanford prison experiment

Procedure: 21 male student volunteers were involved in the study. They were randomly allocated roles of guard or prisoner in a make shift prison in Stanford university.

Aim: investigate the effects of social roles on conformity

👮

Milgram (1963) obedience study

Procedure:40 American male participants recruited supposedly for a study of memory.

Each participant was pared up with a confederate called “mr Wallace”. They drew lots although it was fixed so that the participants would land role of teacher and other as learner

Aim: to see how far a person would go into obeying even if it causes harm

Variables:uniform,location,proximity

🧑‍🏫

Zimbardo (1973) limitations

-lack ecological validity

-ethical issues

-lack population validity (can’t be generalised)

-some participants may have demand characteristics

⛈

Zimbardo (1973) strength

-real life application:this changed how US prisons are run

-Debriefing

-mentally stable/healthy participants were chosen out of volunteers

☀

Milgram (1963) limitations

-Ethical issues

-it raises a social sensitive issue

-lack of internal validity

-lack of ecological validity

🥀

Milgram (1963) strength

-debriefing

-real life applications

-High in internal validity

-highly replicable

🌹

Zimbardo (1973) findings

-Both prisoners and guards adopted their new roles

-guards began to harass and torment prisoners

-prisoners would only talk about prison issues which suggest the prisoners believed the fake prison was real which is a counterpoint for demand characteristics

😡

Milgram (1963) findings

12.5%(five participants) stopped at 300 volts

65% continued to 450 volts (highest level)

-participants experienced anxiety,distress

Conclusion:we obey legitimate authority even if that means that our behaviour may cause harm to someone.

Certain situations encourage obedience

😰

Asch (1951) Findings

-36.8% conformed

-25% never conformed

-75% conformed at least once

-in a control trial only 1% of responses given by participants were wrong

🤯

Strength of Asch (1951) line study

-lab experiment

-Ethical:Deception however participants were debriefed

📈

Limitations of Asch (1951) study

-lack ecological validity

-ethical issue:Deception

-sample size:limited

📉

Minority influence (Moscovici et al 1969)

Minority influences the majority.A group of six people (four participants, two confederates) viewed 36 blue coloured slides of varying intensities. They were asked to state whether the slides were blue or green. In one condition, both confederates consistently said green. In another conditions confederates were inconsistent. Findings were that consistent minority influenced more than inconsistent.

Limit: MI research often involves artificial tasks like moscovici which lack external validity and harder to tell how minority influence (MI) works in real world

Strength: other studies support consistency (Wood et al 2004)

Dissenter

(Social support)

-someone who disagrees with the majority or refuses to obey

🫂people are then less likely to conform/obey since there is less sense of pressure to do so if another person does not

Minority influence

-Small group or one person influences the beliefs and behaviour of other people

🤏they may cause social change if they are: CONSISTENT,COMMITTED and FLEXIBLE

Binding factors

Aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce the “moral strain” they feel.🔥

Agentic shift (Milgram)

Moving to a Agentic state from autonomous 💪➡🕵‍♀️

Autonomous state (Milgram)

-Not an agent

💪independent, behaves according to THEIR principles

Agentic state (Milgram)

-Act on behalf of another person

🕵‍♀️In this state a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions

(NSI) Normative social influence

-Norms, Desire to behave like others and not look foolish

👯‍♀NSI concerns what is “normal” behaviour for a social group

👯‍♀NSI is a an EMOTIONAL rather than cognitive process

(ISI) Informational social influence

-A desire to be right

⚡️if you are uncertain about what’s wrong or right ,you might conform because u believe it will give u the best chance of being in the right

⚡️ISI is a COGNITIVE process- people generally want to be right. ISI leads to internalisation🪆

Compliance

-temporary agreement

📱involved going along with others in public but privately not changing opinions/behaviours

Internalisation

-think the group is right

🪆when a person genuinely accepts group norms. It results in a private as well as public change of opinion and behaviour

🪆usually permanent and persists in absence of group members

Identification

-value the group

🪞when we identify with a group that we value , we want to become part of it. Do we publicly change our opinions and behaviour even IF we don’t privately agree with everything the group stands for

Locus of control (Rotter 1966)

Internals believe things happen to them are largely controlled by themselves 🧝‍♀