Conformity

NSI + ISI AO1

NSI - They want others to like or accept them, emotional effect, more likely to have effect when the individual feels similar to the majority or the majority is a group to whom they would ish to belong, Public behavior but not necessarily private beliefs change, temporary change, likely to lead to compliance

ISI - people conform because they want to be right, cognitive effect, more likely to have effect when the question asked does not have an obviously correct answer, when an individual is not sure of the answer or when the majority are regarded as having more knowledge about the situation, public behaviour and private beliefs change, likely to be permanent and lead to internalisation

ISI AO3 Lucas

Lucas 2006 did a study where he asked students mathematical questions in varying difficulties and found that people were more likely to conform to others answers to harder questions, students that rated themselves poorer at maths were more likely to conform

NSI AO3 McGhee and Teevan

McGhee and Teevan (1967) found that participants with a high need for affiliation (a concern for being liked and having a relationship with others) were more likely to conform than those with a lower need

NSI AO3 Schultz

Schultz (2008) found that hotel guests that were exposed to a normative message that 75% of hotel guests reuse their towel, decreased their towel usage by 25%

NSI + ISI AO3 maybe not independent

it is quite likely that they do not operate independently in situations, conformity is less likely to occur when a person descends from others’ views which may be because they provide another likely opinion which is ISI or because it provides a way for people to express their opposite views as well NSI

NSI AO3 Linkenback and Perkins

Linkenback and Perkins (2003) looked at the relationship between peoples normative beliefs and the likelihood that they would take up smoking and found that adolescents exposed to a message that most people their age don’t smoke were then less likely to

Asch AO1

Procedure:

Method: lab experiment

Design: repeated measures

Participants: groups of seven or eight male students; only one ‘real’ participant in each group; others were confederates of the experimenter

Task: shown a stimulus line (S) and then three other lines (A, B and C), asked to say out loud which line matched the stimulus line. The real participant answered either last or last but one.

Number of trials in total: 18

Number of critical trials: 12

What happened in critical trials: confederates had all been primed to give the same wrong answer

Asch findings

Findings:

Percentage of incorrect answers in control trials: 0.7%.

Percentage of incorrect answers in the critical trials: 37%

Percentage of participants who conformed at least once: 75%

Percentage of participants who conformed on every critical trial: 5%

Asch conclusions

Conclusion:

Normative social influence had taken place — the naïve participants agreed with the opinion of the group because they wished to avoid being rejected by them.

Some participants reported that they weren’t aware they had given incorrect responses, suggesting that informational social influence had also taken place.

Asch AO3 payment

They have an increased desire to please the experimenter which possibly lead to demand characteristics therefore casting doubt on the internal validity of the experiment as the participants could have guessed that they were supposed to conform to the group

Asch AO3 trivial task :(

The findings cannot be generalised to realistic group settings as the trivial decisions do not have long lasting impacts or challenge the individuals beliefs.

Asch AO3 trivial task :)

25% never conformed, 63% chose the correct answer over conformity in most cases and 37% did conform, this is surprising given the ease of the task and shows how social pressure influences choices

Asch AO3 culture

Likelihood of conformity varies from culture to culture as shown by Smith and Bond who carried out a meta-analysis of conformity rates in different countries. Their results show that conformity rates are higher in collectivist cultures (37%) and lower in individualist cultures (25%) (n.b. asch’s research was carried out in america which is individualist culture )

Asch AO3 era dependence

In the 1950s american conformity was high so results I n more liberal times may be different now. The experiment was repeated in 1970s america and rates were found to be lower . Was repeated in 1980s in england and found that 1 in 396 conformed, the people in the experiment were engineering students who were trained in the importance of accuracy in measurements and would be more likely to trust their own judgements. This shows how conformity can depend upon the nature of the task and the individuals involved

Group size AO1

Asch found that conformity was low with 1 confederate but higher with 3 and increasing it above 3 had little effect

Group size AO3 bond and smith

Bond and Smith (1996) conducted meta-analysis on similar studies to Asch and found that conformity peaked with 4-5 confederates

Group size AO3 campbell and fairey

Campbell and Fairey (1989) the effect of group size depends on the task. if the task if based on personal preference then the group size has a more linear effect (larger majority more conformity).

Group size AO3 bond

Bond (2005) found that it depends on how the participant responds (publically or privately) if they responded privately, increasing the size of the majority reduced conformity

Unanimity AO1

Asch looked into the effect of puncturing the unanimity of the group. He used two variations, in one there was a non-conforming confederate who gave the correct answer on critical trials and in the other there was a non-conforming confederate who gave a different answer to the majority but still an incorrect answer. Conformity levels dropped from 37% to 5% in both variations. This suggested that the pressure to conform came more from the unanimity of the group than the answers. For Asch, unanimity was a more important factor than group size.

Unanimity AO3 Allen and Levine

Allen and Levine (1971) found that conformity levels differ with valid and invalid support. They found that with no support there was a 97% conformity rate, with invalid support there was a 64% conformity rate and with valid support there was a 36% conformity rate. This suggests that puncturing unanimity can have different effects. Just by puncturing unanimity but with incorrect answers, the pressure to conform decreases as the dissenter provides some measure of social support for the participant but when puncturing the unanimity with valid support, as well as making it easier to not conform, having someone agreeing with the participant makes them less likely to look to the majority to decide on the correct answer.

Task difficulty AO1

Asch thought that the difficulty of the task would have an effect on the levels of the conformity seen. The harder the task, the higher the rate of conformity

Task difficulty AO3 Lucas

Lucas (2006) investigating how self-efficacy could moderate the effects of task difficulty. They used an Asch type task by solving maths problems and found that conformity levels were lower during the harder maths questions for high efficacy participants than lower efficacy participants. This shows that, even with difficult tasks, there will still be individual differences in conformity levels. In this case, due to the participants own confidence in how correct their answers were

Task difficulty AO3 baron

Baron (1996) used a variation of the Asch task and told the participants that it was important or not important. It was found that conformity rates were highest when the task was both difficult and important. This suggests that when we find something hard, and we know that getting the answer correct matters, then we look more to others to find the right answer. This suggests that levels of conformity are more complex than Asch initially suggested.

Zimbardo procedures

Procedures:

Sampling method: Volunteer sample - an advertisement sought male volunteers, to be paid $15 a day, for a study of ‘prison life’.

Participants: the 24 most stable men (physically and mentally) were selected, all students, and largely middle class.

Participants were assigned randomly to the role of either a prisoner or a guard.

Mock prison was built in the basement of Stanford University.

Guards were each given a uniform, a whistle, a wooden baton and sunglasses.

They were told that they should ‘maintain a reasonable degree of order within the prison’ but were given no further instructions about how to behave.

Prisoners were issued with a prison uniform: a numbered smock, a light ankle chain, rubber sandals and a cap to make it look like their hair had been cut off.

Zimbardo findings

Findings:

The guards became sadistic and oppressive.

Punishments included solitary confinement and humiliation.

The prisoners became passive and depressed.

Five prisoners had to be released early because of extreme depression.

The experiment was ended after 6 days, despite the intention to continue for 2 weeks.

Even when participants believed they were unobserved, they conformed to their roles.

Zimbardo conclusions

There was strong evidence of conformity to social roles for prisoners and guards.

Participants reported that they had ‘acted out of character’, and there was no lasting change in their private opinions.

The conformity was due to the social situation rather than to the personal characteristics of the male student participants, as none of the participants had ever shown such character traits or behaviour in the past.

Zimbardo’s research is taken as providing evidence in favour of the importance of situational factors in determining behaviour, rather than dispositional factors.

Zimbardo AO3 dispositional factors

Zimbardo generalised his findings; all prison guard turned sadistic. The prison guards’ behaviour varied from sadistic to more positive; some guards did not harass the prisoners, some did small favours for them.

Only 1/3 were brutal, another 1/3 applied rules fairly, remaining guards were helpful.

This shows that the guards chose how to behave, rather than just conforming to a social role; this suggests dispositional factors as well as situational ones were playing an important part.

Zimbardo AO3 demand characteristics

It has been argued that the guards and prisoners did not conform due to social rules but they showed demand characteristics. Students who had never heard of the experiment guessed that the purpose of the study was to show that ordinary people would act like regular prisoners and guards. This suggested that Zimbardo was not measuring conformity but the adherence to demand characteristics so the internal validity of the study is lacking.

Zimbardo AO3 external validity

He uses a mock prison, participants knew it wasn’t real from the beginning, and the guards knew they were being observed, so it may not have done anything that was beyond acceptable

Zimbardo AO3 ethics

No deception. tried to get informed consent but couldn't because he didn’t know what was going to happen in advance. participants had the right to withdraw but did not feel like they could. Protection from harm - prisoners were suffering and it took zimbardo 6 days to stop the study despite issues on the second day so they were not protected from harm. Participants may have learned things about themselves that they did not want to know such as their capability to become sadistic. Zimbardo was also unable to put the interests of his participants above running the prison as he took on two roles - the experimenter and the prison ‘superintendent’.

Zimbardo AO3 real life application

He thinks the same conformity to social roles is occurring in military. Prisons in Iran known for abuse of prisoners in in 2003 as well as abuse in Guantanamo Bay prison

- He thinks the situation factors of unrelenting boredom, lack of training and lack f accountability to higher authorities were mutually present in the experiment and the examples above

- These factors when combined with he social role of a card lead to terrible abuse carried out by normal humans

- This helps us understand situations where humans in roles of authority act badly

- It also suggests the external validity of the research isn’t lacking