Conformity

Conformity (or majority influence)

 A change in a person’s public or private attitude as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.

Private attitude

What a person truly believes

Public attitude

What a person tells others they believe

Social roles

Behaviours expected in a social group

Explicit social norms

 Clearly stated rules or guidelines for behaviour within a group or society (eg. laws such as no smoking in public spaces)

Implicit social norms

Unspoken rules for behaviour within a group, learned through observation and socialisation. (eg. Not standing too close to strangers)

Herbert Kelman (1958) proposed 3 types of conformity..

Compliance- A superficial change in an individual’s behaviour to gain approval or avoid disapproval from the group, which only exists in the presence of a group.  (Publicly not privately and attitudes are temporary) weakest form

Often as a result of Normative social influence

Identification-  A change in a an individuals behaviour and internal beliefs to imitate a role model / social role they desire.

(Publicly and privately but attitudes are short / temporary as they depend on admiration) medium

Example: Acting more professional and less silly when you enter your work place.

Internalisation- A complete change in an individual’s behaviour and internal beliefs to conform to a value/attitude they believe is correct .

(New attitudes are long- lasting/ permanent) Strong

Often a result of  Informational social influence

Example: Being brought up in a religious household, becoming religious yourself

Morton Deutch and Harlord Gerard (1955) developed a two process theory to explain why people conform…

Informational social influence- When an individual conforms because of the desire to be right, therefore they look to others by copying or obeying them to have the right answer. Often occurs in ambiguous situations where they do not have the knowledge or expertise to make their own decisions. 

Usually leads to internalisation 

Example: A person following the direction of the crowd in an emergency as they assume everyone else is going to the right place. 

Normative social influence- When an individual conforms because they desire to be liked or part of a group. 

Usually through compliance- Often occurs when a person wants to avoid the embarrassing situation of disagreeing with the majority. 

Example: A person starting to smoke because they are surrounded by other people who smoke

Real life application: Bullying

Evidence for Informational social influence

Evidence: Lucas et al (2006) found that people are more likely to conform to a group's answers when they are uncertain or in an ambiguous situation, driven by a desire to be correct. The procedure involved students solving easy and hard math problems while being shown incorrect answers from purported other students, and their self-efficacy was assessed beforehand

Evidence for Normative social influence

Evidence: Garandeau and Cillissen (2006) found that a boy can be manipulated by a bully into victimising another child because the bully provides a common Goal for the boy’s group of friends. The goal was to victimise the other child and the boy would most likely do so to avoid disapproval from friends.

Aims of Asch’s study

Asch believed Jenness’ jelly bean experiment lacked ecological validity and people weren’t often put to tasks so ambigous

He wanted to:

• To investigate the effect of normative social influence

• To examine the extent to which social pressure to conform from a unanimous majority effects conformity in an unambiguous situation.

Procedure of Asch’s study

Procedure: A controlled laboratory experiment

123 American male undergraduates in groups of 6; consisting of 1 true participant and 5 confederates 

• Each participant sat at a table with 6-8 other male students who were confederates

• The group was presented with a series of cards with 4 lines ; 3 comparison lines and 1 standard line

• Their task was to state aloud which of the 3 lines was the same length as the stimulus line

• The real participants always answered last or second to last

• Confederates were told to give the same incorrect answer for 12 critical trails out of the 18 trails

• Asch measured the extent to which the participants would conform to the incorrect majority by giving the same answer they heard, compared to the correct answer

Findings and conclusion of Asch’s study

• Participants gave the wrong answer on 36.8% of the critical trials (conformist) ; whilst 75% of participants conformed at least once

• In control trails where no confederates were present, only 1% of responses from participants were incorrect (eliminates eyesight / perception as an extraneous variable- increases validity of the conclusions drawn)

Asch concluded that many participants conformed due to compliance- publicly agreeing with the group to avoid social disapproval, despite private disagreement.

People will conform to the majority even when the situation is unambiguous- It was clear what the correct answer was per trial yet (some) participants still gave the wrong answer

Asch also concluded that conformity to the majority is not inevitable- 25% of participants did not conform on any of the trials i.e. they showed resistance to social influence in the form of group pressure

Factors affecting conformity: Group size 1/3

Group size: An individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group. This was evident where there was much lower conformity when the group had less than 3 confederates, any more than 3 and the conformity rose again by 30%.  This explains that a person is more likely to conform if all members of the group are in agreement and give the same answer, because it will increase their confidence in correctness of the group, and decrease their confidence in their own answer. Since conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four, this is considered the optimal group size. As a result, this shows that the majority must be at least 3 to exert an influence, but an overwhelming majority is not needed in all instances to bring about conformity.

Factors affecting conformity: Unanimity 2/3

Unanimity of group: An individual is more likely to conform when the group is unanimous, for example they all give the same answer, as opposed to them all giving different answers. This is evident because when joined by another participant or disaffected confederate (who gave the correct answer), conformity fell from 32% to 5.5%. If different answers are given, it falls from 32% to 9%. This explains that the more unanimous the group is, the more confidence the participant will have that they are all correct, and therefore the participant’s answer is more likely to be incorrect. As a result, this shows that unanimity is vital in establishing a consistent majority view, which is particularly important by providing normative social influence through preventing any conflicting views arising.

Factors affecting conformity: Task difficulty 3/3

Task Difficulty: An individual is more likely to conform when the task is difficult. For example, Asch altered the (comparison) lines (e.g. A, B, C) making them more similar in length. Since it was harder to judge the correct answer, conformity increased. This is because when the task is difficult, we are more uncertain of our answer so we look to others for confirmation. As a result, the more difficult the task the greater the conformity.  This suggests that informational social influence is a major mechanism for conformity when the situation is ambiguous and the individual does not have enough of their own knowledge or information to make an informed decision independently, and so has to look towards others. 

Strengths of Asch’s study

High internal validity: The experiment was conducted under strictly controlled laboratory conditions, which meant extraneous or confounding variables such as timing, instructions, and environmental factors were minimised. As well as this, participants completed control trials alone, confirming they could identify the correct line without group influence and eliminating eyesight and perception as extraneous variables. This strengthens the cause and effect relationship between the presence of a unanimous majority and the likelihood of conformity.  Furthermore, the use of a standardised and replicable procedure means the findings can be tested for reliability, overall increasing the scientific credibility of the research

Supporting research:  The findings have been supported by other research, such as  Lucas et al (2006), who found that conformity was more likely when tasks were more difficult. This suggests that both task difficulty and group pressure highly influence conformity. This supports the robustness of Asch’s findings and offers a more nuanced understanding of how social and cognitive factors interact in conformity.

Limitations of Asch’s study

Lack of ecological validity: The study was reliant on people’s perceptions of lines, which is a rather simple and unnatural task. This is because it does not accurately represent the complexity of real life situations where conformity takes place, therefore lacking mundane realism. As a result, the findings cannot be generalised to actual scenarios, for example those where there are many other confounding variables and majorities exert influence, irrespective of being a large group. 

Lack of population validity:  The participants only consisted of American male undergraduates. This means the study was subject to gender bias, particularly beta bias where it assumes the findings from male participants can also be generalised to women.

 

Lack of temporal validity:  The social context of the 1950s may have affected results. For example, Perrin and Spencer criticised the study by stating that the period that the experiment was conducted in influenced the results because it was an anti-Communist period in America when people were more scared to be different i.e. McCarthyism. Thus, the study can be said to lack temporal validity because the findings cannot be generalised across all time periods. 

Zimabardo’s study- conformity to social roles (1971)

Phillip Zimbardo and his colleagues wanted to investigate conformity to social roles. The question was asked; do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities , or is it the situation that creates such behaviours, are they conforming to social roles? 

Procedure of Zimbardo’s study

• Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University

• He advertised for students willing to volunteer and chose 21 out of 75 who were deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after extensive psychological testing.

• Students were randomly assigned the role of either prisoner or guard, to heighten the realism of the experiment

• Prisoners were arrested from their homes and taken to the prison where they were blind-folded, strip- searched, and assigned a uniform and a number

• The guards were also given a uniform and props such handcuffs and shades to make eye contact with prisoners impossible and to reinforce the boundaries between the two social roles within the established social hierarchy. They were told they have complete power over the prisoners.

Identification occurred very fast as both the prisoners and guards adopted their new roles and played their part in a short amount of time. 

Strengths of Zimbardo’s study

Ecological validity: high mundane realism due to the procedure of the arrest from homes ect.  This was clearly successful because both prisoners and guards quickly adopted to their new roles. Guards began to torment prisoners in harsh and aggressive ways, later reporting to have enjoyed doing so and relished in their new-found power and control. 

Prisoners would only talk about prison issues (forgetting about their previous real life), and snitch on other prisoners to the guards to please them. This is significant evidence to suggest that the prisoners believed that the prison was real, and were not acting simply due to demand characteristics.  They would even defend the guards when other prisoners broke the rules, reinforcing their social roles as prisoner and guard, despite it not being real. The guards became more demanding of obedience and assertiveness towards the prisoners while the prisoners become more submissive. This suggests that the respective social roles became increasingly internalised. 

It was a controlled observation carried out in a laboratory and therefore was able to have strict control over extraneous variables. for example only participants judged to be emotionally stable were chosen to take part. participants were also randomly assigned to the role of either guard or psioner, which minimses possible participant variables. because of this, it is easier to identify causality, that the particiapnts behaviour was a result of the pressures and expectations of the situation, rather than due to the dispositonal factors. therewfore this supports the internal validity of this research as evidence of confirmity to social roles.

Real life applications: This research changed the way US prisons are run e.g. young prisoners are no longer kept with adult prisoners to prevent the bad behaviour perpetuating. Beehive-style prisons, where all cells are under constant surveillance from a central monitoring unit, are also not used in modern times, due to such setups increasing the effects of institutionalisation and over exaggerating the differences in social roles between prisoners and guards. 

Limitations of Zimbardo’s study

(Counter) Lacks ecological validity: The study suffered from demand characteristics. For example, the participants knew that they were participating in a study and therefore may have changed their behaviour, either to please the experimenter (a type of demand characteristic) or in response to being observed (participant reactivity, which acts as a confounding variable). The participants also knew that the study was not real so they claimed that they simply acted according to the expectations associated with their role rather genuinely adopting it. This was seen particularly with qualitative data gathered from an interview with one guard, who said that he based his performance from the stereotypical guard role portrayed in the film Cool Hand Luke, thus further reducing the validity of the findings 

some people like banuazisi and mohadevi (1975) argue that…

Additionally Fromm (1973) accuses zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour and minimising the role of dispositional factors. For example, only around 1/3 of the guards behaved brutally towards the prisoners, another third tried to apply the rules fairly, and the rest tried to help and support the prionsers. This is significant because it suggests the guards personality did play a role in influencing their behaviour. This undermines zimbardo’s conclusion that this is context alone that resulted in the observed behaviour, limiting the validity of zimbardo’s research into conformity to social roles.

Lacks population validity: The sample only consisted of American male students and so the findings cannot be generalised to other genders and cultures. For example, collectivist cultures, such as China or Japan, may be more conformist to their prescribed social roles because such cultures value the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. This suggests that such findings may be culture-bound! 

Ethical issues: Lack of fully informed consent due to the deception required to (theoretically) avoid demand characteristics and participant reactivity. However Zimbardo himself did not know what was going to happen, so could not inform the participants, meaning that there is possible justification for a breach of ethical guidelines. Psychological harm – Participants were not protected from stress, anxiety, emotional distress and embarrassment e.g. one prisoner had to be released due to excess distress and uncontrollable screaming and crying. One prisoner was released on the first day due to showing signs of psychological disturbance, with a further two being released on the next day. This study would be deemed unacceptable according to modern ethical standards.