Abrams et al. (1990)

What was the aim of the study?

To determine if in-group identity would affect one’s willingness to conform.

What theory in the sociocultural approach does this study relate to?

Socio identity theory

Methodology (2)

• lab experiment 

• independent samples

Participants

• 50 undergraduate introductory psychology students 

• 23 males and 27 females 

How many conditions and what were the manipulated IVs?

• 4 conditions

• 2 manipulated IVs:

  • IV 1: whether the confederates were an in group (psychology students) or an out-group (ancient history students)

  • IV 2: where their responses were private or public 

Procedure

• 3 confederates were introduced either as first year psychology (in-group) or ancient history (out-group) student from that same university

• participants were instructed not to talk to each other 

(similar to Asch paradigm) they were shown a stimulus line, to which they had to match to one of 3 lines varying in length (one of which was the same length as the stimulus line) This happened 18 times. 

• In 9 of the trials the confederates gave the correct response 

• In 9 of the trials, confederates gave a unanimous, incorrect response 

The confederates and one naive participants were in a row facing the monitor and the participant was always at the end of the row and gave their judgements last 

• In the public condition all 4 members of the group gave their judgements aloud and the experimenter recorded their responses 

• however, in the private condition, the experimenter asked the participant to note down the responses in order to leave her free to “operate the computer” (which was always the real participant) 

• The 3 confederates gave their responses aloud and the participant recorded their judgements on a score sheet along with their own, privately

General results (4)

• 77% of all participants conformed to the incorrect confederate judgements on at least one trial 

• The actual portion of conforming responses was 32%

• no gender differences observed 

• similar to the results of the original Asch experiments

In-group public condition

conformity was maximised in the in-group public condition

Out-group public condition

conformity was minimized in the out-group public condition

In-group and out-group private condition

The in-group and out-group private conditions did not differ significantly

Implication(s)

• social categorization can play a key role in one’s decision to conform publicly 

• Public conformity exceeded the usual level in the in-group condition but was far below normal in the out-group condition 

The explanation for this, from self-categorization theory, is that we tend to exaggerate the difference between us and out-group

Strength(s)

Low ecological validity

• may not predict what would happen in a naturalistic situation

• high artificiality 

Independent and Dependent Variable

• manipulation of the independent variable and high level of control in the experiment allows us to see a causal relationship between group membership and the dependent variable - the rate of conformity to an incorrect response 

• the study isolates a single variable to test its role in conformity; however, in real life , there may be several variables that interact to determine conformity behaviours

Limitation(s)

Use of Deception

• Deception was used the participants were lied to how 

Low Generalizability 

• university samples tend to be YAVIS (young, affluent, verbal, intelligent, and social) 

• makes it difficult generalize

Culturally Biased

• study was done in an individualistic society