Conformity

Conformity

A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure

Levels of conformity

• Compliance

• Identification

• Internalisation

Compliance

Where you change your behaviour in public but do not in private. It is a temporary change. E.g. uniform

Identification

Who you identify with can influence your behaviour. You take on the behaviour of that group, even if your private beliefs are different  E.g. at school vs at home. 

Internalisation

Where you behave like a group of people because you have accepted their views and beliefs. Your internal and external beliefs match, in private and public. 

Pressures to conform

• In Japan they value fitting in with your social group, and not deviating in your dress, speech or behaviour 

• Western cultures typically exert less pressure on individuals to fit in, and value individuality and uniqueness rather than conformity

Reasons for conformity

• Informational influence

• Normative conformity

Informational influence

• When we conform to others because we believe they have accurate information

• Occurs when there is high uncertainty and ambiguity

• The way other people act is a guide to the customs of the situation

• People shape their abilities to match others

Normative conformity

• When we conform to others because we want them to accept and like us

• The main form of social conformity

• Though individuals may disagree with the group, they verbally adopt the group stance so they don’t seem like a deviant

Factors affecting conformity

• Authority figures

• Unanimity

• Group size

• Culture

• Diffusion of responsibility

• Circumstance

Name of conformity study

Asch

Asch Aim

To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform 

Asch Procedure

• Lab experiment

• 50 male students in the USA participated in a ‘vision test’

• Asch put the participant in a room with 7 confederates

• Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A,B or C) was most like the target line

• The answer was always obvious

• The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task

• The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave their answer last

• There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trials (clinical trials)

• There was also a control condition where there were no confederates, only a ‘real participant’

Asch Results

• 32% of the participants who were placed in the situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials 

• Over the 12 critical trials, 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% never conformed 

• In the control group, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer 

Asch conclusion

People conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence) 

Asch Generalisability

• All participants were American, male, college students, so may not be generalisable to women, other age groups, or non-Western cultures.

• The study was conducted in an individualistic society, collectivist cultures show different conformity rates 

• 1950s America encouraged conformity more than modern societies

Asch Reliability

Procedure was tightly controlled, allowing consistent replication

Asch Applicability

• Conformity in task may not reflect conformity in more serious or complex real-life settings

• It is applicable to understanding peer pressure, group decision-making, and social influence in other settings

Asch Validity

• Artificial task and laboratory setting may not reflect natural social influence situations

• Some participants might have suspected the setup and gone along with the group without genuinely conforming

Asch Ethics

• Participants were misled about the true purpose of the study 

• Participants may have felt uncomfortable or distressed when disagreeing with the majority.

• Participants did not know the full nature of the experiment beforehand.