Conformity: social and dispositional factors

Social factors

Research has demonstrated that certain social factors affect how strong the pressure is to conform to majority influence.

Group size

It might seem obvious that the more people there are in a group, the greater the pressure to conform to the group opinion- and asch found that was true, up to a point.

Asch tried his procedure with groups or varying size. With two confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6% with three it rose to 31.8%. However adding more confederates made little difference.

Evaluation: one weakness with this explanation is that group side has different effects depending on the type of task. In asch’s stidy there was an obvious answer (such as asking people about their musical preferences) then group size does matter - people don’t conform with only 1 or 2 others but they are more likely to conform when group size gets to 8 or 10. This shows that group size is sometimes important.

Anonymity

In asch’s study, participants reported that they conformed because they didn’t want the others to think they were silly- they didn’t want to be rejected by the group. So, I’d group members have anonymity you might expect that people would feel less group pressure.

Asch did a variation on his method where participants were allowed to write their responses down anonymously. In this situation they did give far fewer incorrect answers, ie less conformity.

evaluation: one weakness with this explanation is that asch’s research involved a group of strangers. Other research has shown that the effect or anonymity changes if the group of individuals are formed who are expressing their opinions anonymously . In such situations people conform more (huang and li 2016). This shows that anonymity may sometimes increase rather than reduce conformity.

Task difficulty

A third factor that moderates the effect of group pressure is the difficulty of the task. Asch made the line-judging task harder by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length. I’m this situation conformity increased.

Presumably as the difficulty of a task increases, the answer becomes less certain. This means people feel less confident about their own answer and look to others for the right answer.

Evaluation: one weakness with this explanation is that it may not be true for everyone- people with greater expertise may be less affected by task difficulty.

Dispositional factors

In Asch’s study there were considerable differences between people. He found that 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer, in other words they were not conformist. In contrast a few participants conformed most of the time.

Two possible explanations are in terms of personality and expertise.

Personality

One personality characteristic that may be relevant is called locus of control. Someone with an external locus of control believes that they do not influence the things that happen to them; for example, if they fail a test at school they believe it is due to having a bad teacher or just bad luck. Someone with an internal locus of control feels that they are in charge of what happens to them- if they fail a test it is because they didn’t work hard enough.

In fact, locus of control is on a continuum, some people tend towards the external end of the continuum and others tend towards the internal end.

Jerry Burger and Harris Cooper (1978) investigated whether locus of control was an important factor in conformity. Participants were shown a series of cartoons and asked to rate them in terms of funniness. A confederate say by their side giving his ratings out loud for some of the cartoons. Participants with a low desire for control (externals) were more likely to agree with the confederates ratings than those with a high desire for control (internals). In other words the externals were more conformist.

Evaluation: one weakness with this explanation is that locus of control does not seem to have an effect on conformity in familiar situations. Julian Rotter (1966) argued that in situations which are new to you, you have one decisions about how to behave- and then your locus of control will be important. In contrast, in familiar situations. Levels of conformity will be less affected by your sense of control. In familiar situations you are more affected by how you behaved in the past. This shows that personality interacts with other factors.

Expertise

Experience increases your confidence in your opinions and knowledge so it is no surprise that people with grater expertise tend to be less conformist. For example, when judging the answers to maths problems, people who rated themselves as good at maths were less likely to conform than those who were less confident. (Lucas et al. 2006)

Evaluation: one weakness with this explanation is that focusing on one single factor to explain conformity is simplistic. In all the explanations offered on this spread it is important to remember that no single factor is likely to be the only influence on conformity levels. Therefore, in some situations, being an expert may not be sufficient- for example, even if you are an expert you still might conform in a group of strangers in order to be liked.