Conformity A.g

-A form of majority influence

-Where attitudes, beliefs & behaviours of people in a group are adopted

-In response to real or imagined group pressure.

1. Compliance

-Publicly conforming to the behaviour of views of others in a group but privately maintains one's own view

- Wants to be accepted or avoid disapproval

- Temporary change - only lasts as long as group pressure is present.

2. Identification

- Individuals adjust their behaviour & opinions to those of a group because membership of that group is desirable & members = role models.

- Stronger type of conformity - private & public acceptance.

- Temporary - not maintained when individuals leave the group.

3. Internalisation

- Conversion of private views to match those of the group.

- Belief becomes part of their own belief system.

- Most permanent - usually lasts even if the majority is no longer present.

Deutsch & Gerard (1955)

-based on 2 central needs.

1. Normative Social Influence

- Desire to be liked (following the crowd)

- Want to avoid being rejected

- Need for acceptance and approval from the group which encourages agreement with the norm.

- Associated with compliance.

2. Informational Social Influence

- Desire to be right (accepting the majority' viewpoint)

- Turning to others to gain information about how to act or think in ambiguous situation.

- Associated with internalisation.

- Found that individuals tended to change their personal views & give estimates that resembled those of the group.

- Clearly individuals were conforming to the majority.

- Study suggests when faced w, an ambiguous situation, pp's looked to others in the group for guidance.

- Once group norm had been established, pp's continued to use it when they were asked to make individual judgements later.

- Found on 12 critical trials out of 18 = 37% conformity to wrong answer

- 75% = at least one wrong answer & 25% = no wrong answer.

- Judgement affected by majority even when obviously wrong.

- NSI b/c performed publically, but not privately.

- Individuals who care more about being accepted = more likely to be influenced by majority = conform due to NSI

- People who are less concerned about being liked = less likely to be influenced.

- Desire to be liked influences conformity for some but not all.

- Doesn't explain why different people may respond in different ways.

- Individual differences need to be considered for full picture into explanations for conformity.

- Deutsch & Gerard assumed NSI would be more common b/c occurs when individuals seek social approval.

- Research found 7x greater conformity rate when other groups belonged to the pp's ingroup rather than an outgroup.

- Belonging to a certain group may influence conformity more than seeking for approval.

- We need to research other explanations from conformity to gain deeper understanding of why people conform.

Aim

Degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers.

Procedure

- 123 male US undergraduates

- 7 pp's had to estimate which line (A,B or C) was similar to the stimulus line - out loud.

- 6 confeds, 1 real pp ( sat 2nd to last)

- Confeds instructed to give the same incorrect answer on 12 critical trials/18

Findings

1. on 12 critical trials/18 - 37% conformity rate to wrong answer.

2. 75% pp's conformed to at least 1 wrong answer & 25% never gave a wrong answer.

3. 5% conformed to all 12 wrong answers.

Conclusions

- Judgment affected by majority, even when obviously wrong.

- Performed publicly not privately = NSI - compliance

- Study shows a strong tendency to conform to group pressures when answer is clear.

- Lab experiment = artificial.

- May have led to demand characteristics.

- Asked pp's to measure line lengths = insignificant & they would want to avoid humiliation.

- On an important task conformity would drop (insert e.g).

- Asch's study lacks ecological validity.

- Findings are unique to one culture (all US undergraduates).

- Particular period of US history when conformity was high, made sense to conform to established social norms.

- Perrin & Spencer replicated it in England (1980).

- Only one student conformed on 396 trials.

- Questions reliability of Asch's research into conformity.

- Smith & Bond reviewed 31 studies of conformity in different cultures.

- People in collectivist cultures - CR of 58% compared to 14% in individualistic cultures.

- In collectivist cultures- emphasize loyalty in a group = group decision-making is preferred.

- In individualistic cultures - concerned with theirs & family's self interest - individual initiative are valued.

- In order to understand conformity, cultural differences need to be taken into consideration.

- Asch's naïve pp's didn't give fully informed consent b/c they were misled.

- They didn't know other pp's were confeds they thought they were real.

- Due to deception pp's didn't know true aims.

- Researchers argue deception was necessary to avoid demand characteristics.

-Conformity rates increase as size of majority influence increases up to a point where further increase doesn't in conformity.

Research Support (A03)

-1 real pp & 1 confed = 3%

- 2 confeds = 13%

- 3 confeds = 32%- Adding confeds has no further effect on overall CR.

- Size group is important but only up to a point.- Bond & Smith performed a meta-analysis of 133 Asch-type studies from 17 countries & found conformity peaks at 4 or 5

Problems with determining the effect of group size

-Bond said a limitation Asch-like research it uses a limited range of majority sizes.

- Investigators too quick to accept Asch's conclusion that a majority size of 3 is a sufficient number for maximal influence.

- Bond says that no study, other than Asch's uses a majority size greater than 9.

- We know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes of conformity levels.

- What degree the group members are in agreement w/ each other.

- CR decline when majority influence is not unanimous.

- Asch introduced a confed who disagreed w/ others.

Research Support

- Asch found when he instructed confed to give the correct answer throughout conformity dropped to 5.5% (from 37%).

- When a lone dissenter was introduced CR dropped to 9%.

- Breaking group's unanimous position = major factor in conformity reduction

- When task difficulty increases (right answer= less obvious) confidence in their own judgement drops.

- This causes them to look to others for guidance - ISI= dominant force.

Research Support

- Asch made the comparison lines smaller to each other = correct answer less obvious.

- More likely to conform to the wrong answer.

The parts people play as members of various social groups.

- These are accompanied by expectations we & others have of what is appropriate behaviour.

Aim

- Investigate extent to which people would conform to the roles of guard & prisoner in a role playing simulation of prison life.

Procedure

- Mock prison in Stanford Uni

- Zimbardo recruited 24 male students from a volunteer sample.

- Volunteers were psychologically & physically screened.

- Pp's randomly allocated to the role of prisoner or guard.

- Dehumanisation increased as prisoners were dressed in smock uniform, stocking caps & given ID numbers.

- Guards given uniforms, clubs & wore reflective sunglasses.

-p Zimbardo played the role of prison supervisor.

- Study planned to last 14 days.

Findings

- Within a day, prisoners rebelled.

- Guards locked them in their cells & confiscated their blankets.

-Guard's behaviour became a threat to prisoners' psychological & physical health.

- Study stopped after 6 days

- Dehumanisation, increasingly apparent - guards= more sadistic & prisoners= more submissive.

- De-individuation increased = prisoner referring to themselves by prison numbers instead of their names.

- After 36 hrs, 1 prisoner was released - showed symptoms of psychological disturbances.

- 1 prisoner went on a hunger strike.

- Power of situation and the social roles pp's had to play influenced their uncharacteristic behaviour.

- Everyone conformed to their roles (guards, prisoner & even Zimbardo), they believed they were in a prison.

- Investigator effects reduced the internal validity of the experiment.

- Zimbardo's dual role (researchers & supervisor) interfered w/ the results of the study.

- E.G, student wanted to leave, Zimbardo responded it as a prisoner asking to be released, which may influenced the way the pp behaved.

- If Zimbardo had acted as a researcher the results may have been different.

- Internal validity is questionable.

- Zimbardo failed to protect pp's from harm.

- A student wanted to leave but Zim acted as the supervisor of a prison not a researcher.

- This may have led to psychological harm to the pp.

- In Zim's defence, he stopped the experiment early & held debriefing sessions.

- There were no lasting negative effects.

- Fromm accused Zim of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence the behaviour & minimising the role of personality factors.

- Minority of guards (1/3) behaved in a brutal manner & the rest were keen on applying the rules and sympathetic towards the pp's.

- Both situational & dispositional factors should be considered in order to draw accurate conclusions.

-Same conformity to social role in SPE was evident in Abu Ghraib = military prison in Iraq notorious for torture of Iraq prisoners by US soldiers.

- Guards were victims of situational factors that made abuse more like.

- Situation factors like - lack of training, boredom & no accountability to higher authority.

- Combined w/ an opportunity to misuse power associated w/ assigned role of guard.

- This could lead to beneficial reforms within prison systems.