1) conformity Flashcards
what are some evaluation points of Asch’s research?
- low levels of external validity
- ethically questionable
- biased sample of participants
what is the aim of Asch’s conformity research?
to examine the extent to which social pressure to confirm from unanimous majority affects conformity in an unambiguous situation.
what are the findings of Asch’s results?
- on average participants conformed on 32% of trials
- 74% of participants confirmed on at least one trial
- 26% never conformed
what are the 3 types of conformity?
- internalisation
- identification
- compliance
what are the two explanations of conformity?
- normative social influence
- informational social influence
define normative social influence
- desire to be liked
- individuals conform because they think others will approve and accept them
- related to emotion, humans have a desire to be accepted and fear rejection
define informational social influence
- desire to be right
- individuals look to others to whom they believe to be correct, to give them information on how to behave
- cognitive process to do with thinking
what does conformity to social roles involve?
- involves identification which is stronger than compliance but is not as strong as internalisation
what was the aim of zimbardo’s prison experiment?
to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of prison guard or prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment
what did Asch’s sample consist of?
Asch’s sample consisted of 123 male undergraduate students from Swarthmore College in USA, who believed they were taking part in a vision test
what was Asch’s procedures?
- line judgement task
-placed one naive participant in a room of 6-8 confederates - in turn, each person had to say out loud which of the three lines was most like the target line in length –> the correct answer was always obvious
- each participant completed 18 trials, the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials (critical trials)
what were Asch’s conclusions?
- asch interviewed his participants after
- most said they knew their answers were wrong but went along with group to fit in or cause they thought they might be ridiculed
- this confirms that participants complied due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in publicly without changing their private viewpoint.
what are the 3 variables affecting conformity?
1) group size
2) unanimity
3) task difficulty
why does Asch’s research have low levels of external validity?
- line judgement task is an artificial task that does not reflect conforming in everyday life
why is Asch’s research ethically questionable?
- he purposefully deceived participants into thinking they were taking a vision test
- not protected from psychological harm as many participants reported feeling stressed
