TEST WEEK 3

Question 1

Conformity Defintion

Answer 1

• The tendency to align your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those around you
• It’s a powerful force that can take the form of overt social pressure or subtler unconscious influence
• Change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group

Question 2

Normative Influence

Answer 2

• The tendency to conform in order to gain social acceptance
• Desire to avoid punishment
• Major motive in conformity

Question 3

Informational Influence

Answer 3

• Based on the desire to obtain useful information through conformity and achieve a correct or appropriate result
• Change behaviour in order to be correct
• Occurs; when we are unsure of response, look to others who are better informed/knowledgeable
• Major motive in conformity

Question 4

Increased Conformity

Answer 4

• Larger group size
• Unanimity (situation)
• High group cohesion
• Perceived higher status of the group
• Difficulty of task
• Individual differences
• Cultural differences

Question 5

Normative Conformity

Answer 5

• Involves changing one’s behavior in order to fit in with the group

Question 6

Informational Conformity

Answer 6

• Happens when a person lacks knowledge and looks to the group for information and direction

Question 7

Identification

Answer 7

• Occurs when people conform to what is expected of them based upon their social roles.
• Conforming to the expectations of a social role.
• There does not have to be a change in private opinion.
• A good example is Zimbardo’s Prison Study

Question 8

Compliance

Answer 8

• Involves changing one’s behavior while still internally disagreeing with the group
• Publicly changing behavior to fit in with the group while privately disagreeing
• Conforming to the majority (PUBLICLY),
• In spite of not really agreeing with them (PRIVATELY)
• Example in Asch Line Experiment

Question 9

Internalisation

Answer 9

• Occurs when we change our behavior because we want to be like another person
• Publicly changing behavior to fit in with the group and also agreeing with them privately
• This is seen in Sherif’s Autokinetic Experiment

Question 10

Difficult of Task

Answer 10

• Can lead to both increased and decreased conformity
• Not knowing how to perform a difficult task makes people more likely to conform
• But increased difficulty can also make people more accepting of different responses, leading to less conformit

Question 11

Size of Group

Answer 11

• People are more likely to conform in situations that involve between three and five other peopl

Question 12

Unanimity

Answer 12

• Subjects were much more likely to conform when a group agreed unanimously
• individuals are more likely to conform to group decisions when the rest of the group’s response is unanimous
• If even one other person in the group disagreed with the group, a subject was much less likely to conform

Question 13

Situation

Answer 13

• People are more likely to conform in ambiguous situations where they are unclear about how they should respond

Question 14

Cultural Differences

Answer 14

• Researchers have found that people from collectivist cultures are more likely to conform

Question 15

Deindividuation

Answer 15

• Then people are in a large group that makes them feel aroused and anonymous, they may experience deindividuation
• When people become deindividuated, they lose their inhibitions and their sense of responsibility and are not self-conscious about their behaviour
• Deindividuation is a major reason for the violence that sometimes happens in mobs

Question 16

Sherif (1935) Auto kinetic Effect Experiment AIM

Answer 16

• Demonstrating that people conform to group norms when they are put in an ambiguous (i.e. unclear) situation

Question 17

Sherif (1935) Auto kinetic Effect Experiment METHOD

Answer 17

• Sherif used a lab experiment to study conformity
• He used the autokinetic effect – this is where a small spot of light (projected onto a screen) in a dark room will appear to move, even though it is still (i.e. it is a visual illusion)

Question 18

Sherif (1935) Auto kinetic Effect Experiment DISCOVERED

Answer 18

• Discovered that when participants were individually tested their estimates on how far the light moved varied considerably (e.g. from 20cm to 80cm).
• The participants were then tested in groups of three.
• Sherif manipulated the composition of the group by putting together two people whose estimate of the light movement when alone was very similar, and one person whose estimate was very different
• Each person in the group had to say aloud how far they thought the light had moved

Question 19

Sherif (1935) Auto kinetic Effect Experiment DISCOVERED

Answer 19

• Sherif found that over numerous estimates (trials) of the movement of light, the group converged to a common estimate
• The person whose estimate of movement was greatly different to the other two in the group conformed to the view of the other two.
• Sherif said that this showed that people would always tend to conform
• Rather than make individual judgments they tend to come to a group agreement

Question 20

Sherif (1935) Auto kinetic Effect Experiment CONCLUSION

Answer 20

• The results show that when in an ambiguous situation (such as the autokinetic effect), a person will look to others (who know more / better) for guidance (i.e. adopt the group norm)
• They want to do the right thing, but may lack the appropriate information
• Observing others can provide this information.
• INFORMATIONAL CONFORMITY

Question 21

Cohesion in Groups

Answer 21

• Groups that possess bonds linking them to one another and to the group as a whole tend to display more conformity than groups that do not have those bonds

Question 22

Gender Affect on Conformity

Answer 22

• Women are more likely to conform than men in situations involving surveillance, but less likely when there is no surveillance
• Societal norms establish gender differences that affect the ways in which men and women conform to social influence

Question 23

Asch Conformity Experiment AIM

Answer 23

• Conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform

Question 24

Asch Conformity PROCEDURE

Answer 24

• Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity
• 50 male students participated in a ‘vision test’.
• Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates
• The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
• The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven participants were also real participants like themselvesEach 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 real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
• There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials).
• Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.
• Asch’s experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a “real participant”

Question 25

Asch Conformity Experiment RESULTS

Answer 25

• Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view.
• On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials
• Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% of participant never conformed.
• In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer

Question 26

Asch Conformity Experiment CONCLUSION

Answer 26

• When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought “peculiar”.
• A few of them said that they really did believe the group’s answers were correct.
• 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)

Question 27

Asch Conformity Experiment EVALUATION

Answer 27

• One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. - All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group
• This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people
• The experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity - judging line lengths
• This means that study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real life situations of conformity.
• Ethical issues: participants were not protected from psychological stress which may occur if they disagreed with the majority
• Asch deceived the student volunteers claiming they were taking part in a ‘vision’ test; the real purpose was to see how the ‘naive’ participant would react to the behavior of the confederates (deception was necessary to produce valid results)

Question 28

Obedience Differing From Conformity

Answer 28

• Obedience involves an order; conformity involves a request
• Obedience involves following the order of someone with a higher status; conformity usually involves going along with people of equal status
• Obedience relies on social power; conformity relies on the need to be socially accepteda

Question 29

Milgram Obedience Experiment AIM

Answer 29

• Researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII

Question 30

Milgram Obedience Experiment PROCEDURE

Answer 30

• Volunteers recruited for a lab experiment investigating ‘learning’
• 40 males aged 20-50 (varied professions) for $4.50
• They were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate
• They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher (this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner)
• There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey lab coat
• Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator
• The “learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes
• After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices
• The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time (30 switches from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock)
• The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock
• When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued
• Prod 1: please continue
• Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue
• Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue
• Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue

Question 31

Milgran Obedience Experiment RESULTS

Answer 31

• 65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts
• All the participants continued to 300 volts
• Milgram carried out 18 variations of his study
• All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV

Question 32

Milgram Obedience Experiment CONCLUSION

Answer 32

• Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being
• Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up
• People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based
• This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace

Question 33

Milgram Obedience Experiment CRITICISM

Answer 33

• Bias Sample
• Protection from Harm
• Right to Withdraw
• Deception

Question 34

Zimbardo Experiment AIM

Answer 34

• To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life
• Zimbardo (1973) was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e. dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (i.e. situational)

Question 35

Zimbardo Experiment PROCEDURE

Answer 35

• To study the roles people play in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison
• 24 male college students (chosen from 75 volunteers) were screened for psychological normality and paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment
• Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment.
• There were 2 reserves and one dropped out, finally leaving 10 prisoners and 11 guards.
• The guards worked in sets of 3 (being replaced after an 8 hour shift), and the prisoners were housed 3 to a room
• There was also a solitary confinement cell for prisoners who ‘misbehaved’
• The prison simulation was kept as “real life” as possible
• Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station
• They were fingerprinted, photographed and ‘booked’.
• Then they were blindfolded and driven to the psychology department of Stanford University, where Zimbardo had had the basement set out as a prison, with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells.
• Here the deindividuation process began.
• When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, deloused, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away, and were given prison clothes and bedding
  = They were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only. Their clothes comprised a smock with their number written on it, but no underclothes
  -They also had a tight nylon cap, and a chain around one ankle.
• Guards were issued a khaki uniform, together with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.0 The guards worked shifts of eight hours each (the other guards remained on call). No physical violence was permitted.
• Zimbardo observed the behavior of the prisoners and guards (as a researcher), and also acted as a prison warden.

Question 36

Zimbardo Experiment FINDINGS

Answer 36

• Guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, with the guards adopting theirs quickly and easily
• Some guards began to harass prisoners within hours
• They behaved in a brutal and sadistic manner, prisoners were also tormented
• The prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior; talking about prison issues a great deal of the time
• Some even began siding with the guards against prisoners who did not obey the rules
• As the prisoners became more submissive, the guards became more aggressive and assertive
• One prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger
• 3 others also had to leave after showing signs of emotional disorder that could have had lasting consequences
• Terminated after 6 days

Question 37

Zimbardo Experiment CONCLUSION

Answer 37

• People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards
• The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behaviour
• Findings support the situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one
• Most of the guards found it difficult to believe that they had behaved in the brutalizing ways that they had
• The prisoners, too, couldn’t believe that they had responded in the submissive, cowering, dependent way they had
• Cant be generalised bc of environmental factors

Question 38

Zimbardo Experiment ETHICAL ISSUES

Answer 38

• Cack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment (it was unpredictable).
• Also, the prisoners did not consent to being ‘arrested’ a home
• Were not protected from psychological harm, experiencing incidents of humiliation and distress.
• For example, one prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger.
• Zimbardo did conduct debriefing sessions for several years afterwards and concluded they were no lasting negative effects

Question 39

Psychodynamic

Answer 39

• Frued

- Tripartide; Id, Ego, Superego

Question 40

Trait

Answer 40

• Allport

- Eysenck (2D 3D models)

Question 41

Humanist

Answer 41

• Maslow Heirachy of Needs

Question 42

Behaviourist

Answer 42

• Skinner; operant conditioning (pos neg reinforcement)