Social Influence Flashcards
Conformity
A form of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group.
- This change is in response to group pressure and can be real (physical presence of others), or imagined (pressure of social norms/expectations).
Reasons of Conformity: Normative Social Influence
The desire to be liked; when we conform to fit in with a group because we don’t want to appear foolish or be left out.
Reasons of Conformity: Informational Social Influence
The desire to be right m; were e confirm because we are unsure of the situation and therefore look to others who we believe may have more information than us.
Types of Conformity: Compliance
A superficial/temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view but privately disagree.
- The change in behaviour only lasts as long as the group is monitoring us because we want to fit in.
Types of Conformity: Internalisation
A deep type of conformity where one takes on the majority view as they believe it to be correct.
- It leads to acceptance of the groups point of view both publicly and privately, and therefore practice the groups views even when alone.
Identification
A moderate type of conformity when one acts in the same way as the group because they value it and wish to be a part of it, however do not necessarily agree with the beliefs of the majority.
Evaluation: Research Support for Normative Social Influence
Likenbach + Perkins (2003), found that when telling students that the majority of their age mates didn’t smoke, less students were likely to take up smoking.
- Schultz et al (2008), showed hotel guests a message saying that 75% of guests re-use their towels during their stay and after this, 25% of guests reduced their towel use.
Evaluation: Research Support for Informational Social Influence
Lucas et al (2006), gave ppts. either easy or difficult maths problems and found that ppts. were more likely to conform for more difficult tasks.
Fien et al (2007), made ppts. watch the “apparent” reactions of other ppts.’ reactions on the performance of presidential candidates and found that ppts. changed their judgments on candidate performance similarly to other ppts.
Conformity: Asch’s Research: Aim
To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could influence a person to conform.
Conformity: Asch’s Research: Procedure
Selected 123 male American undergraduates from a volunteer sample and placed them in a room with 6-8 confederates.
- Ppts. were told to state which line (A, B or C) matched the target line; ppts. gave their answers second to last.
- 12/18 trials confederates gave the wrong answers and Asch’s wanted to see if ppts. would conform to the majority.
Conformity: Asch’s Research: Results
- The naive ppt. gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time.
- Overall, 25% of ppts. did not conform on any of the trials which meant that 75% of ppts. conformed at least once.
Conformity: Asch’s Research: Conclusion
When interviewed after the experiment, the majority of ppts. said that they didn’t believe their answers but went along with the group through fear of being ridiculed. (Normative)
A few ppts. said that they really did believe that their groups answers were correct. (Informational)
Asch’s Variations: Group Size
The size of the group affected conformity levels:
- 1 confederate + 1 naive = 3%
- 2 confederates + 1 naive = 14%
- 3 confederates + 1 naive = 31.8%
- Further increases in group size do not lead to increases in conformity.
Asch’s Variations: Unanimity of the Majority
When the naive ppt. was given the support of either another real ppt. or confederate (instructed to give the right answers), conformity levels dropped from 33% to 5.5%
Asch’s Variations: Task Difficulty
When the “correct” answer was less obvious and the task much more difficult, the level of conformity increased.
Conformity can also be determined by individual differences
