Asch - conformity Flashcards
Lecture 2 (13 cards)
1
Q
Background - Asch
A
1.1907 - born in Poland
2. Family emigrate to lower east side NY
3. Worked with gestalt psychologist
2
Q
Background - irrational crowd
A
- LeBon - “by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation”
- Aka lose your mind in a crowd, morality out the window
3
Q
Background - nature of democracy
A
- According to LeBon - a crowd of people making decisions for the country won’t work
- Asch wanted to look at this - “to bring democratic practices into relation with the issues presented by a giant technology, concentration of economic power, state authority”
4
Q
Background - Sherif’s autokinetic effect studies
A
- Looking at whether people influence each others answers when they are uncertain about whether it is correct
- Autokinetic effect - spot of light in a darkened room, does not move but it’s believed it is moving as it depends how much each individual’s eyes move
- Result was a conversion of answers because of uncertainty
5
Q
Key questions
A
- Can people’s deep-seated beliefs be changed through social influence, even if it’s obvious and certain
- Asch didn’t believe that people conformed slavishly to groups and didn’t believe that social influence was mindless and irrational
6
Q
Main experiment
A
- Participants - groups of 7-9 college students participate in a perceptual study of line judgements, total of N = 123 participants
- Stimuli - a standard line and three comparison lines, if asked individually everyone knew the correct answer
- Findings - 36.8% gave incorrect response in the critical trials, 11% conformed in all trials, 76% of people conformed at least once, from the other perspective 24% never conformed, 71% resisted group pressure in at least half of all trials
- Methods - qualitative follow-up interviews, variations showed when conformity was high or low, WEIRD sample combated by replicating with other samples
7
Q
Qualitative follow up
A
- No subject disregards the group judgement
- Virtually no one looks upon the estimates of the group with indifference or as irrelevant
- All participants experience “puzzlement and confusion” and attempt to resolve the disagreement
- They see themselves (not the majority) as the source of the problem
- “Fear of exposing themselves”
- Actively tried to make sense of the situation - politeness (maybe the first had a visual impairment and the others went along to not humiliate them so they should go along with it too), alternatives (people are judging the line by a different standard that they missed), experiment (not ruining the results of the experiment), self doubt (something wrong with them)
- Asch categorised the answers by independence with confidence (resisting) or without confidence (occasionally conform), and yielding because of distortion of perception (true believers, rare), distortion of judgement (self-doubters), distortion of action (conformists)
8
Q
Variations
A
- Subsequent work explored the impact of the quality of the task (more obvious, does it vary as a function of the size of the error) - no, even when differences between lines are 7 inches, there is a little change to % of trials in which conformity is shown
- Quality of group opposition (does conformity vary based on the size and unanimity of the opposition) - reducing the number of confederates reduces conformity, only 1 confederate drops to 3.6%, with a non-unanimous opposition with one other person who breaks the unanimity, conformity drops to 12.6%, if they get it wrong but it still breaks unanimity, conformity drops to 9%
- Deutsch and Gerard - private answer condition, independence group will stay independent, yielding group, if distortion of perception they’ll still write it wrong, if distortion of judgement they’ll write it wrong (in Asch’s study 12.5% conformity in public and private), but distortion of action will write the correct (30.5% conformity in public but not private)
9
Q
Ethics
A
- Informed consent - no formal consent form as it wasn’t practice at the time, participants volunteered to be part of the experiment
- Deception - acceptable as debriefing and justifiable to test the hypothesis
- Harm/distress - participants felt worried about confederates’ opinion, realisation that they may not be as independent, acceptable due to distress being within limits typically experience in day to day life
10
Q
Debate and controversy - replications
A
- Age - conformity increases towards adolescence and then decreases again
- Gender - adult women tend to conform more than adult men
- Nationality - similar results in other countries (France, Norway) not just US, but UK not so much
- Culture - cultures that value collectivism and harmony more conform more than cultures that value independence and individualism
- Decades - changes in conformity over time appear to be subject to the political atmosphere in the country, general decline in the US
11
Q
Debate and controversy - External validity
A
- Content of the task - not realistic, no uncertainty (no real answer), nothing to gain, lack of personal relevance because of strangers
- Opposition of majority - no opportunity to discuss and resolve disagreement so not realistic
12
Q
Debate and controversy
A
- Became enshrined in two-process theories which differentiate between physical and social reality testing, and informational and normative influence
- Normative influence - acceptance by the group, fear of punishment = conformity
- Informational influence - motivation to be correct about the world, in situations of uncertainty = conversion
- Reevaluation - more recently, these dualisms have been re-examined, no difference, all reality testing is social, all influence is in some sense normative = referent informational influence (Turner)
- Negatives to peer pressure - rumours, buying shares, spreading fake news
- Positives to peer pressure - solidarity, cultural traditions, social cohesion
13
Q
Impact and legacy
A
- Asch’s studies influenced new research e.g. Moscovici
- Echo chambers - online communication ac
