Booklet 1: Conformity Flashcards
(38 cards)
What is conformity?
Yielding to group pressure. Conformity occurs when an individuals behaviour and/or beliefs are influenced by real or imagined group pressure. Conformity is also knows as ‘majority influence’ as people are influenced by the majority. It can be seen as a negative thing as it reduces our independence and can have harmful consequences.
What are the two types of conformity Kelman (1958) identified?
Compliance and internalisation.
What is compliance?
A public display of conformity not private. It is going along with the behaviours of other to gain acceptance and avoid disapproval. For example laughing at a joke.
What is internalisation?
The deepest type of conformity as it is public and private. It involves not only going along with the behaviours of others but accepting their point of view and making their beliefs your own. For example, becoming a vegetarian.
Summarise Asch’s experiment.
A study of conformity in an unambiguous situation, done in 1955.
What was Ashc’s aim?
He wanted to see if people would conform to an incorrect answer if the majority would say it, even when it meant going against their own eyesight.
What was asch’s sample?
123 american males.
Describe Asch’s method.
The experiment took place in a controlled environment. This means that there were no extraneous variables that could affect his results therefore the levels of conformity can be accurately measured. A sample of 7-9 men were placed in the controlled environment, 1 being naive and the rest confederates. There were all given the same cards with a standard vertical line on one and three lines of varying lengths on another. This means that every participant was looking at the same lines, making it easy to see if the naive participant did conform to the majority.
What were asch’s findings.
In the controlled trial with no confederates giving a wrong answer, participants only made mistakes 0.7% of the time. However in critical trials, participants conformed to the majority 37% of the time and 75% of the participants conformed at least once, suggesting they didn’t want to look different.
What did Asch conclude?
The conditioned control showed the task was easy to get right. However 37% got the obvious answers wrong on critical trials, showing they conformed to the majority by going along with others behaviours to avoid disapproval.
What type and explanation of conformity does Asch’s experiment link with?
Compliance and Normative social influence.
What are the three evaluation points for Asch?
Lab experiment, lacked population validity and culture biased.
Explain a positive evaluation point for Asch’s research into conformity.
The research method was laboratory, meaning the experiment was carried out in a controlled environment and eliminated extraneous variables that could affect the results. Therefore the independent variable directly influenced the dependent variable.
Explain the first negative evaluation point for Asch.
As all the participants were male, american undergraduates the experiment lacked population validity. The results from the experiment could not be generalised from the sample as it was biased and therefore would not apply to the rest of the population e.g. females, other cultures or other ages.
Explain the second negative evaluation point for Asch.
The experiment was culture biased, as all the participants were american, meaning the results only apply to the american population, so they aren’t accurate as they don’t give a true representation of the whole population as they can’t be generalised.
What are Asch’s two variations?
One confederate doesn’t conform to the majority answer, The task was made more difficult by using lines that are closer together in length.
What was the result of Asch’s two variations?
‘One doesn’t conform’ has a lower conformity rate as there is a lesser chance of the naive getting disapproval if there is somebody else to be independent with. ‘More difficult task’ had a higher conformity rate as it is easier to think your wrong.
Who carried out the third Asch variation and what was it?
Perrin and Spencer (1981) - All participants were math and science students in the UK.
What was the result of Perrin and spencer’s variation?
Lower conformity rate as the participants were more clever and therefore got the simple task right and were confident in their answers.
Briefly describe Jenness’ study?
A study of conformity in an ambiguous situation, carried out in 1932.
What was Jenness’ aim?
To investigate the effects of group discussions on individual answers with an ambiguous task.
What was Jenness’ method?
Participants were individually asked to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar. They were then asked to discuss their estimates with a group of participants and collaborate to decide on a group estimate. After this, they had to give a final individual estimate on their own.
What were Jenness’ findings?
When individuals had to make their final estimates, they estimated closer to the group estimate than there beginning individual estimate. The average change of opinion was greater amongst females.
What was Jenness’ conclusion?
The judgements of individuals are affected by majority influence, especially in situations where the correct answer is ambiguous or uncertain.
