Conformity

Question 1

What are the types of conformity?

Answer 1

Internalisation, identification and compliance.

Question 2

What is internalisation?

Answer 2

Occurs when a person accepts a group’s norms.
Results in private as well as public change of behaviour.
The change in opinion also remains when the group members are absent.

Question 3

What is identification?

Answer 3

This when we conform to the opinion/behaviour of a group because there is something about the group that we value, we identify with the group and want to be part of it.
This results in a public change of opinion/behaviour even if we don’t privately agree with it,

Question 4

What is compliance?

Answer 4

Simply ‘going along’ with others in public but privately not changing personal opinions/behaviour.
A particular behaviour or opinion stops as soon as group pressure drops.

Question 5

Who conducted the baseline procedure to measure conformity levels?

Answer 5

Soloman Asch

Question 6

Describe Soloman Asch’s baseline procedure.

Answer 6

Participants: 123 American male undergraduates.
They were told that the procedure was actually a vision test.
The participant was introduced to other ‘participants’ who were actually confederates.
The participants were asked which out of 3 lines matched a stimulus line.
The confederates gave the incorrect answers in 12/18 trials.
The naïve participant was always sure to answer at the end or near the end.

Question 7

What was Asch’s baseline findings?

Give reasons.

Answer 7

Genuine participants agreed with confederates’ incorrect answers 36.8% of the time.
25% of the participants never conformed.
When asked why some said:
‘Doubt in perception;.
Doubt in judgement
Didn’t want to feel left out.

Question 8

What variables did Asch investigate to that lead to an increase or decrease to conformity.

Answer 8

Group size, Unanimity and Task difficulty.

Question 9

Explain how group size effects conformity:

Answer 9

To test this Asch varied the number of confederates form 1 to 15.
Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity. Conformity increased with group size up to a point.

Question 10

Explain how unanimity effects conformity:

Answer 10

Asch introduced another confederate who disagreed with all the other confederates. In one variation this confederate gave the wrong answer and in the next variation he gave the right answer.
The genuine participant conformed conformed less in the presence of a dissenter The presence of a dissenter made the participant behave more freely.

Question 11

Explain how task difficulty effects conformity:

Answer 11

Asch increased the difficulty of the line judging task by making the comparison lines more similar to each other.
Asch found that conformity increased because the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder.

Question 12

Give a strength for Asch’s research:

Answer 12

Support form other studies- for task difficulty
(Todd Lucas research on maths task difficulty). Participants conformed more when the maths task were harder and when they were unsure of the answers.

Question 13

Give the limitations for Asch’s research:

Answer 13

Artificial task and situation- Participants knew they were in a research study so they may have responded to demand characteristics. Task of identifying lines was trivial and there o reason not to conform. Ash’s groups did not resemble groups we experience in everyday life. Suggests- Findings do not generalise to real-world situations.

Limited application- Participants were only American Men. Other research suggests that women may be more conformist because they are concerned about social relationships. US is an individualist culture so they are more concerned about themselves rather than social groups. Similar conformity studies conducted on collectivist cultures found higher conformity rates. Suggests that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.

Ethical issue- participants were deceived - they thought it was a vision test and they thought the confederates were genuine participants.

Counterpoint- Lucas’ study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants with high confidence in their maths conformed less on hard tasks. This shows that individual- level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables for example task difficulty. Asch did not research the roles of individual factors.

Question 14

What is ISI and how does it link to conformity?

When is it most likely to happen?

Answer 14

Informational social influence-
Its about who has the better information themselves or the group.
We follow the behaviour of the majority because we want it to be right .
ISI is a cognitive process because it is to do with what you think it leads to permanent change to opinion/behaviour.

It is most likely to happen in situations that are new to a person or where there is some ambiguity. It can also occur in crisis situation where decisions have to be made quickly and you go along with the group.

Question 15

What is NSI and how does it link to conformity?

When is it most likely to happen?

Answer 15

Normative social influence-
about norms
People do not like to appear as foolish and they prefer to gain social approval rather than be rejected.
NSI is a emotional process and it leads to temporary change in opinions/behaviour.

NSI is likely to occur in situations with strangers where you may feel concerned about rejection.

Question 16

Research support for NSI:

Answer 16

NSI has evidence that supports it as an explanation of conformity-
When Asch interviewed his participants some said they conformed because they were afraid of disapproval. When participants wrote their answers down conformity fell to 12.5% because giving answers privately meant there was no normative group pressure.

Question 17

Research support for ISI:

Answer 17

There is research evidence to support ISI from Todd Lucas.
He found that participants conformed more often to incorrect answers they were given when the maths problems were difficult. This is because when the problems were easier the participants knew their ‘own minds’ however when they became harder the situation became ambiguous.

Question 18

Counterpoint for NSI and ISI:

Answer 18

It is often unclear whether it is ISI or NSI at work in research studies.
For example Asch found that conformity is reduced when there was a dissenter present.
The dissenter may reduce the power of the ISI (because they provide an alternative source of social information) , the dissenter may also reduce the power of the NSI (because they provide social support).
Both interpretations are possible.
Therefore, it is hard to separate ISI and NSI and both processes probably operate together in most real-world conformity situations.

Question 19

Who did the Stanford prison experiment?

Answer 19

Philip Zimbardo

Question 20

What did Zimbardo want to know?

Answer 20

Why prison guards behave brutally.

Question 21

What is the name of Zimbardo’s experiment?

Answer 21

The Stanford Prison Experiment?

Question 22

Describe the Stanford prison experiment.

Answer 22

Zimbardo set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University.
They selected 21 (student volunteers-men) who tested as emotionally stable.
The students were randomly assigned to play the role of prison guard or prisoner.
Prisoners were given individual numbers, uniform,
Guards were given wooden cubs, uniform, handcuffs, mirror shades.
Uniforms created a loss of personal identity (de-individuation), so they were more likely to conform to the perceived social role.
Guards were encouraged to play their role by being reminded that they have complete over prisoners.
The guards harassed the prisoners constantly they became increasingly brutal and aggressive day by day.
Prisoners became subdued, anxious and depressed and showed symptoms of psychological disturbance.
Zimbardo ended the study in 6 days instead of the intended 14.

Question 23

Give strengths for the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Answer 23

Control- Zimbardo had complete control over key variable for example the selection of participants. Only emotionally stable participants were chosen. This was a way in which the researchers ruled out individual personality differences as an explanation of the findings. This much control increased the internal validity of the study so we can be much more confident when making conclusions.

Counterpoint- Mark Mcdermott argued that the participants did behave as if the prison was real to them. 90% of the prisons conversations was about prison life. Prisoner 416 explained dhow he thought the prison was a real one but run by psychologists and not the government.

Question 24

Give limitations for the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Answer 24

Did not have the realism of a prison. Banuazizi and Movahedi argued that the participants were merely play acting rather than conforming. Participants performances were based on their stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to behave. One of the guards claimed that he based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool Hand Luke. Suggests- The findings of the study tells us little about conformity to social roles in actual prisons.

Zimbardo may have exaggerated the power of social roles to influence behaviour. Only one third of the guards actually behaved in a brutal manner, another third tried to apply rules fairly and the rest actively tried to help and support the prisoners. Most guards were able to resist situational pressures to conform to a brutal role. This suggests that Zimbardo overstated his view that SPE participants were conforming to a social roles and minimised the influence of dispositional factors.