Conformity (A03) Flashcards
(9 cards)
variables affecting conformity- Asch (A03)
+ive Support for task difficulty: Other research have also clearly supported Asch’s task difficulty variations. In one Study Lucas (2006) found that as Maths questions increased in difficulty there was more conformity on answers between Ps. This is clear evidence that Asch’s findings have been replicated in a slightly different context still demonstrating the importance of difficulty on social influence. (Note: Gold because used here too——————-)
-ive Lack of E.V: One of the weaknesses of Asch’s study is that it lacked ecological validity. In that, psychologists have to be careful generalising from the set-up Asch created to real world examples of conformity. An example of this would be bullying where real world research has shown that poorer quality of relationships between a group make it easier for a malicious bully to manipulate members against another. This is important because Asch’s line length task bares little resemblance to examples like this and may have meant very little to participants making their behaviour unnatural.
-ive Lack of temporal validity (COIT): One of massive criticism of Asch’s research is that it has been described as a child of its time. Perrin and Spencer (1980 in a British replication of Asch’s study found only one conforming response in 356 trials of Asch type expt. Although the use of maths/engineering students may have created some of the resistance to conform. Asch’s research though may still have been partly a function of the era in 1950s America where fear of communism made people less likely to standout.
-ive Sample bias: One of the weaknesses of Asch’s study is that is had a huge sample bias. In that the participants were all male and from a similar demographic (class). This means that we should be careful generalising to other sections of the population from his original research. In fact, later research did find dramatic differences in conformity across cultures, for examples Fijian Indians in one study showed as much as 58% conformity rates suggesting that there are big variations across populations. This is important because Asch’s research was not representative of diverse cultures who are more focused on group needs than their own.
+ive Influential: One of the main strengths of Asch’s research is that it has been incredibly influential. In that, huge areas of theory have opened up as a consequence of his studies. For instance Moscovici and his work on minority influence was a direct adaptation of Asch’s design and has pushed our understanding of group processes beyond Asch’s original findings.
explanations of conformity (A03)
+ive Support for NSI: Asch found that in asking his Ps afterwards in interviews that many of them reported not wanting to standout to the group for fear of embarrassment or disapproval. This is clear evidence that NSI is at work in such studies.
+ive Support for ISI: Other research have also clearly supported ISI. In one Study Lucas (2006) found that as Maths questions increased in difficulty there was more conformity on answers between Ps. This is clear evidence that Asch’s findings have been replicated in a slightly different context still demonstrating how task difficulty increases ISI.
-ive Individual differences (nAffiliators) : One issue with the explanations is that they struggle to account for individual differences in conformity. Later researcher has found two ‘nAffiliators’ people who have a stronger desire to be in relationships with others. Studies have shown that these types of people are more likely to conform, suggesting that there is more complexity to explanations of conformity than ISI and NSI offer.
-ive NSI and ISI work together: One massive issue for these explanations is that ISI and NSI may work together: Often it’s difficult to tell whether ISI or NSI are at work e.g the Presence of a supporter in Asch’s variation reduced conformity to 5% but was it because they reduced the power of NSI by providing social support, or was it because they offered a new source of information and made ISI more likely. This is a big issue for the theories and suggests that their explanatory power is limited.
-ive Study support limitations: One issue for these explanations is that studies in this area tend to have limitations. The lab studies that support them are often contrived (line length doesn’t represent real group pressures) and full of potential demand characteristics (where Ps pick up on the cues of how to behave e.g going along with the unusual turn of events when people start giving wrong answers). These issues therefore undermine their support for the theories that they appear to be based on.
conformity to social roles- Zimbardo (A03)
+ive Controlled: One strength of Zimbardo’s study is that it had high levels of control and some impressive attempts at creating a prison like simulation. He went to great length to ‘arrest’ each P at home, process them, strip and delouse them, all the while trying to control timings and account for individual differences in Ps including mental health problems and drug abuse that might affect the study. This shows a clear sense of scientific rigour in designing and managing a complex lab study as a simulation.
-ive Lack of E.V: One of the weaknesses of the study is that it lacked ecological validity. In that, psychologists have to be careful generalising from the set-up Zimbardo created lab environment to real prisons, where inmates and guards have hugely different backgrounds and motivations. Prison violence between inmates and from inmates to guard were a real danger in 1973 as now, which would clearly change the dynamic and possible conformity to social roles, clearly undermining the validity for the study.
-ive BBC prison study contradicts: One of massive criticism of the Zimbardo’s research on conformity to social roles is that a later replication found completely different results. In a million pound BBC study and TV programme psychologist found that prisoners fell into dominant roles over guards eventually leading to the overthrow of the guards and the end of the study on ethical grounds. Haslam and Reicher concluded that social identity processes were at work, showing that outcomes for groups depend not on social roles but on emerging norms depending on ingroup and outgroup perceptions.
-ive Ethics: One issue for Zimbardo is the clear breaches in ethical guidelines. The study clearly allowed high levels of psychological harm before it was stopped. Zimbardo’s girlfriends was apparently the one to trigger Zimbardo to see the harm he was potentially doing to his participants. Whilst there was some considerable attempts to debrief and bring prisoners and guards back together, it is clear that by today’s standards the 6 days in the basement were incredibly unethical.
+ive Experimenter bias: One of the main issues with the validity of the research is the more recent realisation that Zimbardo’s role as the prison superintendent was a huge confounding variable. In recently discovered tapes and articles from the Stanford archives, dialogue clearly suggests that he is influencing and directing how the guards should behave which ironically shows that his ‘social role’ created the outcomes for the prisoners rather than the Ps.
obedience- Milgram & situational variables (A03)
-ive Sample bias: One issue with Milgram’s original studies is that they were based on an all male sample. Though they were from a range of backgrounds, the volunteer sample from a newspaper and not representing women means that those early conclusions on the first sample may not be a true baseline. From the later analysis of archive papers it appears that MR Williams may then have been even harsher to the female Ps that were added in the later variations, meaning that comparisons between conditions and gender are questionable if instructions weren’t consistent, a problem for the validity overall.
-ive Questionable experimental realism: One issue with the studies and particularly the variations on proximity is that the experimental realism is dubious. Perry argued many Ps from lost tapes doubted they were real, especially in variations like hand on shock plate where Mr Wallace had to act ‘live.’ Other replications at the time though suggest that Ps were prepared to do horrible things for real, like electrocute a live puppy using a Milgram type shock scale. This is an important question to answer but difficult in retrospect as such a long time has passed.
-ive Ethics: One issue for Milgram’s research is the clear breaches in ethical guidelines. The study has high levels of psychological harm all Ps showing signs of stress and some having seizures. The variations like hand on shock plate are potentially even worse with massive deception and potential consequences for Ps. Zimbardo’s girlfriends was apparently the one to trigger Zimbardo to see the harm he was potentially doing to his participants. Whilst there were some attempts to debrief, it is clear that by today’s standards Milgram’s studies were incredibly unethical made worse so by the discovery of archives papers that suggest some Ps were never told that it was sham and or only debriefed with a letter.
+ive Influential: Though there are clearly some massive issues with Milgram’s research it is also clear that his research on obedience and factors affecting have had big impacts on social psychology as a field. They’ve created huge amounts of follow up studies and theories that better explain many of the findings and even had an impact on how Ps should be treated in studies, leading to huge changes in ethics.
Explanations of obedience: Agentic state and Legitimacy of authority
+ive Milgram’s Ps clearly showed an agentic shift: Support for the agentic shift comes from Milgram’s study in which some Ps ask who is responsible for the consequences of the punishments. When the experimenter finally responds, “I am responsible” it appears to galvanise the Ps into further obedience. This was described as the agentic shift where it is clear that the P is acting on behalf of the organisation, therefore supporting the idea that we obey when we lose our autonomy.
-ive Weaknesses of lab studies… also found tapes suggest 50% of Ps questioned the realism of the study
+ive Controlled: One variation study that supports L.A is where the role of experimenter was taken over by a confederate whom the participant believed to be an ordinary member of the public. Only 20% of participants gave the maximum shock in this condition, showing that obedience rates are low when the legitimacy of the authority is removed.
+ive Real life examples: Findings from real air crash investigations by Tarnow (2000) shows support that L..A. was involved. E.g) Hesitant challenging –where the crew members did not speak up sufficiently when danger threatened. Lack of monitoring - One second officer claimed to have noticed the captain taking a particularly risky approach but said nothing as he assumed the “captain must know what he’s doing.“ These instances clearly demonstrate a fear of challenging those above them in hierarchy and have been used in training in organisations since also demonstrating the RWA of the theory.
LOC & social support as an explanation of social influence (A03)
+ive Support from Asch line study: Social support…
+ive Support for disobedient role models: Milgram’s variations research shows clear evidence for social support finding where the percentage of people obeying all instructions to give shocks dropped to 10% when there was a confederate present who was disobedient. The agentic state is easier to leave if others support your decision to become autonomous again clearly demonstrating the importance of social support in resistance.
+ive Supporting Milgram replication: Holland (1967) using Milgram’s procedure, found that resistance to obedience was higher in people with an internal than with an external locus of control. 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock but 23% of externals did not do so. This therefore clearly supports L.O.C as a factor in Milgram type obedience studies.
-ive Twenge (2004) contradictory research: However, its Twenge et al (2004) found that as a society we have actually become more external. Where as other research has shown that obedience has decreased as a society. This therefore goes against LOC as a predictor of obedient behaviour.
-ive Only for novel events: However Rotter himself argued that LOC may only apply in situations that are unusual to us. Like encountering a new type of recycling facility Thus if we have obeyed in similar ways in the past we are more likely to obey again in the same way.
minority influence (A03)
+ive Research support for consistency: The importance of consistency is supported by Moscovici’s study. Wood et al (1994) in a meta-analysis of over 100 hundred studies found that minorities who were consistent were seen as the most influential. This shows important support for consistency as important in minority influence with a huge sample and combined power of the M.A enhancing the reliability of Moscovici’s early findings.
-ive Methodological issues: One issue with studies in this area is that most of the tasks used in M.I studies bare little resemblance to how minorities try to influence majorities in the real life. In that, the colour of a slide does not reflect the importance of for example: protesting against oppression. This is important because it means that the behaviour shown in the lab doesn’t reflect how people act when more important decisions are to be made.
+ive Research support: Moscovici varied the original study and found higher agreement with the minority position when they were allowed to write down their answers. This suggests they had internalised the view but didn’t necessarily want to be publicly associated with it in the original format thus supporting the importance of M.I and particularly internalisation as a process.
+ive Bigger influence than majorities: One of the biggest strengths of the theory is that it might actually explain more change than Asch’s research on majority influence. If people follow the majority group the whole time then change technically shouldn’t occur. Asch himself actually agreed with this, arguing importantly that M.I was a more important process.
social influence and social change (A03)
+ive Research Support for disobedient role models: Milgram’s variations research shows clear evidence for social support finding where the percentage of people obeying all instructions to give shocks dropped to 10% when there was a confederate present who was disobedient. The agentic state is easier to leave if others support your decision to become autonomous again clearly demonstrating the importance of social support in resistance.
+ive Research support for NSI: Nolan et al (2008) found that posting information on people’s doors that referred to ‘most residents are trying to decrease their energy usage’ led to significant decreases in energy conservation in comparison to notes asking people to ‘save energy.’ This is important because it shows that normative pressure can create social change in a realistic setting.
-ive Barriers to social change (tree hugger) These theories and findings have important implications for moving society towards shared ethical goals but Bashir (2013) found that stereotypes may prevent that change. In his study Ps didn’t want to behave in an environmentally friendly way because of fear of association with negative stereotypes of environmentalists e.g ‘Tree hugger’ ‘Hippy’ This is important because it means that minority groups can carefully use this feature to avoid associations that might hamper their adoption.
-ive Research limitations: One issue with research in this area is that there are several limitations of the methodology that social change research is based on. Many of the lab studies are based on contrived artificial experimental set ups that don’t generalise well to the incredibly complex processes in real world social change. This means that the many complex factors affecting it aren’t really understood outside of the vacuum of the lab which is a massive limitation of research in this area.
explanations of obedience: authoritarian personality (A03)
+ive Large sample: A strength of Adorno’s A.P is it based on a large amount of data. To develop the F-scale he tested more than 2000 American participants. The scale is still used today with some minor variations but the large sample size is clearly a strength to the development of A.P improving its generalizability.
+ive Research support: Elms and Milgram (1966) gave the California F-Scale, a test of authoritarian personality, to some of Milgram’s participants. They found that those who resisted in the experiment were significantly less authoritarian on the F-Scale than those who did not resist. This supports the idea that the authoritarian personality may play a role in obedience.
-ive Correlation and causation: One issues with A.P is that it shows that there is a link between obedient behaviour and authoritarian personality but does not show that personality causes obedient behaviour. There may be a third factor, for example levels of education, which contribute both to high scores on the F-scale and to obedient behaviour in Milgram’s procedure. This is important because other factors should be investigated in correlation to rule out illusory correlations and Adorno’s work clearly doesn’t do this.
-ive Methodological errors: Perhaps the biggest issue for F-scale research is that it has been criticised for wording all of the questions in the same direction. This means that if you agree by ticking the same box the whole way down the questionnaire, it’s possible to get a high score on the side you lean towards. Greenstein (1969) called it a ‘comedy of methodological errors and is a form of acquiescence bias (giving in to the flaws in the design that push you behave/give-in – acquiesce, in a certain way. This is a huge issues for A.P which clearly undermines its validity as a whole.
-ive Other dispositional explanations are better: Overall, Adorno’s A.P has largely been superseded by better measures of disposition to explain obedience. Combinations of factors such as L.O.C and self esteem and more modern measurements of authoritarianism are now used as better predictors and therefore explanations, suggesting that A.P should be resigned to history.
