conformity and obedience: conformity

Question 1

conformity

Answer 1

it results form peer pressure but we can also feel pressured to go along with groups of strangers and media

Question 2

types of conformity

Answer 2

kelman (1958) proposed 3 types of conformity: compliance, identification, internalisation

Question 3

compliance

Answer 3

conforming to gain something, people who comply may not actually agree with the norm but will go along with others to gain approval e.g. laughing at a joke others laugh at while not finding it funny

Question 4

identification

Answer 4

conforming because that person approves of the person displaying that behaviour, these attitudes are not strongly held and are usually motivated by a desire to be like someone else e.g. only recycling when flatmates are around

Question 5

internalisation

Answer 5

conforming as that person agrees with the social norm and they believe it is the right thing to do and are likely to perform that behaviour on their own e.g. becoming a vegetarian after sharing a flat with a group of vegetarians

Question 6

why do people conform

Answer 6

normative social influence, informational social influence, individual factors, situational factors, cultural factors

Question 7

normative social influence

Answer 7

when a person is influenced by social norms, the pressure comes from the group based on a need to be liked and accepted

Question 8

informational social influence

Answer 8

exerted by the majority on the minority to get them to change their behaviour and attitudes, designed to convince the minority that the majority is genuinely right and to produce internalisation, rather than compliance

Question 9

normative social influence, conform to be

Answer 9

liked

Question 10

informational social influence, conform to be

Answer 10

right

Question 11

asch aim

Answer 11

asch (1956) investigated whether people would conform to others incorrect estimates if the task was easy and the correct answer was obvious

Question 12

asch participants

Answer 12

50 american men who were told that this was an experiment into visual perception

Question 13

asch method

Answer 13

the participants entered a room with 10 others and were shown a picture of three lines of differing lengths and were asked which line matched the length of the fourth line, the answer was always obvious

Question 14

asch findings

Answer 14

the majority group had a large influence, over all the trials 32% were incorrect, asch believed this was due to people not wanting to be ridiculed by the majority. even when they gave correct answers they seemed embarrassed as they are still influenced by the majority. in the control group with no pressure to conform, less than 1% gave the wrong answer

Question 15

asch evaluation

Answer 15

low ecological validity as done under experimental conditions, ethical breach, the culture of 1950’s america encourage conformity and can’t be generalised to other places

Question 16

perrin and spencer (1981)

Answer 16

replicated the asch study using british engineering students and found much lower levels of conformity showing cultural norms have an effect on conformity

Question 17

individual factors

Answer 17

age, gender, personality, cognition

Question 18

age

Answer 18

studies report conformity is static between 10 and 14 after which decreases up to 18 and then stays constant

Question 19

personality

Answer 19

santee and maslach (1982) found that people who have higher self esteem were less likely to conform

Question 20

situational factors

Answer 20

task difficulty, group size, unanimity of the majority, secrecy of response, similarity of the group

Question 21

task difficulty

Answer 21

in asch when the difficulty was increased where the difference between lines was smaller conformity increased, this suggests people may have been internalising rather than complying

Question 22

group size

Answer 22

in asch when there was only a small majority conformity was nearly zero, when the majority was three it jumped to about 30% suggesting the size of majority is important

Question 23

unanimity of the majority

Answer 23

in asch when one confederate gave a different wrong answer conformity dropped to 9%