social influence - conformity

Question 1

what is social influence?

Answer 1

processes by which individuals and groups change each other’s attitudes and behaviour

Question 2

what is conformity?

Answer 2

• a type of majority influence.
• an individual changes their behaviour or opinions to be the same as the group.

Question 3

procedure for asch

Answer 3

• sample: 123 american males in groups with 5-7 confederates
• had to identify which line was the same length as the test line
• confederates gave the wrong answer in 12/18 trials
• there was a control group of 36 that made little errors
• participants were told that the experiment concerned perception of line length.

Question 4

what did the control group in asch’s study ensure?

Answer 4

Ensured the correct answers were due to conformity and not **errors*, as the task was proved easy.
This ensures the results are valid.

Question 5

why were participants in asch’s study told that the study was on perception of line length?

Answer 5

To avoid demand characteristics

Question 6

what were the results of asch’s research?

Answer 6

• participants conformed on 37% of trials
• 75% of the participants conformed at least once
• 25% never conformed

Question 7

explanations for asch’s results on conformity

Answer 7

2 reasons:
1) social/emotional- they wanted to be liked/accepted/feel normal within the group > this is normative social influence.
2) cognitive- they want to be right/have true beliefs/are uncertain about an answer > this is informational social influence.

Question 8

what were the 5 key variations of asch

Answer 8

• basline
• group size
• unanimity
• task difficulty
• private answer

Question 9

results of the group size variation of asch’s procedure

Answer 9

Conformity increased up to a group size of 3, and after stayed the same

Question 10

what was the unanimity variation and results?

Answer 10

• variation when a dissenter gave a different answer to the rest of the confederates.
• only 5% of participants conformed.

Question 11

what were the results of asch’s task difficulty variation?

Answer 11

• more difficult tasks produced more conformity
• easier tasks produced less conformity

Question 12

what was the private answer variation of asch’s experiment and what were the results?

Answer 12

• participants were told they had arrived late and must give their answers on paper/privately
• could still hear the confederates answer, but they will not share their answer publicly.
• conformity reduced to 12.5% (2/3).

Question 13

which variation of asch show evidence for informational social influence?

Answer 13

task difficulty:
- the normative social influence stays the same, but people are more likely to be informationally influenced due to the task being **more ambiguous*

Question 14

which variation(s) of asch show evidence for normative social influence?

Answer 14

• Private asnwer variation. Because the normative social influence was removed, and the conformity rates decreased, it can be assumed that the normative social influence was causing people to conform in the first place.

Question 15

what is compliance?

Answer 15

• going along with the group publicly, but holding a different opinion privately.
• a temporary agreement with the group.
• explained by normative social influence

Question 16

what is identification?

Answer 16

• conforming to the group because we value it
• genuine change to opinion, not just behaviour.
• change of opinion is not necessarily permenant

Question 17

what is internalisation?

Answer 17

• both a public and private agreement with a group.
• a permenant change to opinion and behaviour.
• explained by informational social influence

Question 18

What supports the explanations of conformity

Answer 18

• NSI, private answer variation
  > conformity decreased to 12.5%
  > exposed to ISI but not NSI
  > shows NSI to be roughly 2x more important
• baseline condition can show NSI because the task was designed to be easy and this was shown by the control group.
• ISI, task difficulty variation
  > conformity increased with harder task
  > only changed ISI so the change in result must be due to it.
• ISI, Lucas maths questions study.
  > varied asch’s study using maths questions.
  > varied the difficulty.
  > found pps conformed more on harder questions.

Question 19

what are some other questions which conflict the idea of NSI and ISI as expanations for conformity.

Answer 19

• individual differences. e.g personality differences or (in the case of asch/lucas) mathematical confidence.
• Locus of control

^ both suggest NSI and ISI are incomplete explanatioms

Question 20

internal validity of asch

Answer 20

• demand characteristics good
  > told pps the study was to test perception of line length, used deception
• demand characteristics bad
  > task was easy and pps may have questioned what was really being tested
  > confederates had to be good actors to avoid people realising they were acting

Question 21

external validity of asch

Answer 21

• ecological validity:
  > pps were all similar males so it should have felt like a group
  > but they had no history with eachother so that actually may have not been the case

> the task had no real consequences so the pps may have deemed it less important.
a study found pps conformed on 50% of trials related to moral dillemas

Population validity:
- sample was all male, young, educated, american so was unrepresentative
- cross-cultural replications found variations in rates of conformity, e,g that they were twice as high in collectivist cultures such as china where conformity is valued much more.

Temporal validity:
- some people claim that people have become more independant in society than in the 1950s
- BUT a recent replication found conformity rates to be 33% which is still very similar