Conformity

Social psychology looks at how people interact and influence each other. Social influence means people change their behaviour to fit the situation or who they’re with- for example, you might act differently with a parent than with a friend

The influence of others can cause individuals to change their behaviour- this is social influence. Conformity is when a larger or dominant group influences the behaviour of an individual or small group

• It means accepting the majority’s view as your own

• It is going along with the majority and believing in their views- you’ve accepted and internalised them so they’re now your own too

• This might happen if you’re in an unfamiliar situation, where you don’t know the ‘correct’ way is to behave. In this situation, you’d look to others for information about how to behave. This type of influence is called informational social influence

• It is going along with things even though you disagree with them

• It is where you go along with the majority, even if you don’t share their views

• You do this to appear ‘normal’- going against the majority might lead to exclusion or rejection from the group. This type of influence is called normative social influence

• It means doing what’s expected of you to fulfil a role

• It is conforming to what’s expected of you to fulfil a social role

• This means changing your behaviour because you want to fit a specific role in society or trying to imitate the behaviour of a role model

This was a laboratory experiment with a repeated measures design. Sherif used a visual illusion called the autokinetic effect, where a stationary spot of light, viewed in a dark room, appears to move. Participants were falsely told the experimenter would move the light. They had to estimate how far it had moved. In the first phase, individual participants made repeated estimates. They were then put into groups of 3 people each making their estimate with the others present. Finally, they were retested individually

When they were alone, participants developed their own stable estimates (personal norms), which varied widely between participants. Once the participants were in a group, the estimates tended to converge and become more alike. When the participants were then re-tested on their own, their estimates were more like the group estimates than their original guesses

Participants were influenced by the estimates of other people, and a group norm developed. Estimates converged because participants used information from others to help them- they were affected by informational social influence

This was a laboratory experiment, so there was strict control of the variables. This means that the results are unlikely to have been affected by a third variable, so it should be possible to establish cause and effect. It also means that the method could be replicated. The repeated measures design meant that participant variables that could have affected the results were kept constant. However, the method is flawed because the participants were being asked to judge the movement of a light that wasn't moving — this rarely happens in real life. Because it created an artificial situation, the study can be criticised for lacking ecological validity. As well as this, the sample used was quite limited — all of the participants were male, so the results can't be generalised to everyone. An ethical problem with this study was deception

• the participants were told the light was moving when it wasn't

He designed an experiment to see whether people would conform to a majority’s incorrect answer in an unambiguous task (one where the answer is obvious)

• Asch carried out a laboratory experiment with an independent group design

• In groups of 8, participants judged line lengths (shown below) by saying out loud which comparison line (1, 2 or 3) matched the standard line

• Each group contained only one real participant -

  - the others were confederates

  (who acted like real participants but were helping the experimenter)

• The real participants always went last or last but one, so that they heard the others' answers before giving theirs

• Each participant did 18 trials. On 12 of these (the critical trials) the Confederates all gave the same wrong answer

• There was also a control group, where the participants judged the line lengths in isolation

• In the control trials, participants gave the wrong answer 0.7% of the time

• In the critical trials, participants conformed to the majority (gave the same wrong answer) 37% of the time

• 75% conformed at least once

• Afterwards, some participants said they didn't really believe their answers, but didn't want to look different

• The control condition showed that the task was easy to get right

• However, 37% were wrong on the critical trials

  • They conformed to the majority due to normative social influence

• This was a laboratory experiment, so there was good control of the variables

• This minimises the effects of extraneous variables

• Strict control of the variables also means that you could easily repeat the study to see if you get the same results

• However, because the participants weren't in a natural situation, the study lacks ecological validity

• Whether they were right or wrong didn't really matter to the participants

  • They might have been less likely to conform if their answer had had real-life consequences

• In terms of ethics, the participants were deceived and might have been embarrassed when they found out the true nature of the study

• Sometimes we're influenced by others and conform, but sometimes we resist these influences and behave independently

• There are situational and dispositional factors that affect conformity

• Situational factors are due to the social situation a person is in, whereas dispositional factors are due to the person's internal characteristics

• You might expect that the bigger the majority is, the more influential it will be

• If that were the case, it would be easier to resist conforming when there were fewer people to influence you

• To test this, Asch (1956) conducted his conformity experiment with different numbers of confederates as the majority

• With only two confederates, the real participants conformed on only 14% of the critical trials

• With three confederates, conformity rose to 32%

• There was little change to conformity rates after that

  - no matter how big the majority group got

• So, very small majorities are easier to resist than larger ones

• But influence doesn't keep increasing with the size of the majority

• Asch absolutely loved doing his conformity experiment, so he ran yet another version of it to test the effect of having a supporter in the group

• Rather than the confederates forming a unanimous majority, one of the confederates agreed with the participant

• Having a fellow dissenter (someone who disagrees with the majority) broke the unanimity of the group, which made it easier for the participant to resist the pressure to conform

  • the rate of conformity fell to 5.5%

• When Asch made the task more difficult by making the lines more similar, conformity levels increased

• People are more likely to conform if they're less confident that they're correct

• When Asch debriefed his participants, he found a common factor of confidence in the people who hadn’t conformed

• If someone felt confident in their judgements, they were more able to resist group pressure

Until the mid-1970s, the dominant view was that females conform more than males