Conformity

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

• when a person changes their attitudes or behaviour due to real or imagined group pressure

Question 2

What is compliance?

Answer 2

• the lowest level of conformity
• a person changes their public behaviour but not their personal beliefs
• short term
• usually due to normative social influence

Question 3

What is identification?

Answer 3

• middle level of conformity
• person changes their public behaviour and personal beliefs whilst in the presence of the group they are identifying with
  -short term
• usually due to normative social influence

Question 4

What is internalisation?

Answer 4

• deepest level of conformity
• person changes both their public behaviour and personal beliefs
• long term change
• usually due to informational social influence

Question 5

What is informational social influence?

Answer 5

• we follow the behaviour of the group because we want to be right
• most likely to happen in new situations or when theres ambiguity

Question 6

What is normative social influence?

Answer 6

• people prefer to gain social approval rather than be rejected
• fitting into the norms of a social group

Question 7

Research support for ISI

Answer 7

P: one strength is evidence support
E: when Asch interviewed his participants, they said they conformed because they didn’t want to be ridiculed by the group. When PP’s wrote their answers down, conformity fell to 12.5%
E: giving answers privately meant there was no group pressure
L: some conformity is due to the pressure of fitting in

Question 8

Individual differences in NSI

Answer 8

P: weakness is NSI doesn’t predict conformity in every case
E: people greatly concerned with being liked by others are called nAffiliators
E: they have a strong need for affiliation, so are more likely to conform
L: NSI underlies conformity for some people more than it does for others. There are individual differences in conformity

Question 9

Research support for ISI

Answer 9

P: research support
E: Lucas found that participants conformed more to incorrect answers during maths problems
E: when the problems became difficult and pp’s no longer ‘knew their own minds’, conformity increased
L: ISI is a valid explanation of conformity

Question 10

Counterpoint to evidence for ISI

Answer 10

• unclear whether ISI or NSI is at work
• Asch found that conformity is reduced when there is one dissenting participant because they provide social support
• dissenter may reduce the power or NSI and ISI
• therefore is is hard to separate them

Question 11

What was Asch’s aim?

Answer 11

• to investigate the extent to which group pressure from a majority group could affect a persons likelihood to conform

Question 12

What was Asch’s procedure?

Answer 12

• 123 male American students
• line judgement task
• one PP and seven confederates
• 18 trials in total, and confederates gave the incorrect answer 12/18 times

Question 13

What were Asch’s findings?

Answer 13

• 36% of participants conformed to the clearly incorrect majority
• 75% of participants conformed on at least one trial
• 5% of participants conformed to all 12 incorrect answers

Question 14

What conclusion did Asch make?

Answer 14

• when interviewed, most participants said they did not believe their conforming answers, but went along with the group in fear of being ridiculed
• normative social influence

Question 15

Group size

Answer 15

• conformity decreases when there is only one confederate
• when there are 4 confederates instead of 7, conformity stays the same

Question 16

Unanimity

Answer 16

• when there are more people in the group all giving the wrong answer, conformity stays the same

Question 17

Task Difficulty

Answer 17

• when the task is more difficult conformity increases
• when the task is easier, conformity decreases

Question 18

Artificial situation and task - weakness of Asch’s research

Answer 18

P: task and situation were artificial
E: participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected
E: there was no consequence or reason for conforming so findings can’t be generalised to the real world
L: research doesn’t reflect conformity in real world situations

Question 19

Limited application - limitation of Asch’s research

Answer 19

P: it is a limited application
E: may be culturally biased. All of Asch’s participants were men.
E: the USA is an individualist culture where people are more concerned with themselves rather than the social group. Collectivist cultures have found higher rates of conformity
L: Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in other cultures

Question 20

Research support - strength of Asch’s research

Answer 20

P: support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
E: Lucas asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. PP’s were given answers from three other confederates
E: participants conformed more when problems were harder
L: Asch was correct that task difficulty affects conformity

Question 21

Counterpoint to Research support for Asch’s study

Answer 21

• conformity is more complex than Asch suggested
• participants with high confidence with their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
• an individual level factor can influence conformity