𝓼𝓸𝓬𝓲𝓪𝓵 𝓲𝓷𝓯𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮
conformity: conformity
Asch’s research
Asch’s baseline procedure
→ 123 men judged line lengths, with confederates giving deliberately wrong
answers.
→ found 75% conformed at least once, 25% never conformed
Asch’s variations
→ group size : varied group size from 2-16. conformity increased up to 3
confederates, then levelled off. conformity increased with group size but only up
to certain point. thus most people are sensitive to views of others
→ unanimity : introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederate.
found genuine participant conformed less in presence of a dissenter
→ task difficulty : increased difficulty, found conformity increased. this may be
due to informational social influence, assuming others are right & you are wrong
evaluation
- artificial situation & task
→ participants knew this was a study, allowing for presence of demand characteristics as
may have done what they believed was expected
→ findings thus do not generalise to real life situations
- limited application
→ only conducted on American men; an individualist culture. collectivist studies show
conformity to be much higher
→ thus Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women & other cultures
+ research support
→ Lucas : found more conformity when maths questions harder
→ thus supports Asch’s claim that task difficulty affects conformity
, conformity: types & explanations
types
compliance
→ going along with group publicly but not privately
identification
→ change behaviour to be apart of a group we identify with, may privately
change too but only in the presence of the group & is usually short term
internalisation
→ publicly & privately adopting the groups behaviour
explanations
normative social influence
→ conforming with the group to ‘fit in’
informational social influence
→ conforming with the group to be ‘right’ as we assume group knows better
evaluation
+ research support for NSI
→ Asch : when no normative group pressure, ie wrote answers down privately, conformity
dropped to 12.5%
→ thus suggests conformity is done to be accepted
+ research support for ISI
→ Lucas : conformity increased on hard maths questions, most likely because they assumed
other people were right & they were wrong
→ thus suggests conformity is done to be right
- individual differences in NSI
→ McGhee : found students who were nAffiliators (have a strong need for affiliation ie relate
to other people) were more likely to conform
→ thus NSI doesn’t predict conformity in every case, as individual differences can’t be fully
explained by a general theory
conformity: conformity
Asch’s research
Asch’s baseline procedure
→ 123 men judged line lengths, with confederates giving deliberately wrong
answers.
→ found 75% conformed at least once, 25% never conformed
Asch’s variations
→ group size : varied group size from 2-16. conformity increased up to 3
confederates, then levelled off. conformity increased with group size but only up
to certain point. thus most people are sensitive to views of others
→ unanimity : introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederate.
found genuine participant conformed less in presence of a dissenter
→ task difficulty : increased difficulty, found conformity increased. this may be
due to informational social influence, assuming others are right & you are wrong
evaluation
- artificial situation & task
→ participants knew this was a study, allowing for presence of demand characteristics as
may have done what they believed was expected
→ findings thus do not generalise to real life situations
- limited application
→ only conducted on American men; an individualist culture. collectivist studies show
conformity to be much higher
→ thus Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women & other cultures
+ research support
→ Lucas : found more conformity when maths questions harder
→ thus supports Asch’s claim that task difficulty affects conformity
, conformity: types & explanations
types
compliance
→ going along with group publicly but not privately
identification
→ change behaviour to be apart of a group we identify with, may privately
change too but only in the presence of the group & is usually short term
internalisation
→ publicly & privately adopting the groups behaviour
explanations
normative social influence
→ conforming with the group to ‘fit in’
informational social influence
→ conforming with the group to be ‘right’ as we assume group knows better
evaluation
+ research support for NSI
→ Asch : when no normative group pressure, ie wrote answers down privately, conformity
dropped to 12.5%
→ thus suggests conformity is done to be accepted
+ research support for ISI
→ Lucas : conformity increased on hard maths questions, most likely because they assumed
other people were right & they were wrong
→ thus suggests conformity is done to be right
- individual differences in NSI
→ McGhee : found students who were nAffiliators (have a strong need for affiliation ie relate
to other people) were more likely to conform
→ thus NSI doesn’t predict conformity in every case, as individual differences can’t be fully
explained by a general theory
