Social Influence Revision
TYPES, EXPLANATIONS AND VARIABLES OF CONFORMITY
Conformity: a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in
order to fit in with a group or because of the rewards associated with its adoption.
This change is in response to real (e.g. physical presence of others) or imagined
(e.g. pressure of social norms) group pressure.
Types of conformity: Kelman (1958)
Compliance: going along with others to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval. There
is no change in the person’s underlying attitude, only in their public behaviour. It is the
shallowest level of conformity (heavily linked to normative)
Internalisation: going along with others because of an acceptance of their point of view.
Individuals change both their public and private attitudes toward a particular view. It is the
deepest level of conformity (closely linked to conformational)
Identification: when an individual adopts an attitude or behaviour because they want to be
associated with a particular group or person by adopting the target group’s attitudes and
behaviours, they feel more like part of it. Identification has elements of both internalisation
and compliance (want to be associated with a group)
Explanations of why we conform:
Normative social influence: the desire to be liked - when we conform to fit in with the group
because we don't want to appear foolish or be left out because we want to be accepted
Informational social influence: the desire to be right - often in ambiguous situations so we
conform because we are unsure of the situation. We look to others who we believed may
have more information than us
EVALUATION:
It is difficult to know if it is compliance and internalisation - For example, it is assumed that a
person who publicly agrees with a majority yet disagrees with them in private must be
demonstrating compliance rather than internalisation. But it is also possible that the
acceptance of the group’s views has occurred in public yet dissipates when in private (could
be because they have forgotten information given by the group or because new information
has been received).
Research Support - Due to the tasks in Asch’s line judgement study being easy, normative
social influence was likely as the participants changed their answers to fit in with the majority
and not to appear foolish/left out. Asch’s study also shows informational and social influence
as some participants conformed because they had not done a test like this before and
thought they were no good at judging lines and wanted to be right.
,CONFORMITY
CASE STUDY: Asch (1951)
Aims: to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a
person to conform
Procedure:
- Lab experiment using 123 American male student participants
- Line judgement task. 3 lines, 1 obviously different from the rest. Everyone had to
state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was the most like the target line but the
answer was always obvious
- Put a participant in a room with 7 confederates, the real participant was unaware and
was led to believe that the other 7 were real participants. The real participant sat at
the end of the row and gave their answer last
- On 12 of the 18 trials (‘the critical trials’), the confederates were told to all give the
same incorrect answer
Findings:
- Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view
- On average, about ⅓ (33%) of the participants in each trial went along and
conformed to the clearly incorrect majority (in the critical trials)
- ¼ never conformed on any of the critical trials
- ½ conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials and 1/20 of the participants conformed
on all 12 of the critical trials
- After the experiment, Asch interviewed the participants and discovered that the
majority of participants who conformed had privately continued to trust their own
perceptions and judgements but changed their public behaviour to avoid disapproval
from other group members (showed compliance)
Variables affecting conformity from Asch’s Variations of his original experiment:
Size of Group;
- Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just 1
or 2 confederates but under pressure from these confederates, the proportion of
confirming responses jumped up to about 30%
- Increasing the size of the majority did not increase the level of conformity, indicating
that the size of the majority is important but only up to a point. Campbell and Fairey
(1989) suggest that group size may have a different effect depending on the type of
judgement being made and the motivation of the individual
- Where there is no objectively correct answer (e.g. musical preference). The individual
is concerned about ‘fitting in’. Then the larger the majority the more likely they are to
conform and be persuaded to agree with that majority
- However, when there is a correct answer and the individual is concerned about being
correct then the views of one or two others will not be sufficient
The unanimity of the majority:
, - In the original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a
confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, the
conformity levels dropped from 33% to 5.5%
- When a confederate gave an answer that was different to the correct answer and
different from the majority, conformity rates dropped to 9%, nearly as great a fall as
when the dissenter provided support for the real participant by giving the same
answer. This led Asch to conclude that it was breaking the group’s unanimous
position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.
Task difficulty:
- In one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller
(so that the ‘correct’ answer was less obvious and the task much more difficult).
Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased. Lucas et al (2006)
investigated this relationship a little further. They found that the influence of task
difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy of the individual. When exposed to maths
problems in an Asch-type task, high self-efficacy participants (i.e. participants who
were confident in their own abilities) remained more independent than low
self-efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty. This shows that
situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy) are
both important in determining conformity.
EVALUATION:
Asch’s findings may be unique because of when the research took place - it may lack
historical validity but it also may be because at the time the US was in a strong
anti-Communist time where people were scared to go against the majority and so were more
likely to conform.
Mundane realism - it has a limited application of findings because it was a lab study which
may not reflect real-life conformity
Research support - Crutchfield (1955) tested 600 participants on the line task judgement
study but each participant was in an isolated booth but lights told them what the other
participants had answered (but the experimenter controlled these). They found that the
conformity rates were 30% in this study.
CASE STUDY: The Stanford Prison Experiment
Procedure:
- A mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford
University in California, USA. 24 male student volunteers were psychologically and
physically screened and were randomly selected and assigned to either play the role
of ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’.
- The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’, they
were put through a delousing procedure, given a prison uniform and assigned an ID
number. The guards referred to the prisoners only by these numbers throughout the
study. Prisoners were allowed certain rights, including three meals a day and three
supervised toilet trips a day and 2 visits per week.
TYPES, EXPLANATIONS AND VARIABLES OF CONFORMITY
Conformity: a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in
order to fit in with a group or because of the rewards associated with its adoption.
This change is in response to real (e.g. physical presence of others) or imagined
(e.g. pressure of social norms) group pressure.
Types of conformity: Kelman (1958)
Compliance: going along with others to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval. There
is no change in the person’s underlying attitude, only in their public behaviour. It is the
shallowest level of conformity (heavily linked to normative)
Internalisation: going along with others because of an acceptance of their point of view.
Individuals change both their public and private attitudes toward a particular view. It is the
deepest level of conformity (closely linked to conformational)
Identification: when an individual adopts an attitude or behaviour because they want to be
associated with a particular group or person by adopting the target group’s attitudes and
behaviours, they feel more like part of it. Identification has elements of both internalisation
and compliance (want to be associated with a group)
Explanations of why we conform:
Normative social influence: the desire to be liked - when we conform to fit in with the group
because we don't want to appear foolish or be left out because we want to be accepted
Informational social influence: the desire to be right - often in ambiguous situations so we
conform because we are unsure of the situation. We look to others who we believed may
have more information than us
EVALUATION:
It is difficult to know if it is compliance and internalisation - For example, it is assumed that a
person who publicly agrees with a majority yet disagrees with them in private must be
demonstrating compliance rather than internalisation. But it is also possible that the
acceptance of the group’s views has occurred in public yet dissipates when in private (could
be because they have forgotten information given by the group or because new information
has been received).
Research Support - Due to the tasks in Asch’s line judgement study being easy, normative
social influence was likely as the participants changed their answers to fit in with the majority
and not to appear foolish/left out. Asch’s study also shows informational and social influence
as some participants conformed because they had not done a test like this before and
thought they were no good at judging lines and wanted to be right.
,CONFORMITY
CASE STUDY: Asch (1951)
Aims: to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a
person to conform
Procedure:
- Lab experiment using 123 American male student participants
- Line judgement task. 3 lines, 1 obviously different from the rest. Everyone had to
state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was the most like the target line but the
answer was always obvious
- Put a participant in a room with 7 confederates, the real participant was unaware and
was led to believe that the other 7 were real participants. The real participant sat at
the end of the row and gave their answer last
- On 12 of the 18 trials (‘the critical trials’), the confederates were told to all give the
same incorrect answer
Findings:
- Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view
- On average, about ⅓ (33%) of the participants in each trial went along and
conformed to the clearly incorrect majority (in the critical trials)
- ¼ never conformed on any of the critical trials
- ½ conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials and 1/20 of the participants conformed
on all 12 of the critical trials
- After the experiment, Asch interviewed the participants and discovered that the
majority of participants who conformed had privately continued to trust their own
perceptions and judgements but changed their public behaviour to avoid disapproval
from other group members (showed compliance)
Variables affecting conformity from Asch’s Variations of his original experiment:
Size of Group;
- Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just 1
or 2 confederates but under pressure from these confederates, the proportion of
confirming responses jumped up to about 30%
- Increasing the size of the majority did not increase the level of conformity, indicating
that the size of the majority is important but only up to a point. Campbell and Fairey
(1989) suggest that group size may have a different effect depending on the type of
judgement being made and the motivation of the individual
- Where there is no objectively correct answer (e.g. musical preference). The individual
is concerned about ‘fitting in’. Then the larger the majority the more likely they are to
conform and be persuaded to agree with that majority
- However, when there is a correct answer and the individual is concerned about being
correct then the views of one or two others will not be sufficient
The unanimity of the majority:
, - In the original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a
confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, the
conformity levels dropped from 33% to 5.5%
- When a confederate gave an answer that was different to the correct answer and
different from the majority, conformity rates dropped to 9%, nearly as great a fall as
when the dissenter provided support for the real participant by giving the same
answer. This led Asch to conclude that it was breaking the group’s unanimous
position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.
Task difficulty:
- In one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller
(so that the ‘correct’ answer was less obvious and the task much more difficult).
Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased. Lucas et al (2006)
investigated this relationship a little further. They found that the influence of task
difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy of the individual. When exposed to maths
problems in an Asch-type task, high self-efficacy participants (i.e. participants who
were confident in their own abilities) remained more independent than low
self-efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty. This shows that
situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy) are
both important in determining conformity.
EVALUATION:
Asch’s findings may be unique because of when the research took place - it may lack
historical validity but it also may be because at the time the US was in a strong
anti-Communist time where people were scared to go against the majority and so were more
likely to conform.
Mundane realism - it has a limited application of findings because it was a lab study which
may not reflect real-life conformity
Research support - Crutchfield (1955) tested 600 participants on the line task judgement
study but each participant was in an isolated booth but lights told them what the other
participants had answered (but the experimenter controlled these). They found that the
conformity rates were 30% in this study.
CASE STUDY: The Stanford Prison Experiment
Procedure:
- A mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford
University in California, USA. 24 male student volunteers were psychologically and
physically screened and were randomly selected and assigned to either play the role
of ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’.
- The prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and on entry to the ‘prison’, they
were put through a delousing procedure, given a prison uniform and assigned an ID
number. The guards referred to the prisoners only by these numbers throughout the
study. Prisoners were allowed certain rights, including three meals a day and three
supervised toilet trips a day and 2 visits per week.
