Discuss Conformity: Types and explanations (16 marks)
A01
Conformity: the tendency to change what we do, think or say in response to the influence of real or imagined
pressure from others.
Explanations of conformity -
- Normative Social Influence (need to be liked)
This occurs when we wish to be liked by the majority group, so we go along with them even though we may
not agree with them. This is really just following the crowd in order to fit in with the ‘norm’ and be liked by
the group. It’s an emotional process.
- Informational Social Influence (need to be right)
This occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure about the way in which to
behave. A person will conform because they genuinely believe the majority to be right as we look to them for
the right answer. It’s a cognitive process.
A01
Types of conformity -
1) Compliance (NSI)
Conforming publicly but continuing privately to disagree.
2) Internalisation (ISI)
A deep type of conformity where a person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised
and accepted the views of the group.
A03
One strength for research into explanations of conformity is Asch’s (1951) study into conformity which
provides support for NSI. Asch demonstrated in a later variation that when the pressure to publicly conform
is removed by asking participants to write down their answers on a piece of paper, rather than say them
aloud, the conformity rates fell to 12.5% as the fear of rejection became far less. Asch’s follow up
experiment provides support for the idea of normative social influence.
However…
Asch's research has been criticised for lacking ecological validity, the task of line judgement in a controlled
artificial setting does not reflect real-world situations where conformity might occur. Therefore their
applicability to real-world behaviour is limited.
A03
One limitation of explanations for conformity is that individual differences may play a role in explaining
social influence, which means that the processes will not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way.
E.g., Perrin and Spencer (1980) conducted an Asch‐style experiment, but this time using engineering
students
in the UK. Only one conforming response was observed out of nearly 400 trials. This could be due to the fact
that the students felt more confident in their ability to judge line lengths due to their experience in
engineering and so felt less pressure to conform. Alternatively, it could be argued that this difference is due to
a historical bias from comparing research conducted in a different era and almost 30 years apart where rapid
social changes have emerged and norms have changed. As a result, individual differences need to be
considered when it comes to explaining why people conform.
A03
One strength of explanations into conformity is that there are real‐world applications which demonstrate that
NSI also occurs beyond the lab setting. Eg. Schultz et al. gathered data from many hotels over a week where
guests were allocated to rooms randomly as either control or experimental conditions. In the control rooms,
there was a door hanger informing the participants of the environmental benefits of reusing towels. In the
experimental condition, there was additional information stating that ‘75% of guests chose to reuse their
towels each day’. The results showed that in comparison to the control conditions, guests who received a
message that contained normative information about other guests reduced their need for fresh towels by 25%.
This is showing that they had conformed in order to ‘fit in’ with the perceived group behaviour.
A03
One strength for explanations of conformity is research support for ISI. Lucas et al students conformed more
to an incorrect answer when they found the task difficult in a maths problem. Showing people conform in
situations where they feel they don’t know the answer. This shows that ISI is a valid explanation of
,conformity because results were what ISI would predict.
However…
It is often unclear whether it is ISI or NSI at work. E.g. Asch found that conformity is reduced when there is
one other dissenting participant. The dissenter may reduce the power of the NSI (social support) or the ISI
(alternative info). Therefore it is hard to separate these processes because they probably both operate together
in real-world conformity explanations.
, Discuss research into obedience (16 marks)
A01
Obedience: Complying with or deferring to a request or order from a legitimate authority.
Milgrim’s research - Procedure and aims:
40 American men volunteered for an experiment about ‘memory’ in a lab at Yale uni.
Volunteer Ps were assigned as ‘teachers’ and told to give electric shocks of increasing severity to ‘learners’
(who were actually confederates but who Ps believed were just other volunteers).
Each time the confederate/learner gave a wrong answer, the P/teacher had to give him a shock (not real) – the
confederate was acting when he yelped and shouted.
- Procedures:
If the P/teacher hesitated in giving the shock, a lab-coated experimenter (the authority figure) gave verbal
prods such as ‘Please continue’, and ‘You have no choice, you must go on’. As the level of shocks rose, the
confederate/learner’s pre-recorded cries of pain and pleas for the P/teacher to stop were played. The P/teacher
had only 5-6 seconds between asking the question and having to give the shock.
A01
Milgrim’s research - Results and conclusions:
Results:
- All the Ps gave shocks up to 300V.
- 63% of the Ps continued to give shocks up to 450V – even though the confederate/learner fell silent
at 300V and even though they knew that 450V was a lethal electric shock.
Conclusion:
People have the capacity to follow orders which lead to inflicting harm on others. This may be because of the
‘agentic state’, in which they switch off their conscience, feeling that it is the authority figure who takes
responsibility for their actions.
Other data -
Milgram carried out a pilot study in which he asked psychologists what proportion of Ps they thought would
give electric shocks to other people, when ordered to do so.
Only 3% thought they would, so Milgram continued with his study.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it broke several ethical guidelines.
Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment
affects learning, rather than on obedience. They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that
was in fact pre‐determined. Due to the nature of the task Milgram did not protect the participants from
psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment and may have
continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human
being. Some critics of Milgram believed that these breaches could serve to damage the reputation of
psychology and jeopardise future research. This suggests that Milgram’s research was unethical.
However…
Milgram attempted to overcome all of the ethical breaches by debriefing all of the participants at the end and
by offering counselling to the ones who needed it.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it lacks ecological validity.
This is because Milgram conducted a laboratory study, which is very different from real‐life situations of
obedience. In everyday life we often obey far more harmless instructions, rather than giving people electric
shocks. As a result, we are unable to generalise his findings to real‐life situations of obedience and cannot
conclude that people would obey less severe instructions to the same degree.
However…
Milgram counters this claim, stating that the laboratory can reflect wider authority relationships seen in
real‐life situations. For example, Hofling et al. (1966) found that nurses were surprisingly obedient to
unjustified instructions from a doctor in a hospital setting. 21/22 nurses went along and gave the drug to the
patient despite the fact the instruction came from a bogus doctor.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it lacks population validity.
A01
Conformity: the tendency to change what we do, think or say in response to the influence of real or imagined
pressure from others.
Explanations of conformity -
- Normative Social Influence (need to be liked)
This occurs when we wish to be liked by the majority group, so we go along with them even though we may
not agree with them. This is really just following the crowd in order to fit in with the ‘norm’ and be liked by
the group. It’s an emotional process.
- Informational Social Influence (need to be right)
This occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure about the way in which to
behave. A person will conform because they genuinely believe the majority to be right as we look to them for
the right answer. It’s a cognitive process.
A01
Types of conformity -
1) Compliance (NSI)
Conforming publicly but continuing privately to disagree.
2) Internalisation (ISI)
A deep type of conformity where a person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised
and accepted the views of the group.
A03
One strength for research into explanations of conformity is Asch’s (1951) study into conformity which
provides support for NSI. Asch demonstrated in a later variation that when the pressure to publicly conform
is removed by asking participants to write down their answers on a piece of paper, rather than say them
aloud, the conformity rates fell to 12.5% as the fear of rejection became far less. Asch’s follow up
experiment provides support for the idea of normative social influence.
However…
Asch's research has been criticised for lacking ecological validity, the task of line judgement in a controlled
artificial setting does not reflect real-world situations where conformity might occur. Therefore their
applicability to real-world behaviour is limited.
A03
One limitation of explanations for conformity is that individual differences may play a role in explaining
social influence, which means that the processes will not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way.
E.g., Perrin and Spencer (1980) conducted an Asch‐style experiment, but this time using engineering
students
in the UK. Only one conforming response was observed out of nearly 400 trials. This could be due to the fact
that the students felt more confident in their ability to judge line lengths due to their experience in
engineering and so felt less pressure to conform. Alternatively, it could be argued that this difference is due to
a historical bias from comparing research conducted in a different era and almost 30 years apart where rapid
social changes have emerged and norms have changed. As a result, individual differences need to be
considered when it comes to explaining why people conform.
A03
One strength of explanations into conformity is that there are real‐world applications which demonstrate that
NSI also occurs beyond the lab setting. Eg. Schultz et al. gathered data from many hotels over a week where
guests were allocated to rooms randomly as either control or experimental conditions. In the control rooms,
there was a door hanger informing the participants of the environmental benefits of reusing towels. In the
experimental condition, there was additional information stating that ‘75% of guests chose to reuse their
towels each day’. The results showed that in comparison to the control conditions, guests who received a
message that contained normative information about other guests reduced their need for fresh towels by 25%.
This is showing that they had conformed in order to ‘fit in’ with the perceived group behaviour.
A03
One strength for explanations of conformity is research support for ISI. Lucas et al students conformed more
to an incorrect answer when they found the task difficult in a maths problem. Showing people conform in
situations where they feel they don’t know the answer. This shows that ISI is a valid explanation of
,conformity because results were what ISI would predict.
However…
It is often unclear whether it is ISI or NSI at work. E.g. Asch found that conformity is reduced when there is
one other dissenting participant. The dissenter may reduce the power of the NSI (social support) or the ISI
(alternative info). Therefore it is hard to separate these processes because they probably both operate together
in real-world conformity explanations.
, Discuss research into obedience (16 marks)
A01
Obedience: Complying with or deferring to a request or order from a legitimate authority.
Milgrim’s research - Procedure and aims:
40 American men volunteered for an experiment about ‘memory’ in a lab at Yale uni.
Volunteer Ps were assigned as ‘teachers’ and told to give electric shocks of increasing severity to ‘learners’
(who were actually confederates but who Ps believed were just other volunteers).
Each time the confederate/learner gave a wrong answer, the P/teacher had to give him a shock (not real) – the
confederate was acting when he yelped and shouted.
- Procedures:
If the P/teacher hesitated in giving the shock, a lab-coated experimenter (the authority figure) gave verbal
prods such as ‘Please continue’, and ‘You have no choice, you must go on’. As the level of shocks rose, the
confederate/learner’s pre-recorded cries of pain and pleas for the P/teacher to stop were played. The P/teacher
had only 5-6 seconds between asking the question and having to give the shock.
A01
Milgrim’s research - Results and conclusions:
Results:
- All the Ps gave shocks up to 300V.
- 63% of the Ps continued to give shocks up to 450V – even though the confederate/learner fell silent
at 300V and even though they knew that 450V was a lethal electric shock.
Conclusion:
People have the capacity to follow orders which lead to inflicting harm on others. This may be because of the
‘agentic state’, in which they switch off their conscience, feeling that it is the authority figure who takes
responsibility for their actions.
Other data -
Milgram carried out a pilot study in which he asked psychologists what proportion of Ps they thought would
give electric shocks to other people, when ordered to do so.
Only 3% thought they would, so Milgram continued with his study.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it broke several ethical guidelines.
Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment
affects learning, rather than on obedience. They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that
was in fact pre‐determined. Due to the nature of the task Milgram did not protect the participants from
psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment and may have
continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human
being. Some critics of Milgram believed that these breaches could serve to damage the reputation of
psychology and jeopardise future research. This suggests that Milgram’s research was unethical.
However…
Milgram attempted to overcome all of the ethical breaches by debriefing all of the participants at the end and
by offering counselling to the ones who needed it.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it lacks ecological validity.
This is because Milgram conducted a laboratory study, which is very different from real‐life situations of
obedience. In everyday life we often obey far more harmless instructions, rather than giving people electric
shocks. As a result, we are unable to generalise his findings to real‐life situations of obedience and cannot
conclude that people would obey less severe instructions to the same degree.
However…
Milgram counters this claim, stating that the laboratory can reflect wider authority relationships seen in
real‐life situations. For example, Hofling et al. (1966) found that nurses were surprisingly obedient to
unjustified instructions from a doctor in a hospital setting. 21/22 nurses went along and gave the drug to the
patient despite the fact the instruction came from a bogus doctor.
A03
One limitation of Milgram’s study is that it lacks population validity.
