Social Influence Revision

Conformity is a type of social influence where a person gives in to group pressure. It is also known as majority influence.

Types of Conformity

Compliance

This refers to instances where a person may agree in public with a group of people but the person actually privately disagrees with the group’s viewpoint or behaviour. The individual changes their views, but it is a temporary change. For example a person may laugh at ‹‹wa joke because their group of friends find it funny but deep down the person does not find the joke funny.

Internalisation

Publicly changing behaviour to fit in with the group while also agreeing with them privately. An internal (private) and external (public) change of behaviour. This is the deepest level of conformity were the beliefs of the group become part of the individual’s own belief system.

An example of internalisation is if someone lived with a vegetarian at university and then decides to also become one too because they agree with their friends viewpoint / someone converting religions would also be a good example.

Identification

Identification occurs when someone conforms to the demands of a given social role in society. For example, a policeman, teacher or politician. This type of conformity extends over several aspects of external behaviour. However, there still be no changed to internal personal opinion.

A good example is Zimbardo's Prison Study.

Research Studies

Asch’s Line Study (A01)

Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious.

Procedure: In Asch’s study there were 7 participants per group. Each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length. In each group there was only one true participant the remaining 6 were confederates. The confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails.

Results: True participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials where confederates gave the wrong answers. Additionally 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial.

Evaluation of Asch’s Study (A02)

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• This study lacks ecological validity as it was based on peoples’ perception of lines, this does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity.

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• There are also sampling issues regarding this study as the study was only carried out on men thus the sample was gender bias and therefore the results cannot be applied to females. The sample therefore lacks population validity.

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• Moreover, there are ethical issues regarding Asch’s study – Mention deception as participants were told the study was about perception of lines. As a result they could not give informed consent. Furthermore it is possible that the participants may have felt embarrassed when the true nature of the study was revealed. Thus could potentially put them through some form of psychological harm. However Asch did debrief at the end.

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• For extra A02 points link Asch’s results to theories/reasons why people may conform to the majority. For instance some P’s said they conformed to fit in with the group, this claim coincides (supports) ‘Normative influence’ which states that people conform to fit in when privately disagreeing with the majority.

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Jenness’ Bean Jar Experiment (A01)

Jenness carried out a study into conformity – in his experiment participants were asked to estimate how many beans they thought was in a jar. Each participant had to make an individual estimate, and then do the same as a group.

He found that when the task was carried out in a social group, the participants would report estimates of roughly the same value (even though they had previously reported quite different estimates as individuals).

The study was successful in showing majority influence, thus proving that individuals' behaviour and beliefs can be influenced by a group. Additionally this is likely to be an example of informational social influence as participants would be uncertain about the actual number of beans in the jar.

Why People Conform

Normative 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.

For example a person may feel pressurised to smoke because the rest of their friends are. Normative influence tends to lead to compliance because the person smokes just for show but deep down they wish not to smoke. This means any change of behaviour is temporary. For a study on this refer to Asch.

Informational Influence

The desire to be right – when we conform because we are unsure of the situation or lack knowledge, so we look to others who we believe may have more information than us. This explanation tends to lead to internalisation.

An example of this is if someone was to go to a posh restaurant for the first time, they may be confronted with several forks and not know which one to use, so they might look to a near by person to see what fork to use first.

For a study on this refer to Jenness.

Big Group Size

An individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group.

For example, Asch altered the number of confederates in his study to see how this effected conformity. He found that conformity increase with each extra person (i.e. confederate) in the group. However, conformity did not increase much after the group size was about 4/5.

Difficulty of Task

When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation.

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