RECAP…

• How many marks do you need to get in a 12 mark question to receive an A*?

• What are A01, A02 & A03? (3 marks)

• Where did Wundt open the first school of Psychology? (1 mark for city, 1 mark for country)

• What year did this happen?

• What was the name of the technique Wundt used to measure cognitive processes?

• The scientific method is made up of 4 components… (4 marks)

…Identify the missing words…

1 2 3 4

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

• Social Psychologists – interested in human behaviour in social settings

• In this section we will consider the study of conformity and of obedience – 2 ways in which others may influence us…

LESSON 1: CONFORMITY

• Differentiate between different types of conformity• Understand different explanations for conformity• Evaluate these explanations• Recap Asch (1956) and variables that affect conformity• Evaluate research into conformity• Introduction to Conformity to Social Roles

CONFORMITY

• A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure

REAL VS. IMAGINED GROUP PRESSURE…

• Real Group Pressure

• Involves the physical pressence of others

• Imagined Group Pressure

• Involves the pressure of social norms and expectations

CONFORMITY

• Try and think of as many examples of conformity in your every day life…

1. A teacher has asked a question to the class. You know the answer, but no one else has put their hand up. Despite the fact that you know you are right do you give the answer or not?

2. You arrive at your classroom late and the teacher has not yet turned up yet. She may be late or she may be absent today. Most of the class get up and leave, do you follow them?

3. You walk into a lift and notice everyone facing away from the doors. You know they do not open through to the other side, which way to you stand?

4. You are taking part in a psychology study and are directed into a room with 8 other participants to fill out a questionnaire. You notice smoke appearing under the door, no-one reacts, what do you do?

LATANE ET AL (1968)

CONFORMITY

• It is not simply acting like others, but also being effected by how they act.

• You “consciously” act differently from the way you would act alone.

3 TYPES OF CONFORMITY:

• 1: Compliance

• Going along with a group in order to gain their approval or avoid their disapproval.

• It does not result in change in the individual’s underlying attitude: only the views and behaviours expressed in

public

3 TYPES OF CONFORMITY:

• 2: Internalisation

• Going along with a group because of an acceptance of their views

• Likely to occur if the group is trustworthy, knowledgeable about the subject area or if you have previously gone along with their views

• Leads to acceptance of the groups point of view both publicly and privately

3 TYPES OF CONFORMITY:

• 3: Identification

• Sole purpose of going along with the group is to fit in and identify oneself as a group member

• Has elements of both compliance and internalisation

There are different types

of conformity:

1. Compliance

2. Identification

3. Internalisation

Shallow Level

Deep Level

EXPLANATIONS FOR CONFORMITY

• 1. Normative Social Influence

• 2. Informational Social Influence

1. NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Normative social influence occurs when:

• We go along with a crowd/group in order to be liked or accepted and to avoid being mocked or ridiculed by others and to avoid being ‘the odd one out’.

For Example…

That was amazing!

Um yeah… it was

great…

Imagine you just went to the cinema with your friends to see a new film everyone’s been talking about.

They all loved it and are discussing how amazing it was. However you didn’t think it was very good… but in order to not stand out you just go along with their opinion on the film

1. NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

• This is much more likely to occur if:

• the individual feels that they are under surveillance by the group

• The individual has a desire to fit in with the group

2. INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE

• Occurs when we accept information from others as evidence about reality.

• We are unsure of the correct response and so look to others for the answers…

INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Informational social influence often occurs most when:

• The situation is ambiguous. We have different choices but are unsure of which choice to take (such as Asch discovered when upping the task difficulty).

• When we have little or no time to think and must make abrupt decisions!

• When we accept others as experts and assume they must know better than us (such as Asch discovered with the status of a majority group).

For Example…

Imagine you are dining at a very fancy restaurant. You have been given a multitude of different cutlery but aren’t sure of the proper way to use them…what do you do?

More often than not you will look around to others and try to see what they’re doing and copy them (because we believe they know better than us)

CONFORMITY EXPERIMENT

Milgram et al, (1969)

EVALUATION…

• Difficulties in distinguishing between compliance and internalisation…

EVALUATION…

• Support for Normative Social Influence

• Schultz et al (2008) found that hotel guests exposed to the message that “75% of guests reused their towels each day” (rather than requiring fresh towels) reduced their own towel use by an average of 25%.

• Linken & Perkins (2003) found that adolescents exposed to the simple message that the majority of their peer group didn’t smoke, were subsequently less likely to take up smoking

EVALUATION…

• Research support for informational social influence

• Wittenbrink & Henley (1996) found that Ppt’s exposed to negative information about African Americans (which they were led to believe was the view of the majority) later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual.

EVALUATION…

• Normative Social Influence is under-detected and people largely dismiss it as being the driving force behind behaviour change…even if it is!

SHERIF (1936)

• People use other peoples behaviour to decide what to do.

• Autokinetic effect – an optical illusion

• Participants were put in a darkened room, with no visible objects and asked to focus on a single spot of light.

• They were asked how far the light had moved and in what direction

SHERIF (1936)

• No correct answer as light does NOT move

• Dramatic variation in response

• Repeated experiment in groups of 3

• Sherif found that individuals changed their individual views and converged or agreed with with others within the group.

• Group norm was formed

SOLOMON ASCH (1956)

ASCH (1956)

• A true participant was seated in a row among confederates.

• The participant was seated 6th in a row of 7 people.

• The goal of the study was to examine perceptual judgments & the participants were instructed to pick which of 3 lines “matched” a standard line.

The true participant could see that one of the lines was obviously a match, the others obviously wrong.

ASCH (1956)

• There were 12 critical trials using stimuli similar to that shown opposite…

THE RESULTS OF ASCH’S EXPERIMENT

32%

68%

Conformed didn't conform

On average about one third of participants went along and conformed with the incorrect majority during the critical trials.

75%

25%

Over the course of the 12 critical trails around 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% didn’t conform at all.

1%

99%

In the group with no given pressure to conform less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.

CONCLUSION

Why do we conform so willingly?

After the trials had been completed the participants were interviewed. The majority of participants said that they didn’t believe the answers they were giving to be true but had gone along with the views of the group in fear of being mocked or seeming “peculiar”. some however actually believed the answers they were giving to be correct.

It was concluded that people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in (normative influence) and because they believe others are better informed than they are (informational influence).

Which one matches the first?

Clearly this one!?

EVALUATION OF ASCH (1956) …

• Gender Bias

• Ethics?

• Just a sign of the times?

• Ethnocentric

• Lacks Ecological Validity

• Demand Characteristics?

PERRIN & SPENCER (1980)

• Repeated Asch’s experiment in the UK in 1980 using students who were studying engineering and science.

• They found 1 conforming response out of a total of 396 trials where the majority gave the incorrect answer…

PERRIN & SPENCER (1980)

• Perrin & Spencer then repeated this study again but this time using youths on probation as the participants and probation officers as confederates.

• The results showed 29% of participants conformed at least once –a result comparable to Asch’s 1956 study

FACTORS AFFECTING CONFORMITY

Status of Majority Group

People are often likely to conform if they are around someone they consider to be of high status. For example…

A BOSS OR A TEACHER

We find these sorts of people more influential or knowledgeable and so will conform to their opinions more (e.g. informational influence).

Therefore the higher the status of the group the higher the level of conformity.

OTHER FACTORS AFFECTING CONFORMITYGroup size and answering privately

This is a participant in Asch’s trial. The participant was asked to do Asch’s experiment in private where he could answer alone.

Because the participant was allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group didn’t know their response) conformity decreased. This is because there was less group pressure and normative influence was not as powerful as there is no fear of rejection from the group.

However, conformity tends to increase as the size of the group increases

Now that there is a group of two (one of which is a confederate) the likelihood of conformity is now

3%

Now that there is a group of three(two of which are confederates) the likelihood of conformity is now

13%

Now that there is a group of four(three of which are confederates) the likelihood of conformity is now

32%

However, once the group reaches around 4-5 people there is very little change in the levels of conformity. Because of this, it is considered the optimal group size.

CAMPBELL & FAIREY (1989)

• Group size has a different effect depending on the type of judgement being made and the motivation of the individual

• If the motivation is to fit in (NSI) and there is no objectively correct answer, a larger group size is required to elicit a change in behaviour

• If the motivation is to be correct and there is a right or wrong answer, the individual is concerned with being correct and the views of just 1 or 2 others is sufficient

OTHER FACTORS AFFECTING CONFORMITYDifficulty of task

A B C

Steve has now been given another task. However this task is much harder than the previous ones as the lines are all of similar size.When we are unsure, we often look to others for confirmation or reassurance. The harder the task the greater the conformity.

?It’s B!

Yeah… that’s uh… what I was

thinking too

LUCAS ET AL (2006)

• Difficulty of task effected ppt’s low in ‘self –efficacy’

(belief in ones confidence in completing a task)

LUCAS ET AL (2006)

OTHER FACTORS AFFECTING CONFORMITY

Social Support

It’s B!

It’s B!

It’s B!

It’s A!

It’s C!?

When one other person in the group gave an answer different from the others and the group answer was not unanimous, conformity dropped.

Asch found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity as much as

80%

This suggests that people conform because they worry about what others will think of them (i.e. normative influence).

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN CONFORMITY?

• Smith et al (2006) conducted a meta-analysis of Asch-type studies across different cultures

• Results showed an average of 25% conformity rates across individualist cultures

• Whereas in collectivist cultures, results averaged 37%!

EXAM PREP… 1:

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