Majority influence
- Created by: HLOldham
- Created on: 18-11-16 02:35
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- Majority influence
- Conformity: a change of an individual's behaviours and opinions when they learn that the majority of people in a group they belong to behave differently or hold different opinions.
- Sherif (1935, 1936)
- Used the autokinetic effect (in a dark room, a stationary point of light seems to be moving) participants estimated how far a point of light had moved.
- First alone, then in groups of 2 or 3, vs, first in groups, then alone.
- Found that when participants gave their initial estimates they were very different from one another.
- However, when participants were told what other participants had estimated, the estimates became more similar over successive trials.
- Used the autokinetic effect (in a dark room, a stationary point of light seems to be moving) participants estimated how far a point of light had moved.
- Asch (1951, 1952)
- Participants had to match a standard line to one of three comparison lines.
- There was one participant and six confederates (who had been instructed to unanimously give a wrong answer on 12/18 trials).
- In 36.8% of the trials, conformity to the wrong judgements of the majority was observed.
- Strong individual differences...
- 5% showed conformity on all trials.
- 76.4% gave a wrong answer at least once.
- 23.6% remained completely independent.
- The Crutchfield apparatus - an alternative way to measure conformity
- Mori and Arai (2010).
- Salganik, Dodds and Watts (2006)
- Social influence in a download music market 14341 participants were shown 48 unknown songs by unknown bands, decided which ones to listen to and download, gave 1 ("hated it") to 5 ("love it") star ratings.
- 2 conditions
- Independent (just names of songs and bands).
- Social influence (additional information about how often the song had been downloaded before).
- In the social influence popularity judgements were more polarised and it was more difficult to predict which songs would do well.
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