Conformity: Majority influence

• Conformity is a type of social influence, involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group
• Kiesler & Kiesler, 1969: "A change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagine group pressure."
• We look to others for guidance about what to do, feel, or think. The behaviour of others establishes the range of possible behaviour; it gives us a frame of reference
• Conformity can also be defined as "yielding to group pressures" (Crutchfield, 1955)
• It can also be known as majority influence, or group pressure
• It is the tendency to align your attitudes, beliefs and behaviours with those around you. It's a powerful force that can take the form of overt social pressures or subtler unconscious influence

• Informational influence: this is where someone conforms to a view because they believe it to be correct. People have a need to feel that their perceptions, beliefs, and feelings are right. When we make judgements about physical reality, we can usually rely on our own senses. When information from our senses is not reliable or sufficient, we rely on others. This is associated with internalisation.
• Social judgements: social decisions are, by nature, more ambiguous. They are based on subjective judgements, not senses
• Normative social influence: this type of social influence is most commonly associated with compliance, which is when an individual goes along with the majority even if they don't accept their beliefs. Normative social influence is when a majority are able to control other groups by exerting pressure on them to conform.
• Social Impact Theory: Theory developed by Latane. Key principles are: Number - a higher number of people supporting the conforming view, the greater the levels of conformity. Strength - the more important people are to the individual, the higher the levels of conformity. Immediacy - an individual will have greater influence if the group they are trying to influence is smaller.

• Like Sherif, Asch (1952) believed that conformity reflects a process in which people construct a norm from other people's behaviour in order to determine what the correct and appropriate behaviour for themselves is.
• If you are already confident and certain about what is appropriate and correct, then others' behaviour will be largely irrelevant and unimportant. In Sherif's 1936 study, the answer was unclear, so a norm rose rapidly and was highly effective in guiding behaviour. Asch argued that if the object of judgement was entirely unambiguous, then disagreement, or alternative perceptions would have no effect on behaviour; individuals would remain entirely independent of group influence.
• Asch's 1952 study demonstrated majority influence. He had disproved himself, because although the answer to his task was unambiguous and clearly answerable, around 32% conformed to the wrong answer. The accounts of his participants suggest that one reason why people conform, even when the stimulus is completely unambiguous, may be to avoid ridicule and social disapproval. If participants were not worried about social disapproval, would there be pressure to conform? To test this, Asch conducted another variation of his study where the incorrect majority called out their answers but the single naive participant wrote his down. Conformity dropped to 12.5%

• The existence of large individual differences in conformity has led psychologists to search for personality attributes that predispose some people to conform more than others
• Those who conform tend to have low self-esteem, a high need for social support/approval, a need for self-control, low IQ, high anxiety, feelings of self-blame and insecurity, feelings of inferiority, and feelings of relatively low status.
• However, contradictory findings that people who conform in one situation don't conform in another suggest that situational factors may be more important than personality in conformity
• A similar conclusion can be drawn from research into sex differences in conformity. Women are typically found to conform slightly more than men. However, this can generally be explained in terms of the conformity tasks employed - ones with which women have less familiarity and expertise with, experience greater uncertainty and thuys are influenced more than men.
• Sistrunk & McDavid (1971): exposed male and female participants to group pressure in identifying various stimuli. There were some traditionally masculine items (e.g identifying a special type of wrench) and some traditionally feminine items (e.g identifying types of needlework), and some neutral stimuli. As expected, women conformed more on masculine items, men more on feminine items, and both groups equally on neutral.

• Smith, Bond & Kagitfibasi (2006) surveyed conformity studies that used Asch's paradigm or a variant. They found significant intercultural variation. The level of conformity ranged from a low of 14% among Belgian students (Doms, 1983) to a high of 58% among Indian teachers in Fiji (Chandra, 1973), with an overall average of 31.2%. Conformity was lower among participants from individualist cultures in North America and north-western Europe (25.3%) than among participants from collectivist or interdependent cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and South America
• The higher level of conformity in collectivist cultures arises because conformity is viewed favourably, as a form of social glue (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). 

• The 2 situational factors in conformity that have been most exhaustively researched are group size and group unanimity. Asch (1952) found that as the unanimous group increased from one person to 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, the conformity rate increased then decreased slightly (3, 13, 33, 35, 32, 31%)
• Some research reports a linear relationship between size and conformity (Mann, 1977), the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full strenght with a 3-5 person majority.
• Campbell & 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. With matters of taste, where there is no objectively correct answer (e.g music preference), and where the individual is concerned about 'fitting in', group size will have a relatively linear effect, the larger the group, the more persuasive it is.
• Asch's original experiment employed a unanimous erroneous majority to obtain a conformity rate of 33%. Subsequent experiments have shown that conformity is signficiantly reduced if the majority is not unanimous (Allen, 1975). Asch found that a correct supporter reduced conformity from 33 to 5.5%.
• Support itself may not be the crucial factor in reducing conformity. Any sort of lack of unanimity is effective. Supports, dissenters and deviates may be effective in reducing conformity because they shatter the unanimity of the majority

Kelman (1958) distinguished between 3 different types of conformity

• Compliance: This occurs when an individual accepts influence, even if their personal beliefs do not align with the majority, because they want to be accepted. This tends to be a short-term change or temporary, and is usually the result of normative social influence.
• Internalisation: This is the deepest level of conformity. An individual who internalises has changed their public behaviour and private beliefs. This is usually a long-term change or permanent, and often the result of informational social influence.
• Identification: Individuals conform to the expectations of a social role, for example: a police officer or a nurse. The person changes their public behaviour and private beliefs, but only whilst they are in the presence of the group.

• Asch created a classic experimental paradigm. The aim of his study was to investigate to what extent social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
• Male students participated in what they believe to be a visual discimination task. They were placed in groups of 7-9, with one naive participant in each group, the rest being confederates.
• They took turns in a fixed order to publicly call out which of three comparison lines was the same length as a standard line. The answer was always obvious The naive participant was always made to answer second to last. There were 18 trials in total. 12 of the 18 trials were "critical trials", where the confederates were instructed to give the wrong answer.
• The results showed that 32% of participants in critical trials conformed to the majority clearly incorrect answer. Over all 12 critical trials, around 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed. In the control groups where there were no confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer
• Asch asked his participants why they conformed. They all reported initially experiencing uncertainty and self-doubt, which gradually evolved into self-consciousness, fear of disapproval, and feeligns of anxiety. Some felt their perceptions may hae been inaccurate and that the majority was actually correct. Some went along with the majority because they didn't want to stand out.

• Although much social influence is reflected in compliance, it can also operate in a less direct manner, through conformity to social or group norms. Allport (1924) observed that people in groups gave less extreme and more conservative judgements of odours and weights than when they were alone. In the absence of direct pressure, the group could cause members to converge and become more similar to one another
• Sherif (1936) linked the convergence effect to the development of group norms. He argued that people use the behaviour of others to establish the range of possible behaviour. To test these, he conducted his classical studies using autokinesis, in which 2 or 3 person groups making estimates of physical movement quickly converged over a series of trials on the mean of the group's estimates, and remained influenced by this norm even when subsequently making their estimates alone. The norms had been internalised