Psychology ubit 2

Aims and context; Deutsch and gerard(1955)2 types of conformity;normative social influence(desire to be liked)/Informational social influence(desire to be right) Kelman(1958) 3 types of conformity;compliance/identification/internalisation.

Jeness(1932);students estimate of beans in jar/estimate 1st on their own/make group estimate/make second individual estimate/individual second estimates converged to group one

Sherif(1935)the autokinetic effect/darkened room stationary spot which appears to move/asked to estimate how far light moved 1st individual estimate group discussion 2nd individual estimate/converging 2nd estimate

Aims;task completely unambiguous with clear correct answer/would students still?

Procedures;123 male students from 3 US colleges voluntered and were told they were participating in vision test/put into groups of 7-9 with only one ppt in each group the rest confederates/shown 2 white cards one with a control line and the other with three comparison lines/asked to choose which one of the lines were the same length as the control line/9 out of the 12 trials confederates all gave the incorrect answers/however students gave correct answer for first 2 trials.

FIndings and conclusions;participants gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time of critical trials/in control trial people gave the wrong answer less than 1% of the time/25% never gave a wrong answer/75% of students conformed atleast once/students conformed consistently over the trials as if they refused to conform in the frst few trials this maintained through the whole experiment/independant people confident and conclusions.

Additional finidings:size of group;2 confederates=13.6% conformity/3 confederates=31.8% conformity additional confederates made no difference.Truthful partner;reduced pressure to conform answered incorrectly 25% of the time.Inaccurate partner;increased independance.Partner who leaves;once partner leaves conforms back to the majority.

Methodology:Lab experiment;Pros;replicable as variables are tightly controlled so can be repeated to test reliability.Cons;demand characteristics as participants were aware of research affecting reliability/artificial setting therefor low ecological validity.

Self selected/volunteer sample;Pros;easy to obtain participants in this way.Cons;are not a typical group as most people do not volunteer/were also all male uni students from US which is very unrepresentative/we can therefor not generalise findings to other clutures genders etc.

Ethics:Deception;were unaware that they were taking part in conformity test rather than vision/could not give conformed consent.Harm;feel awkward and embarrassed if discovered true nature of experiment.

Alternative evidence:Crutchfield;believed face to face caused conformity/had ppt rate lines in cubicles but were still able to see confederates answers/found that conformity was 30%/supports asch and suggests that you dont have to be in the presence of people to conform to them.

Perrin and spencer(1980);replicated asch using 33 brit students from math chem and enginering courses/found one conforming response in 396 trials/contradicts asch as there is little-no conformity/however they were done in different times therefor could be results of time diff/could also be diff of cultures.

Perrin and spencer(1981);using probation youths as ppt and probation officers as confed demonstrated good conformaty levels/supports aschs findings and suggests for some groups conformity is higher especially when speaking out is punished.