Social Influence

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

CONFORMITY

TYPES OF CONFORMITY

CONFORMITY: the tendency to change what we do think or say in response to the influence of others. The pressure to conform can be real or imagined.

1. COMPLIANCE: a superficial type of conformity in which people conform publicly but privately disagree.

Example: Hollie agrees with her friends that a film was excellent whilst secretly not enjoying it very much.

2. IDENTIFICATION: a type of conformity in which people change their beliefs to fit in with a group, but the change may only be temporary.

Example: Hollie goes to the army and adopts the belief to support your colleagues even when they’re wrong. However, doesn’t keep the views after leaving the army.

3. INTERNALISATION: the deepest type of conformity in which people change their beliefs permanently, so the beliefs become part of their way of seeing the world.

Example: Hollie became vegan at university because all her roommates were and still was vegan when she returned home.

ASCH (1951)

AIM: to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.

PROCEDURE:

• Lab experiment
• 50 US male students
• One participant, 7 confederates
• Each confederate stated the wrong answer, even when obvious
• Real participant sat last
• 18 trials in total (12 trials were wrong answers called critical trials

RESULTS:

• On average, 32% of participants conformed
• 75% conformed at least once and 25% never conformed

CONCLUSION: participants said too conform even when they knew the answer was wrong because they didn’t want to be ridiculed by the group. A few of them said they really did believe the group’s answers were correct.

EVALUATION:

Strengths

• High level control over extraneous variables
• Cause and effect relationships can be uncovered
• Could manipulate variables (e.g. size of group)

Weaknesses

• Biased sample, cant generalise to women
• Low ecological validity, as we don’t do this everyday
• Results are believed to be due to the time era
• Perrin and spencer (1980) replicated study and found lower rates of conformity

EXPLANATIONS FOR CONFORMITY

NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE: 

• Conformity based on the desire to be liked and accepted by a group
• This is due to people believing it is rewarding
• Also, groups have the power to exclude you or not fitting in with them
• Most likely to occur when conformity is compliance
• Reason given for conforming in Asch’s study
• For example, Hollie lied about smoking to fit in with her new group of friends

INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE:

• Conformity based on the desire to do the right thing
• When people are unsure on how to behave, we look to the majority viewpoint
• If it isn’t the right thing at least the person will not be standing out from others
• This occurred in Asch’s experiment when people didn’t trust their own eyes and looked to others
• For example, Hollie joined in with other rioters even though she was unsure on why they were rioting

VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY

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