SOCIAL INFLUENCE SUMMARY

Types of conformity

Conformity - a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure.

Internalisation- genuinely accept group norms. Change In public and private. Permanent.

Identification- identify with a group and want to be a part of it. Publicly change even if they don’t completely agree.

Compliance- ‘going along with the group’ publicly but not changing privately. Only a superficial change. 

Deutsch and Gerald (1955) said there are two main reasons for conformity:

Informative Social Influence- need to be right. A cognitive process is when you decide what to do based on who has the better information. Most likely in new situations or when it is unclear when it is correct, where a person is considered an expert when decisions need to be made quickly. 

Normative Social Influence- the need to be liked. Norms regulate the behaviour of the groups. Prefer to gain social approval. 

Conformity- Asch

1951,1955 Asch paired one naive participant up with 6-8 confederates. Began by giving the correct answer then all gave the wrong answer. 75% of the participants conformed at least once to the wrong answer. 

Procedure- participants had to identify lines of the same length. 12/18 critical trials.

Findings-mistakenly agreed with the majority 37% of the time. 25% never conformed.

Group size- conformity increased to 32% with a majority of 3 but no further.

Unanimity-conformity dropped with a dissenter.

Task difficulty-conformity increased as tasks got harder, relates to ISI.

Artificial task- a limitation of Asch. People knew they were in a study. Demand characteristics. Trivial so no reason not to conform. Fiske (2004) argued groups did not resemble real life. Do not generalise to situations with consequences. 

Research support- Lucas et al. (2006) gave easy and hard maths problems. Conformed more when it was more difficult. Supports Asch’s claims of task difficulty. Counterpoint- Lucas’ study showed people with high confidence conformed less so individual factors can also affect conformity.

Ethical issues-participants were deceived. The ethical cost weighed up against benefits.

Limited application- all participants were American men, women are more conformist. The US is an individualist culture, collective cultures have higher rates of conformity.

Stanford Prison Experiment 1973

‘Do prison guards behave brutally because they have sadistic personalities, or is it the situation

Procedure- emotionally stable students played roles of prisoners and guards in a prison simulation scheduled for two weeks. Guards and prisoners had own roles.

Findings-guards treated prisoners harshly especially after suppressing a rebellion. Prisoners became depressed and the study was stopped after 6 days.

Aim-  to see if people conformed to social roles.

Conclusion-guards, prisoners and researchers conformed to their roles. The study demonstrated the power of the situation to influence behaviour.

Control- Zimbardo had control over key variables. Randomly assigned roles ruled out individual personality differences. Behaviour was due to role. Increases internal validity. Conclusions are drawn more confidently.

Lack of realism-not realistic prison. Banuazizi and Movahedi argued participants were play-acting rather than conforming. Little about conformity in prison roles. Counterpoint…