Conformity

Asch’s research

 Unambiguous situation
 Original study = baseline study in which other variations are compared with

Baseline study

 123 american male pp

 1 standard line on a card with 3 comparison lines on another card
 1 pp in a group of total 6-8 with them being second to last or last – rest were confederates
 36.8% conformed on average
 25% never conformed, 75% conformed at least once

Variations

Group size

 Varied group size (3-15 confederates)

 Curvilinear
 Conformity increased until 3 (31.8%) confederates and then little to no difference
 Showed that just 1 or 2 ppl are required to sway a persons opinion

Unanimity

 Presence of a dissenter
 1 variation right answer and another variation different wrong answer
 Conformity decreased – dissenter allowed pp to behave more independently

Task difficulty

 More ambiguous – similar lines

 ISI – feel as though some1 else is right

Evaluation

Artificial situation and task – e.g. lines card – demand characteristics – go along with what they expect – no
consequence so no reason not to conform – not generalisable to real world

Limited application – American men – neto 1995 (women conform more because NSI) – Bond and Smith 1996 (usa is
individualist and china is collectivist and conformity rate is higher in china) – not generalisable to all population

Research support – lucas et all – asked easy and hard maths problem and pp conformed more often with hard questions
because of task difficulty and isi – supports asch research – however more complex and high ability students conformed
less that low ability students – participant variables and individual level factors that asch did not research may affect
conformity

Types of conformity

Internalisation

 Private + public
 Permanent change
 Becomes their way of thinking and take of opinion and behaviours of other

Identification

 Public
 Agree because we value something about the group and so we want to be a part of it

Compliance
 Public
 Superficial change
 Simply going along with others

Explanations for conformity

ISI

 Need to be right
 Who has better info since sometimes we are uncertain
 Cognitive proves
 Permanent change – internalisation
 Most likely with new ppl or with ambiguity or crisis where quick decisions need to be made

NSI

 Need to be liked
 Social norms – regulate opinion and behaviour
 Emotional process
 Temporary change – compliance
 Most likely with new ppl or with friends or stressful situation where more social support is needed

Asch support NSI  self conscious

Lucas et al support ISI  hard q  counterpoint is that it is hard t distinguish difference between nsi and isi e.g. asch
shows dissenting pp may reduce nsi because of social support or isi because of alternate source of info

Individual difference  pp variable  e.g. mcghee and teevan said nAffliliators need more social approval

Conformity to social roles

Zimbardo’s research

 Many prison riots and wanted to know why prison guard brutality – personality or social role

Stanford prison experiment

 Mock prison in basement of psych department

 21 male students who were deemed emotionally stable from psychological testing
 Random assigned
 Prison has loose smock and cap and number no name
 Guard has uniform wooden club handcuff and mirror shades
 De individuation to conform to perceived role more
 Were told to identify with social role

Findings related to social roles

 Guards treated pp harshly

 Prisoners reblled in 2 days and ripper uniformed and swore at guards who retaliated with fire extinguishers
 Guards used divide and rule tactic but putting prisoners against eachother
 Constant head counts – call out number in line
 Prisoners were taken from homes without consent
 Prisoners were strip searched and deloused
 Guards made sure to show off their social role by constantly enforcing rules
 Prisoners became subdued, depressed and anxious
 One p was released as he showed psychological disturbance
 Two more were released on the fourth day
 One p went on hunger strike – guards tried to force feed and then put him in the hole which is a small dark
closet
 Study ended after 6 days instead of 14
Conclusions related to social roles

 Social roles have influence on individual behaviour and guard were brutal and prisoners were submissive
 Roles were easily taken on and forgotten that it was a psychological study

Lab  controlled – random assigned – emotionally stable testing provided similar characteristic people  increased
internal validity

Lack realism – banuazizi and mavahedi – play acting to the social role they think its how they behave - however
mcdermott argues that prisoners acted as though they were in a real prison and discussed prison life to eachother and
about their sentences

However results are not as valid since 1/3 brutal 1/3 fair and 1/3 nice – exaggerated idea of social roles

Milgram’s research 1963

Situational variables

 Milgram carried out variations to test situational variables

Proximity

 In baseline teacher could hear learner but not see him

 In variation teacher and learner were in the same room
 Obedience rate dropped from 65 to 45%
 In touch proximity the teacher has to force leaners hand onto electroshock plate when they refused and this
dropped obedience ti 30%
 In remote instruction variables, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions over the phone and
obedience dropped to 20.5% and pp even faked giving shocks
 Less proximity let people psychologically distance themselves from consequences but when closer pp were
more aware of harm they cause by shocking

Location

 Conducted variation in run down office block

 Conformity dropped to 47.5%
 In prestigious university milgram had legitimacy and authority and pp obeyed
 But still high because of the scientific nature of experiment

Uniform

 In baseline experimenter wore grey lab coat

 In variation experimenter was called away and a general public (confederate) took over in everyday clothes and
conformity dropped to 20%
 Uniform encourages conformity as it is widely recognised symbols of authority
 Uniform gives legitimate authority so someone without uniform has less right to expect obedience

Obedience: situational explanations

Agentic state

 Interest in obedience when Eichmann 1961 said he was just obeying orders
 Person does not take responsibility for their actions and are acting for someone else as their ‘agent’
 They experience moral strain but fell powerless to disobey

Autonomous state

 Person feel responsible for their actions and behave according to their own principles

Agentic shift
  Shift from autonomy to agency
 Occurs when a person perceives someone else as authority figure and those who have a higher position in the
social hierarchy

Binding factors

 People remained in agentic state and felt powerless because of binding factors
 Factors that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce moral
strain e.g. shifting blame on victim or denying damage they did to victims

Legitimacy of authority

 Some people are given power in society e.g. police, teachers, parents etc.
 Consequence is that they have the powrr to punish however they wish

Destructive authority

 E.g. Hitler
 Use authority for destructive purposes
 Destructive authority was shown in milgram’s study when experimenter used probs to order pp to behave in
ways that went against their own principles

Obedience: dispositional explanation

Authoritarian personality

 Adorno wanted to investigate anti-Semitism

 Believed obedience is a psychological disorder
 To do with individual personality rather than the situation

Ap and obedience

 People with ap have extreme respect for authority

 View society as weaker than before and we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional vales such
as love of country and family
 Looks down upon inferior social status
 Black and white pov
 Looks down upon minority groups (people of colour etc)

Origins of AP

 Harsh parenting
 Strict discipline
 Expectation of absolute loyalty
 Impossibly high standards
 Severe criticisms of perceived failings
 Conditional love
 Childhood experience creates resentment and hostility but child cannot express their feelings as they fear
punishment
 Displaced onto those who are perceived as weaker – scapegoating  creates hatred towards minority groups
and inferior
 Psychodynamic explanation

Adorno’s research

 Over 2000 middle class white men

 Unconscious attitudes towards racial groups
 Made potential for fascism scale (F-scale) used to measure AP
 Findings show that those with high f scale results identified tiwth superior and looked down upon inferior and
had respect for those of higher status
  Found that those with ap had cognitive style of black and white thinking (no fuzziness and stereotypes)
 Strong correlation between AP and prejudice

Resistant to social influence

Social support

Resisting conformity

 Pressure to conform can be resisted in the presence of other who don’t conform
 Someone else not following the majority is social support
 Dissenter acts as model of independent behaviour and allows pp to be free to follow their own conscience

Resisting obedience

 Pressure to conform can be resisted in the presence of other who don’t obey
 In aschs variation rate dropped from 65 to 10% when disobeying confederate was present
 Model of dissent for pp to copy
 Model challenges legitimate authority making it easier for other to do so too

LOC

 Rotter 1966
 Proposed inter and external LOC
 Internal is personal control of actions and working hard
 External is luck and believe everything is outside of their control

LOC continuum

Not just one or the other – there is a scale

Resistant to social influence

 People with high internal resist pressure to conform or obey and takes personal responsibility for their actions
and experiences, they base decisions of their own principles rather than the opinion of others
 High internal tend to be more confident and achievement oriented and leaders with less need for social
approval

Minority influence

 Minority influence majority

 Lead to internalisation

Moscovici research 1969

 6 people group 4 pp 2 confed

 36 blue card and state whether blue or green
 one group cofed consistent green
 Pp said green on 8.42% trials
 Another group inconsistent minority and said 24 times green and 12 times blue
 Pp said green on 1.25 % trials
 With control group with no confederates it was 0.25%

Consistency

 Consistent in their views

 Over time more intersent
 Synchronic – agreement between minority / all saying the same thing
 Diachronic – same thing over a long period oftime
 Consistent minority makes people rethink their views
Commitment

 Risk to show commitment (augmentation principle)

Flexibility

 Nemeth said other factors are important for minority influene to not be offputting as someone who does this
may be seen as rigid and unbeding and dogmatic
 Open to ideas of the majority and adapt their pov

Social influence and social change

Lessons from minority influence research

 Drawing attention  consistency  deeper processing  augmentation principle (risk to show commitment)
 snowball effect (deeper processing and change in perspective)  social cryptomnesia (change in pov but
don’t know how it occurred)

Lessons from conformity research

 Presence of dissenter
 Or nsi where they use the fact that others do it to their advantage – use majority to influence minority

Lessons from obedience research

 Milgram said Presence of dissenter

 Zimbardo said gradual commitment – when one small instruction is obeyed its harder to resist a bigger one