Conformity

1. Conformity Pg. 394

2. Conformity: the tendency to adjust ones thoughts, feelings or behaviour in ways that are in agreement with those of a particular individual or group or with accepted standards about how someone should behave in certain circumstances

3. Example: someone does something that they normally wouldn’t do in order to go along with the rest of the group • Can you think of other examples of conformity? • One of the best known experiments on conformity was conducted by Asch in the 1950s.

4. Asch’s experiments on conformity • Investigated group pressure to conform • Studied factors that influence conformity (such as group size and whether the group is unanimous) • 1951 experiment • A participant enters a room with 6 other people in it (confederates) and the experimenter • Participants are informed that they are ‘taking part in an experiment on visual judgment’

5. Key points • Participants were not aware that other people in the room were confederates • Confederates had been instructed to answer correctly for some questions and incorrectly for others (majority) • The participant had to decide between giving the same answer as the others in the group, even though their answers were often obviously incorrect or giving the answer that they believed was correct

6. Pictures shown to participants

7. Results • About 75% of the participants agreed with the confederates incorrect responses at least once during the trials • About 33% of the participants agreed with incorrect responses in half or more of the trials • 24% of the participants did not conform to the incorrect responses given by the confederates at all

8. Those participants who had generally conformed and agreed with the answers the confederates gave, said that they were aware that their responses and the confederates were wrong but they went along with the group because they did not want to spoil the experimenter’s results and they did not want to generate disharmony or conflict

9. Activity • pg,. 397 Activity 9.16, evaluation of Asch’s research

10. Factors affecting conformity • Before conducting his experiment, Asch hypothesised that people would not conform in situations where they could clearly see what is correct and what is incorrect • After conducting the experiment Asch said ‘That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a cause of concern’ (Asch, 1955)

11. Factors that Asch found can affect conformity • the size of the group • whether or not the group members are unanimous in their views • whether the group is viewed as being a valuable source of information • normative influence (awareness of accepted standards about how one should behave) • cultural background • social loafing • deindividuation

12. Group size • Group size is the amount of people in a particular group. Asch’s results showed that conformity increased with group size up to 4 • Beyond a group size of 4 conformity did not continue to increase significantly

13. Unanimity • Unanimity: complete agreement, among the group. • Imagine yourself in Asch’s experiment when everyone in the group gives the same answer, but an answer that is different from yours. • A break in unanimity reduced conformity by 80%.

14. Informational influence • Informational Influence: occurs when conformity results from a need for direction and information on the correct response in a specific situation. • Occurs more often when participants feel incompetent, when the task is difficult, or when participants are concerned about being right. • Individuals are more likely to conform when they want to provide a correct response but are unsure of what the correct response is.

15. Normative influence • When informational influence leads us to conform, we conform because we want to be right. • When normative influence leads us to conform, we conform to be liked and accepted by the group. • To conform occurs when our responsiveness in a group situation is guided by one or more social norms • When we are aware of social norms, awareness of these norms can be a powerful influence on both the likelihood that we will conform and the strength of the conformity

16. Culture • After Asch’s initial experiment many more experiments were conducted with different cultures and people. The experiments discovered that the culture of a person can effect how likely they are to conform. Countries with collective cultures are more likely to conform (some African and Asian countries) as opposed to countries with individualist cultures such as North America and Europe.

17. Social loafing • Social loafing refers to the tendency of an individual to make less effort when involved in a group activity than when working alone. • Social loafing can depend on many different factors, experimental research findings indicate that people are less likely to ‘loaf’ in groups when the group consists of friends rather than strangers, but this depends on how important the groups decision is to the individual.

18. Deindividuation • Deindividuation is the loss of individuality or the sense anonymity, that can occur in a group. • Anonymity in a group • When someone perceives themselves as ‘invisible’ or anonymous they are more likely to conform to what the rest of the group is doing, even if it is against what they normally would do • I.e. rioting/looting • Shift in attention • When individuals are with others in a group, their attention is often focused on the activities of the group and events in the environment; that is, events external to an individual. • Results in less focus in internal thoughts