Conformity Studies

Sherif (1935)
1. Type of experiment?
  1. Repeated Measures
2. Aim?
  1. Investigatin whether people would be influence by others in an ambiguous situation.
3. Method?
  1. Participants, tested individually, were shown a point of light in a totally darkened room. The light was not moving. Each participant was asked to estimate how far and in which direction the light had moved.
  2. In the second part of the experiment participants were put into small groups of about three people. each was asked to describe the movement of the light in the presence of others.
4. Results?
  1. When alone estimates were widespread. But over a number of trials the answers converged and the gave similar estimates
5. Conclusion?
  1. In an ambiguous situation, participants are influenced by the judgment of others.
6. Evaluation?
  1. Strengths?
    1. Sherif did not sake the participants to arrive at a group decision but participants still conformed, thus, illustrates majority influence due to group pressure
    2. As the design used was repeated measures the differences between conditions are due to changes in your IV not due to participant variable because you're using the same participants.
  2. Weaknesses?
    1. It is not unusual for people to conform if they are not certain of their own judgment and therefore suggests nothing surprising about human behaviour.
    2. Repeated measures means that there will be order effects (for example recognising demand characteristics).
    3. Low ecological validity as it was a lab experiment and is therefore and unnatural environment. behaviour may not reflect real life.
Asch (1951)
1. Type of experiment?
2. Aim?
  1. To investigate whether people would conform to the judgements of others in situations where such judgements were clearly wrong.
3. Method?
  1. Male students were asked to take part in a study of visual discrimination. They were tested in groups of nine. In each group there was only one genuine 'naïve' participant. All the other participants were confederates (or stooges). The participants were seated in a semi circle. Their task was to decide which one of the three comparison lines shown to them was the same length as the standard line. they had to give their judgement aloud in the order in which they were seated, with the naïve participant answering second to last. There were eighteen trials. In six trials the stooges gave the correct answer but on the other twelve they gave the same wrong answer. There was a control group where confederates gave correct answers.
4. Variations?
  1. Size of the majority?
    1. Asch ran groups in which the size of the majority was changed from one to sixteen. One person (the stooge) ha not real effect on conformity. Two stooges in the majority produced 13% errors. Three stooges produced 33% errors. The addition of further stooges does not lead to further increases in conformity.
  2. Unanimity?
    1. Asch wondered if the unanimity of the groups made the naive participant feel isolated, increasing the tendency to conform. Asch broke the unanimity and gave the participant a 'supporter', that is a stooge who answered before the participant and who gave a different answer to that of the group. The results showed that a break in unanimity, even when the answer is wrong, reduced conformity to around 5.5%.
      1. Allen and Levine (1971) arrange for the supporter to appear as if they had extremely poor vision. Even in such situations conformity was reduced though not quite as much as when the supporter appears convincing.
  3. Task difficulty?
    1. The more difficult the task, the heater the conformity. Linked to this is the belief tin one's competence. Research has found that those who perceive themselves as competent in tasks conform less that others. Perrin and Spencer (1981) replicated Asch's using British students who were studying engineering, maths and chemistry (they wanted to avoid students who might have been familiar with Asch's study). These students remained independent, reporting correct answers even though they faced unanimous majority. In several hundred trials only one error was made. One possible explanation is that these students considered themselves competent. Engineering students in particular need to be precise when using lines.
  4. Anonymity?
    1. When the incorrect major called out their judgement but the single naïve participant wrote his down privately, conformity dropped to just over 12%. This suggests that we are still influenced by others even when asked for our private views. An example of this is voting behaviour. Even though we can vote in private , our views may still be influenced by the media and our friends before reaching a decision. Campaigners are aware of this, which is why they use facts selectively to influence peoples vote.
  5. Self esteem?
    1. Asch (1956) suggested that people with low self esteem conform more than people with high self esteem. This is possibly linked to a strong need for social approval.
5. Results?
  1. Asch measures the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view: approximately one third (33%) of participants conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials. He found that 75% of all participants conformed at least once. whereas in the control group less than 1% gave the wrong answer.
6. Conclusion?
  1. Asch demonstrated that people will conform to the majority view even when that answer is obviously incorrect. It showed that groups exert pressure on an individual in some way to make them conform to majority view.
    1. Ach asked participants following the experiment how they had felt in that group. All said they felt uncomfortable and doubtful of their own judgements.
7. Evaluation?
  1. Strengths?
  2. Weaknesses?
Baron, Vandello and Brunsman (1996)
1. Type of experiment?
2. Aim?
3. Method?
  1. They gave participants an eyewitness task, showing them a picture of a perpetrator and then having them pick that person out of a lineup. The task was ambiguous by having the perpetrator dressed differently in the lineup tun in the original photo and, and by flashing the lineup for only half a sec on. The importance of the task was manipulated by telling some
4. Results
5. Conclusion
6. Evaluation
  1. Strengths?
  2. Weaknesses?
    1. unthical: deception

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Conformity Studies

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