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| Question | Answer |
| Who suggested that there are 3 ways in with people conform to the opinion of the majority? | Herbert Kelman (1958) |
| Conformity. | A change in person's behavior or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people. |
| Types of Conformity - Internalisation. | A deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct. Leads to permanent change in behavior even when the group is absent. |
| Types of Conformity - Identification. | A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be a part of it. But we don't necessarily agree with everything the majority believes. |
| Types of Conformity - Compliance. | A superficial and temporary type of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view, but privately disagree with it. The change in our behavior only lasts as long as a group is monitoring us. |
| Who argued that there are two main reasons people conform and developed a 2 process theory? | Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955). |
| Explanations for conformity - Informational social influence (ISI) | An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it is correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well. This may lead to internalisation. |
| Explanations for conformity - Normative social influence (NSI). | An explanation of conformity that says we agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked. This may lead to compliance. |
| Explanations for conformity - when does ISI occur? | ISI is most likely to occur in situations that are new to a person (so you don't know what is right) or situations where there is some ambiguity, so it isn't clear what is right. |
| Explanations for conformity - When does NSI occur? | NSI is most likely to occur in situations with strangers where you may feel concerned about rejection. It may also occur with people you know because we are most concerned with the social approval of our friends. |
| Evaluation - Research support for ISI. | Lucas et al (2006) asked students to give answers to maths problems that were easy or more difficult. There was greater conformity to incorrect answers where they were difficult rather than when they were easier. this was most true with students who rated their maths skills as poor. this shows people people conform in situations where they feel they don't know the answer. |
| Evaluation - Individual differences in NSI (nAffiliators). | Some research sows that NSI does not affect everyone's behavior in the same way. People who are less concerned with being liked are less affected by NSI than those who care more about being liked. Such people are described as nAffiliators, these are people who have greater need for 'affiliation' (a need for being in a relationship with others. |
| Evaluation - Individual differences in NSI (nAffiliators). Research support. | McGHee and Teevan (1967) found that students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform. This shows that the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. Therefore there are individual differences in the way people respond. |
| Evaluation - ISI and NSI work together. | The idea of the 'two-process' is that behavior is either due to ISI or NSI. The truth is that more often both processes are involved. For example conformity is reduced when there is one other dissenting participant in the Asch experiment. This dissenter my reduce NSI (because the dissenter provides social support) or may reduce the power of ISI (because there is an alternative source of information). this shows that it isn't always possible to be sure whether NSI or ISI is at work.. |
| Asch's research - Procedure. | Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, where 50 white American male university students participated in a 'vision test'. Using a line judgement task, Asch put a naïve participant in a room with 6 confederates. On the first few trials confederates gave the right answers but then they started giving they started giving the same wrong answer. Each participant took part in 18 trials. |
| Asch's research - Findings. | The naïve participant gave the wrong answer 36.8%. 75% of participants conformed at least once. When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI). |
| Asch's variations - Group size. | These variations ranged from 1 confederate to 15 confederates, and the level of conformity varied dramatically. conformity rose for each confederate till 7 when conformity started to decrease. |
| Asch's variations - Unanimity. | In one variation of Asch's experiment, one of the confederates was instructed to give the correct answer throughout. In this variation the rate of conformity dropped to 5%. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous. |
| Asch's variations - Task difficulty. | In one his variations he made the task more difficult, by making the difference between the line lengths significantly smaller. In this variation Asch found the rate of conformity increased, although he didn't report the percentage. This suggests that informal social control plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. |
| Evaluation - A child of its time. | Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch's original study with engineering students in the UK. Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials. The student may have felt more confident obout measuring lines than the original sample. It is also possible that the 1950s were an especially conformist time in America and therefore it made sense to conform to social norms. This is a limitation because |
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