The Complete Companion for AQA, Psychology A Level
This booklet is all you need to pass Psychology. It is structured in order for you to be prepared to answer any question... especially 16 mark essays! I used a lot of resources and condensed them into these booklets; I only used them during sixth form and received an A grade when sitting the exams ...
Types of conformity:
Compliance: Weakest level of conformity: Person may publicly go along with the behaviour of the group to gain
approval or avoid disapproval. Internally their opinions may be different and conformity may happen only when the
group’s presence. Eg: Agreeing with a group that Arsenal are better than Chelsea when secretly disagreeing.
Identification: Adjusting behaviour/ opinions publicly and privately, accepting groups viewpoint and wanting to
belong to the group. Temporary: behaviour changes when they leave group. Eg: someone may join a football team
and engage in behaviours that seem right to fit in (e.g. drinking after match together). However upon leaving team may
stop drinking with them.
Internalisation: Deepest form of conformity also known as “conversion”, when individual adjusts behaviour because
they accept a viewpoint. Occurs when exposed to beliefs of others then decide themselves on own viewpoint. If they
accept groups view they adjust their behaviour even when not around the group. Eg: Tom living with vegetarians at
university and accepting eating meat as wrong then continues to be vegetarian even when he leaves the group.
Explanations of conformity:
Normative Social Influence: Form of compliance. Their main motivation is to be accepted, liked and respected by the
group and avoid disapproval or rejection. The individual may fear punishment such as exclusion. Even though they
publicly agree with groups viewpoint, internally/ in private settings, may disagree.
Asch
123 Male American students volunteered in a lab experiment they believed to be a test of vision. Ppts shown
stimulus line and asked one by one to say out loud which 3 sets of lines A, B or C matched the original line. All except
one were confederates which were primed to give the same incorrect responses 12/18 of the trials.
Results:
36% ppts conformed to majority groups incorrect answer. 75% of ppts conformed at least once in the experiments.
Normative Social influence was the reason for conforming to the majorities incorrect view.
Evaluation:
● One strength for Asch’s study explaining conformity is that it is based within Lab settings. Allowed for the control
of extraneous variables so Asch could be certain the confederates were influencing the participant. However
Asch’s study lacks ecological validity due to lab experiment and having an artificial task. It’s unclear if similar
behaviour would occur in real world settings as it lacks mundane realism, decreasing its internal validity.
● One weakness for Asch’s study explaining conformity is that it contains an unrepresentative sample. For
example, All participants were American students therefore the behaviour may be subject to cultural bias, being
ethnocentric. Not clear whether similar behaviour may occur in collectivist cultures beyond western society. Also
sample consists only of males which cannot be generalised to females thus becoming androcentric with low PV.
● Another limitation is participants faced Ethical issues during the experiment. For example, the ppt were
deceived to the intention of the study with many believing it to be a test of vision. Issue: no full consent.
However this could be argued to be necessary to create realistic behaviour and all were debriefed after,
preventing demand characteristics and encouraging natural behaviour, increasing the internal validity.
Informational social influence: Individuals unsure how to behave in particular situations and look at others to shape
their own opinions on how they should behave. Occurs in unfamiliar settings with conformity to the crowd and avoid
standing out from the majority (due to embarrassment, rejection or lack of knowledge on the person's behalf on
appropriate behaviour). The behaviour usually involves changing public behaviour and internally accepting the
behaviour of others must be correct: internalisation.
Lucas:
Gave ppts maths problems that were easy or difficult. Conformed more when difficulty increased especially if reported
their maths abilities as poor. Looked to others who were confident in answers in order to be right.
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