This essay question was taken from the AQA Psychology June 2018 Past Paper 1. This essay scored 15/16. The structure of this response is 6 marks AO1 and 10 marks AO3.
Psychologists investigating social influence have discovered several reasons why people
conform.
Discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform. (16)
There are two key explanations about why people conform: informational social influence and
normative social influence. Normative social influence (NSI) is when a person conforms to be
accepted and to feel like they belong to a group. Here a person conforms because it is socially
rewarding, or to avoid social rejection; for example, feeling like they don’t ‘fit in’.
One strength of this explanation is the research support found in Asch’s conformity study. He found
that many of the participants went along with the majority and provided an obviously incorrect
answer on a line judgement task. In the interviews following the experiment, participants explained
how they changed their answers to avoid ‘disapproval’ from the rest of the group. This shows NSI
had occurred as the participants conformed to fit in. Asch provides further evidence for NSI as when
participants were asked to write down their answers (reducing the public pressure to conform),
conformity rates fell to 12.5%. this shows that once the social pressure is removed, conformity
decreases, supporting normative social influence as an explanation for conformity.
On the other hand, more recent research by Perrin and Spencer shows different results. By
conducting an Asch-style experiment, they found conformity levels of 0.25%. This difference in
results could show that Asch’s original experiment is out-dated, leading to a decrease in the validity
of the experiment. However, these differences could also be due to the differences in the sample of
participants. Perrin and Spencer’s participants were all engineering and mathematics students,
having an expertise in problem solving skills. Therefore, while NSI may partially explain conformity, it
is not a full explanation and other factors may have an impact.
Informational Social Influence (ISI) is when a person conforms to gain knowledge, or because they
believe that someone else is ‘right’. Informational social influence is usually associated with
internalisation, where a person changes both their public behaviour and their private beliefs, on a
long-term basis. This semi-permanent change in behaviour and belief is the result of a person
adopting a new belief system because they genuinely believe that their new beliefs are ‘right’ or that
the majority are ‘experts’.
A strength of this explanation is the research support from Jenness (1932). Jenness found that when
estimating how many jellybeans in a jar, participants changed their private answers after a group
discussion. This shows that ISI will occur in unfamiliar, ambiguous situations as the participants
believed they gained knowledge from the group and are now more likely to be right. Jenness also
found that female participants conformed more. However, his study lacks ecological validity as the
jellybean task has no significant social consequences. Therefore, it is difficult to apply the findings
about ISI to real-life situations.
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