Conformity
Conformity: a change in a person’s behaviour or belief to fit in with a majority group. The
change is due to real or imagined pressure of group norms/ expectations
Types:
● Compliance- changing publicly but not private views and behaviour (shallow/
temporary)
● Identification- changing views only when with a group/ imitate a role model
(intermediate/ moderate), value membership and want to be a part of the group
● Internalisation- public and private behaviours and beliefs are the same (permanent/
deep)
Explanations for conformity:
● NSI: conformity occurs because of a desire to fit in and be liked, seeking approval
and avoiding rejection (leads to compliance)
● ISI: conformity occurs when we are unsure of a correct solution, a desire to be right
leads to belief that majority view is right (leads to internalisation); us
RESEARCH:
● Asch’s variations support ISI and NSI
● research support for NSI: people were exposed to simple messages that their peers
did not smoke also stopped smoking (wider implications e.g. drunk driving, health)
● research support for ISI: people receiving negative info about African-Americans
were more likely to have hostility towards them (SS as it could justify stereotypes
based on any information provided)
Evals:
➢ There is evidence that people can resist social pressue e.g. LOC or self-efficacy
➢ ISI depends on the type of task - is there physical and objective truths? E.g. survey to
decide best place for holiday in the UK isn’t objectively correct.
➢ Research support
➢ Low internal validity: people may naturally have these beliefs i.e those who were
hostile to African Americans may have been racist
➢ Low exp power as exp cannot explain every individual case of conformity, if we
cannot identify it then the exp are ineffective and invalid
Variables affecting conformity (investigated by Asch)
Asch’s study
● Lab experimetnt
● 6-8 ppts in each group (1 naive ppt, rest confederates)
● Aim: investigate whether social pressure could influence conformity
● There was one standard line, 3 comparison lines (guess the line matching standard)
● Confeds told to give incorrect answers on 12/18 trials; ppt answered penultimately
● Average conformity rate was 33% on the critical trials
● 75% of ppts conformed on at least one trial when confeds gave wrong answers
● 25% never conformed
● With a dissenter (ally), conformity droped from 33% to 5.5.%
● When interviewed, ppts said they conformed due to:
, ➔ Distortion of action and distortion (didn’t want to stand out from majority) of
judgement (didn’t want to be wrong)
Evals:
➢ Lacks ecological validity, mundane tasks not how people confrom irl
➢ ‘Child of its time’ due to McCarthyism, people reluctant to go against majority
(temporal validity)
➢ Replication study: Perrin & Spencer only 1 ppt out 396 trials conformed
➢ Lacks population validity: ethnocentric and androcentric [beta bias]( and American)
➢ Demand characteristics: guessed the aim or been skeptical, maybe didn’t put in effort
as it was mundane
➢ Ethical issues: deception, psychological harm (e.g.embarrasment) (they were
debriefed and it was the only possible way)
Situational variables
Group size
● Bigger majority group, conformity increased
● Levelled off after 3 confeds
Unanimity: people are in full agreement of each other
● When people have the same answer, conformity increased
● Social support from a dissenter reduced conformity to 5.5%, didn’t have to be the
same answer as ppt, just breaking unanimous position
Task difficulty
● When task difficulty increases, more ambiguous, so did conformity
● Lines became harder to judge, people are uncertain thus look to others for
confirmation
● Individual differences: e.g. self-efficacy (they are confident in their abilites to be
correct)
● BOTH situational + individual differences affect conformity
Privacy:
● Conformity decreases, no pressure from majority (NSI)
Evals:
➢ (Bond) we know little about the effect of a large majority group size over 9, has rarely
been researched,
➢ ⅔ of trials, people didn’t conform showing independent behaviour (individual
differences)
➢ Cultural differences: individualist (25%), collectivist (37%) as it acts like a social glue
binding communities.
Conformity to social roles
Social roles: parts people play as members of a social group (e.g. teachers). It comes with
expectations of what behaviour is deemed appropriate
[leads to identification]
● AIM: investigate whether or not people could conform to the expectations of social
roles
, ● In Stanford Uni
● Volunteer sample: advertised experiment(75) and randomly assigned roles to 24 ptps
who were screened for psychological defencies
● Guards: batons, khaki uniforms, reflective glasses (helped with anonymity)
● Prisoners: smocks, ball and chain, given an ID number (deindividuation)
Results:
● Guards were brutal and sadistic (⅓) become increasingly aggressive
● Prisoners forced to do dehumanising tasks and become submissive and dependant
● Conformed to social roles
● Pathological prisoner syndrome: loss of personal identity, dependency on guards and
emasculation
● Prisoner 8612 had hysterical, uncontrollable fits of crying for 36 hours and was
removed from study
● Ended after 6 days
●
Evals:
➢ Demand characteristics: guards claimed to be acting due to societal expectations
thus low ecological validity eg. in prison settings (counter: ⅔ were ‘good guards’ so
they chose to behave sadistically)
➢ Wider implications: ensuring this doesn’t happen in prisons, guards are monitored
and given orders/ training
➢ Investigator bias: Zimbardo acted as prison warden, possible influence of results as
ppts may have behaved in ways they believe HE expected (measuring demand
characteristics)
➢ Ethical issues: deception (arrested, deloused, stripped), lack of informed consent,
harm ( prisoner 8612 36 hours of uncontrollable crying), right to withdraw (counter:
he asked other psychologists, debriefed, ended after 6 days instead of two weeks)
➢ Led to ethical guideliness. Ethics committee assessing cost-benefit ratio of research
➢ High explanatory power in explaining effects of Abu Ghraib (lack of training, no
authority, conforming to role as a guard)
➢ Replication BBC prison (2011) found opposite results prisoners mocked guards and
took control (group identity is important)
➢ Culture bias and ethnocentrism—--> low generalisablity
Situational factors affecting obedience
Obedience: someone carrys out a direct order that has been given to them typically bc of
perceived authority and higher status
Milgram (1963)
● AIM: understand why Germans obeyed Hitler for WW2 killings
● 40 males, volunteered through newspaper ad, for memory; Yale uni
● Learner (confed), teacher (ppt), professor (confed)
● Drew straws but were rigged so naive ppt was teacher and confed was learner
● Ppt asked to deliver shocks from 15-450 V going up in 15 increments
● At 315V learner made no noise, indicating injury
● Professor gave standardised prompts e.g. “the experiment requires that you
continue” “Please go on”
● Binding factors: prompts and the fact that they were paid $4.50 upon arrival
