‘Outline and evaluate explanations of conformity’ (16 marks)
Deutsch and Gerard proposed a two process theory which suggest that there are 2 main
reasons why we conform: the need to be liked and the need to be right. The first
explanation of conformity is normative social influence (NSI) which is when a person
conforms to be accepted and feel like they belong to a group with the desire to be liked by
them. Here a person conforms because it is socially rewarding, or to avoid social rejection ;
for example, feeling like they don’t fit in. To study NSI, Asch found that in his study of
conformity, that many of the participants went along with the majority and provided an
obviously incorrect answer on a line judgement task. When questioned by Asch in post‐
experimental interviews, participants said that they changed their answer to avoid
disapproval from the rest of the group which clearly shows that NSI had occurred, as the
participants conformed to fit in. A second explanation of conformity is informative social
influence (ISI) which is when a person conforms to gain knowledge or because they believe
someone else is ‘right’ with the desire to be right themselves. ISI is usually associated with
internalisation, where a person changes both their public and private beliefs on a long term
basis. Overall, ISI and NSI both can cause conformity due to a desire to be presented as
socially acceptable or knowledgeable to ensure they don’t stand out from others in an
unacceptable way.
One advantage of ISI as an explanation of conformity is that it has supporting research. For
example, Jenness asked participants to initially make independent judgements about the
number of jelly beans contained in a jar and then discuss their estimates in a group.
Following the discussion, participants then made another independent private estimate.
Jenness found that the second estimate moved closer to the group estimate. Therefore, this
shows that ISI can occur in unfamiliar ambiguous situations as the participants believe that
they gain knowledge from the group and now more likely to be right thus increasing
external reliability of the theory.
However one disadvantage of ISI as an explanation of conformity is that some may argue
that it isn’t applicable in all types of tasks where knowledge is required. For example,
Laughlin found that people were more likely to conform to issues of social opinion such as
‘Leicester has a better night life than Nottingham’ than objective criteria such as ‘Leicester
has a higher population than Nottingham.’ Therefore, this shows that the theory only
applies in some scenarios and that other factors such as how factual the statement is can
alter conformity levels and thus reducing the consistency and applicability of ISI as an
explanation for conformity.
One disadvantage of ISI and NSI is that the theory by Deutsch and Gerard’s two process
approach is that they proposed that ISI and NSI work separately however, some
psychologists believe that these actually more often than not work together. For example, in
Asch’s line study, adding a dissenting participant decreased conformity rates. This could be
due to the decreasing power of NSI as there is an increase in social support, or it could be
decreasing the power of ISI as there is an alternative source of information. Therefore, this
shows how it is difficult to tell whether ISI or NSI are at work and thus, this casts doubts over
the idea of ISI and NSI working independently as forms of conforming behaviour.
,One disadvantage of NSI is that it doesn’t take into account that not everyone will react the
same way to NSI. For example, some people may worry about other people’s perception of
them more than others and therefore are more affected by NSI. Such people are called
nAffiliators – people who have a greater need for social relationships. Therefore, this shows
how NSI and the desire to be liked underlies conformity as it is greater for some than others,
thus making it hard to generalise the theory on everyone before considering individual
factors.
, ‘Outline and evaluate research into conformity’ (16 marks)
Asch wanted to investigate whether participants would conform to obviously wrong
answers. Using an independent groups design, he took 123 US male undergrad participants
and sat them down in a room of 6-8 confederates, where the pps was sat either last or
second to last in the line and they had been asked to identify which line matched the target
line in order of their seats. Asch conducted 18 trials for each participant and had the
confederates give out obviously wrong answers in 12/18 of these trials. Asch found that 75%
of participants conformed at least once, whilst 25% did not conform at all, and additionally,
33% of the pps conformed more than once. Asch also introduced variables in which could
affect the conformity and chose to create variations of his baseline study in relation to these
(group size, unanimity and task difficulty). He found that within the group size variation, the
larger the majority group, the more conformity there is until a certain limit where it makes
little difference. With group unanimity, conformity dropped to 5.5% when 1 confederate
went against the group with the correct answer and it was also concluded that pps are more
likely to seek help from others and conform when the difficulty of the task had increased
due to the desire of wanting to be right (ISI). Overall, this shows how even in an
unambiguous situation, people are still likely to conform to fit in with the group (NSI) and
appear right due to believing the other people are knowledgeable in what they’re doing
(ISI).
One advantage of research into conformity such as Asch’s is that it is conducted in laboratory
conditions. This is beneficial because it ensures that variables are manipulated to be able to
specifically test conformity whilst controlling any other variables to ensure that there is not the
interference of extraneous variables such as age, gender, IQ which can impact the results.
Therefore, this allows for a true cause and effect can be concluded on conformity in
unambiguous tasks thus increasing the internal validity of the theory.
However, a disadvantage of research examining conformity such as Asch’s is that it often
demonstrates experimental reductionism. This is because it attempts to examine complex
behaviour by relying on isolated variables operationalised in lab experiments. Therefore, this
creates an artificial setting that isn’t replicable to real life scenarios of challenging conformity
levels in unambiguous tasks which in turn reduces the mundane realism and external validity of
the research into conformity.
Another advantage of research into conformity such as Asch’s is that there is further supporting
evidence. . For example, Jenness asked participants to initially make independent
judgements about the number of jelly beans contained in a jar and then discuss their
estimates in a group. Following the discussion, participants then made another independent
private estimate. Jenness found that the second estimate moved closer to the group
estimate. Therefore, this shows that conformity can occur in unfamiliar ambiguous
situations as the participants believe that they gain knowledge from the group and now
more likely to be right thus increasing external reliability of the theory that difficulty of task
can increase conformity.
