What is social conformity?
What is social conformity defined as?
The idea of changing in response to the physical presence of others, or imaged group pressure.
How many participated in the experiment?
123
What is compliance?
A superficial level of conformity -- when the attitude and behaviour of an individual temporarily alter in response to pressure.
What is a pro of this experiment?
One of:
-Highly controlled (in a lab setting.)
-Established cause and effect
-Replicable results
Why does group size affect conformity?
Larger groups create more conformity pressure and give some the fear of standing out which can influence conformity.
What are examples of everyday social conformity?
Wearing a uniform to school, restaurant etiquette, following fashion trends...
What were the gender of the students?
Male
Give an example of compliance.
Agreeing you enjoy doing something, but privately you don't find it as fun or enjoyable as you say
What is a con of this experiment?
One of:
-Lacks ecological validity
-Biased sample
-Limited generalization to real-life situations
Why does unanimity affect conformity?
Conformity levels drop when somebody in a group disagrees - breaking the unanimity. However, when there is total unanimity, conformity rises.
A dissenting voice challenges the group's consensus and can give individuals the confidence to resist conformity pressure.
What task were the participants given and describe it
A task of 'visual perception.' They were shown two cards, one showing a standard line and the other showing the comparison of 3 lines. After this participants were asked to call out, (in turn) which line of the 3 comparison lines, was the standard line that they were given. (They had to match it)
What is internalization?
A deeper form/level -- the change in attitude and behaviour can be permanent or temporary but for a longer period of time. This is also known as conversion.
Why does task difficulty affect conformity?
Difficult tasks increase informational social influence. So the more difficult a task is, the more people will conform to the group.
In order for Asch to manipulate the group pressure, he had ensured that the group was made of confederates that were briefed to answer in a particular way. They were told to give the same wrong answer in 12 of the 18 trials
An individual gives up eating meat due to group pressure and continues to be vegetarian for the rest of their life
What was the overall conformity rate?
37% or over one in three
What is the dual process dependency model?
-Developed by Deutsch and Gerard in 1955, they highlighted two main reasons for conformity: the desire to be accepted and the desire to be right.
-They believed it was a cognitive process.
-The name given to conforming with the desire to be accepted is normative social influence. This is when people conform to feel accepted by others. People do this due to peer pressure or to genuinely feel like they are a part of a group and it stems from wanting to fit in and be liked.