Revision:Conformity

TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Psychology > Conformity

An experimenter purporting to belong to a local gas company interviewed householders telling them that he was investigating the extent to which they could reduce energy consumption; explained that results would be published in local paper; half told names would appear / half that they would be anonymous - result - respondents who had agreed to use names used much less gas (Pollack and Cummings 1975) - public commitment increases conformity.

Crutchfield (1962) - yielding to group pressures group may be - significant others ( e.g. family, peers) or a reference group whose values the individual admires or aspires to.

Sheriff - (1935) - visual illusion, autokinetic effect, spot seen in an otherwise dark room appears to move; told subjects he was going to move light - how far? Individual estimates varied greatly, but grouped together a group norm developed. Just as different individuals produced different estimates so did different groups through a social comparison process (Festinger) a common social reality is established and validated.

Asch (51,52,56) critical - if people yield to group pressure when the answer is obvious this is a much stricter test than in the ambiguity of Sherif's experiment.

He gave subjects simple perceptual task of matching one line with another each presented on a different card - 36 students tested individually (only wrong three times) ; set up situation with confederates of Asch - 32 per cent willing to agree to wrong answer.

Subsequent interviews revealed a discrepancy between what answer they gave and private belief.

Attempts at replication not always successful - Brown (85) has suggested that modern experimenters are more sceptical about conformity: "even when Asch's paradigm is apparently faithfully replicated, the experimenter may, unwittingly, convey to the subjects certain expectations as to the outcome of the experiment".

Crutchfield (1954) - criticised Asches experiments as time consuming and uneconomical since only one individual could be tested at a time. Individuals in cubicles shown array of alternative answers and lights apparently indicating answers of the other subjects - answers wrong on approximately half the trials.

Influenced also by social norms - implicit rules and expectations; social psychology includes the study of how an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others. People memorise easy word lists faster, but difficult word lists more slowly, in the presence of an audience than when alone (Cottrell, Rittle and Wack, 1967).

Group attitudes are more extreme than individuals - when asked to put odds on a risky course of action, a group will opt for lower odds even if previously as individuals all had estimated the risk as higher! (Kogan and Wallach, 1964)

Criticisms of Conformity Experiments

There is an implicit assumption that independence is good and conformity is bad.

To what, if any, is our knowledge of the world defined in terms of other people's beliefs and opinions?

Different cultures define the truth in different ways - in practice the majority opinion is the one that the individual identifies as a 'fact'.

Do experiments reveal how processes operate to maintain the status quo or do they reveal how new ideas come to be accepted (eccentric thinking / outrageous viewpoints of the confederates appear to be contrary to the norm but come to be accepted as with new scientific ideas - the earth is round).

Comments