Download Conformity: the essentials - King Edward VI Handsworth School VLE

King Edward VI Handsworth School
Psychology Department
Conformity: the essentials
PSYB2
Social influence
What is conformity?
Conformity occurs when people change their behaviour or attitudes to come into line with the
behaviour or attitudes of a group of other people. It is an example of the impact of majority
influence on individual behaviour. Related processes are independence, where an individual’s
behaviour is unaffected by the group’s and anti-conformity, where a person alters their behaviour
so that it conflicts with the group’s.
How has conformity been investigated?
Jenness (1932) asked social science students to estimate the number of beans in a jar. He found
that when students were aware of what other people had estimated, they tended to give estimates
in line with this. Sherif (1935), in a refinement of this procedure, asked student participants to
estimate the distance a light moved in a dark room (it didn’t really move, it was an illusion).
Participants who did the task alone gave a wide range of estimates, but when they were made
aware of others’ views, participants’ estimates tended to converge to be quite close to each other.
Both Jenness’ and Sherif’s studies were based around ambiguous
situations: where it came to estimating the number of beans or the
movement of the light there was no obvious correct answer. Asch
(1953), by contrast, used a situation where the correct answer was
obvious and tried to make participants conform to a wrong one.
Participants were given a simple line matching task. They carried
A
B
C
this out in a room with several other people who they thought were
other participants, but who were in fact confederates following
the researcher’s instructions. The confederates had been instructed to give an obviously wrong
answer to the task some of the time. Alone, the participants gave the correct answer nearly all of
the time. However, when surrounded by confederates giving the wrong answer, the participant
would follow suit about a third of the time. Questioned afterwards, the conforming participants gave
a number of reasons including not wanting to stand out from the group, not wanting to upset the
experiment and genuinely believing that the confederates knew better than them.
What do these studies tell us?
Obviously, these studies show that people will change their behaviour and their judgments if these
conflict with the group’s. They also suggest that, depending on the situation, different processes
may be at work. In studies like Jenness’ and Sherif’s, it seems that the group’s influence caused
participants to alter their judgements and adopt these new judgements as their own. In other
words, they internalised the new judgements. In the Asch study, by contrast, few (if any) of the
participants who conformed really believed they were giving the right answer; they just acted as if
they agreed with the group. In other words, they complied with the group’s behaviour but they did
not internalise it.
What makes people more or less likely to conform?
Further studies have identified some of the variables that make it more or less likely that a person
will conform as a result of majority influence. Surprisingly, the size of the majority doesn’t make
much difference: bigger majorities don’t generally lead to higher rates of conformity. More
A.B.Sammons
Created on 9/11/2008 11:39:00 AM
ASConformityEssentials.doc
King Edward VI Handsworth School
Psychology Department
important is whether the majority all agree with each other (i.e. whether they are unanimous). The
presence of one dissenter in the majority causes conformity to drop substantially. The relative
status of the majority and the person being pressured also matters: a low-status individual is likely
to conform to a high status group but the reverse is not true. Also significant is the difficulty of the
task being undertaken. The more difficult it is for the individual to judge the correct response, the
more likely they are to conform to the group.
Why do people conform?
The research findings about conformity suggest that people’s reasons for conforming fall into two
main categories. Sometimes, conformity is motivated by the desire to be correct. This is likely to
occur when people are unsure of what they should think or do. Faced with uncertainty, and lacking
other sources of information, they may use other members of the group as a source of information
about how to think or act, and follow the behaviour of the group in the belief that it is the right thing
to do. Psychologists call this informational influence. This process accounts for conformity in
the Sherif and Jenness studies: faced with an ambiguous situation, and made uncertain by the lack
of agreement in their estimates, participants used each other’s views to reach new estimates which,
as a result, converged on each other. Informational influence accounts for why conformity rises with
the difficulty of the task: as it becomes harder to judge correctly, uncertainty increases and the
views of the group become more influential as a reference point.
In other circumstances, conformity is motivated by the desire to fit in with the group. This is likely to
occur when belonging to the group is important to the individual (e.g. because the group has the
power to reward or punish them in various ways). If the group’s behaviour or views conflicts with
the individual’s, they may change their thinking or behaviour because remaining a member of the
group is more important to them than maintaining their original thinking or behaviour. This is termed
normative influence and is clearly what took place in the Asch study, at least for some of the
participants. Although they knew the confederates’ answer to be wrong, it was more important for
them to avoid ‘rocking the boat’ by disagreeing. One even said afterwards that he didn’t want to be
a ‘social outcast’. It is pertinent to ask of the Asch study why it was so important for the
participants to fit in with a group that only existed for the purpose of an experiment: surely the group
did not mean that much to the participant. It is worth remembering that not all the participants
conformed. Probably what matters here is the participant’s perception of the situation, the extent
to which they value social acceptance and approval, and the extent to which they find being in
conflict with others unpleasant. What cannot be disputed is that all the participants felt under
pressure to conform even though not all did. Normative influence accounts for a number of
important findings including the influence of relative status – a high status group has more power to
reward or punish the individual and so pressure to conform is higher.
How do different conformity processes relate to each other?
It stands to reason that informational influence, which occurs when an individual is unsure how to
think or act, is likely to result in internalisation. If the person does not have a strong prior opinion
or inclination to act then there is no reason for them not to adopt the ideas or behaviour of the group
as their own. Normative influence is likely to bring about compliance where the individual’s beliefs
conflict with the group’s, especially where the group is a powerful one but it should not be assumed
that normative influence only causes compliance. Many people initially take on behaviours or
attitudes in order to fit in with a social group but – even after a very short time - internalise these as
their own ways of acting or thinking. Conversely, informational influence may be stronger if it comes
from people who belong to the same social group as the individual being pressured. So whilst
informational and normative influence are relatively distinct processes, they are strongly related and
may both be at work in situations where groups exert an influence on individuals.
A.B.Sammons
Created on 9/11/2008 11:39:00 AM
ASConformityEssentials.doc