2. What is Social Influence?
The way in which a person or group of
people affect the attitudes and behaviour of
an individual
(Brody & Dwyer, 2002)
3. Social Norms
What are social norms?
Explicit – Obvious Implicit – Hidden
or directed. but still there.
E.g. a sign asking you E.g. shaking hands
not to eat or drink near after a tennis match,
a computer personal space
4. What is conformity?
The tendency to change what we do
(behaviour) or think and say in
response to perceived pressure from
a group (this is either real or
imagined).
5. Types of Conformity
There are 2 types of
conformity…
Compliance Internalisation
Superficial and
Deep and private.
public.
Change in
Change in
behaviour AND
behaviour not
personal views
personal views
6. Without notes...
Without your notes complete your Glossary
of Terms for
Conformity
Social Norms (Implicit & explicit)
Compliance
Internalisation
7. Research demonstrating
compliance
Compliance –
Asch (1951)
- Most superficial type of conformity
- Individual conforms publically to the group
but privately disagrees
Line-judgement task
Crutchfield – “Yielding to group pressure”
8. Asch - A01
Conducted a
Unambiguous line pilot study –
judging task 3/720 errors
123 American male undergraduates WHY?!
- In each experiment all but one of the
group were confederates
Confederate Confederate
Confederate Confederate Confederate
or real p or real p
Participants were shown 18 sets of cards (trials), on 12 trials the
confederates gave the same wrong answer (these are known as critical
trials)
9. Findings – A01
Mean conformity rate of 37%
Participants
agreed with the
Is 37% low? incorrect
majority answer
Not considering
how obvious
on over 1/3 of
(unambiguous) the trials
the task was!
10. Findings – A01
There were wide individual differences within the
results:
-5% conformed on every critical trial
-25% remained totally independent (never once
agreed with the majority when they answered
incorrectly)
11. Variations of the experiment
Unanimity of stooges (same wrong answer)
Unanimous = High level of conformity
1 stooge giving right answer = drops to 5%
Confederate Confederate Confederate Confederate Real
(wrong answer) (right answer) (wrong answer) (wrong answer) participant
12. Conclusions – A01
Asch concluded that it was an example of
compliance as individuals went along with
an obvious incorrect answer because of
group pressure, mainly because the
individual didn’t want to stand out and
wanted to be liked by the group.
13. Evaluation – A02
You should be able to think of 4 evaluation
points without anymore information than
the research outline
High degree of control over variables
Lack of population validity (used only men) Androcentric
Lack of ecological validity
Ethical issues - lack of informed consent, deception
14. Extra empirical evaluation – A02
• If you’ve finished…
…use the following to add to your middle
evaluation point
• Perrin & Spencer (1980) (repeated Asch’s
research with engineering students in
England and found a lower conformity rate)
