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Conformity This area of the course on social influence, covers one of the most interesting and controversial areas in Psychology. Hence the critical issue is the ethics of using human participants in Psychological research.
First a distinction: Differences between conformity and obedience:
1. Conformity and Minority influence It’s important to remember at the outset that although psychological research generally gets conformity a bad name without it Society would not function. In the majority of real life situations conformity is seen as good! Informational Social Influence This happens when there is no obvious right answer so we look to others for information in order to be right. Real life examples: Looking at the people around you in a posh restaurant to see what knife and fork to use Putting on car lights in the evening when others start to do the same. Examples of Psychological research:
Jenness (1932): ‘Beans.’ You all did the experiment so you should be okay with the procedure.
Sherif (1935): ‘Autokinetic effect’ Participants sit in a darkened room and stare at a pinpoint of light that appears to move, (try it sometime). They are asked to estimate the distance it moves. Since the movement is only apparent the correct answer is it doesn’t, but Sherif’s participants were obviously not aware of this. Again, when put in rooms with others their guesses converge towards a group norm. In a follow up experiment Sherif started the participants in groups were they agree on an approximate answer. When individuals are taken from this group and do the experiment on their own they stick to the answer agreed earlier.
Findings of this sort of research Clearly there is conformity when people are unsure of the answer since group norms emerge. Evaluation Both studies are very artificial so lack ecological validity. Can we generalise from this to real life situations? The Sherif study does involve deception since participants are told the light is moving when it isn’t, so there are ethical concerns. Note: The everyday examples are for clarification. Avoid using them as examples in your answers.
Normative Social Influence This happens when we go along with the crowd because we want to be accepted or liked or because we want to avoid embarrassment or being ridiculed. Real life examples: Smoking because others in your peer group smoke Dressing like your friends in order to fit in or avoid bullying Having a conservatory built because the neighbours have
Examples of Psychological research Asch (1951 etc.): ‘The lines’ Again, you are all aware of the procedure. Briefly stated: participants are deceived into taking part in a study on visual perception. They are seated at a desk with others that they believe to be fellow participants but who in reality are in league with the researchers (stooges or confederates). Lines are presented on a screen and participants simply have to say which line (out of 3 possibilities, is the same length as the target line). The stooges get the right answer on the first two trials but then start to make deliberate mistakes. Conformity is measured by counting the number of times the real participant conforms when stooges give the wrong answer. Possible questions: ‘Describe the procedure.’ Easy peasie, describe the experiment as above. You could mention some of the variations. You could also mention the pilot study that Asch carried out first in which errors were only made on 3 trials out of 720. ‘Describe the findings.’ This one is more likely and also more troublesome. What you must avoid doing is wasting time by describing the procedure. To answer this one, first of all mention Asch’s initial findings: Overall conformity rate was 32% (unless your surname is Eysenck or Flanagan, in which case it’s 37%). This means that participants conformed on 32% of all trials. However, within this there were substantial individual differences: Nobody conformed on 100% of trials 13 out of the original 50 never conformed at all Highest rate of conformity was a participant who conformed on 11 out of 12 trials (must have felt a right plonker when he was debriefed!). 75% conformed at least once. Also mention what Asch found in his variations:
Note: write your answers in continuous prose, not in tables like this. Evaluation of Asch’s Paradigm (as it is often called) The method The procedure is very artificial (it lacks ecological validity) in that participants are being asked to conform when there is clearly a different and obviously correct answer. In everyday life disagreements occur over politics, religion, tastes etc., when correct answers are not obvious, except we all agree that Kylie is lush! Results do not appear to be consistent over time. Later studies such as Perrin and Spencer’s in Britain in the 1980s found much lower levels of conformity. It has been suggested that Asch’s original was post war when America was very wary of Communist take over when US citizens were worried about being seen to be different for fear of incrimination. Levels of conformity did fall in the late 60s when it was popular for students in particular to protest against the Vietnam War, showing low levels of conformity. The study is androcentric. Only male participants took part.
The ethics Participants were deceived so were unable to give their informed consent. Note: whenever stooges are used there is always deception. Participants were clearly stressed and some must have been embarrassed by the procedure and suffered some loss of self esteem once they had been informed that it had all been a big con. This all constitutes ‘psychological harm.’
Crutchfield (1955): ‘The question booth.’ Crutchfield thought Asch’s experiment was far too expensive, time consuming and inefficient. Lots of stooges were required to test each participant. So he devised a method of testing lots of participants quickly and cheaply. They were sat in cubicles and questions projected onto a screen. In one corner were the answers given by other participants. In fact these were made up and often wrong. Conformity was measured by the number of times participants would go along with these incorrect answers. Example of question used: ‘The life expectancy of the average US male is 25.’ Participants answer true or false. Since the screen indicates that the majority have answered ‘true’ many of the real participants do the same. In fact Crutchfield found about the same level of conformity as Asch; 30%. Also worth mentioning in an appropriate part c. question is the information Crutchfield found out about the personalities of conformist individuals by administering a personality test after the procedure. According to this, conformist people tend to be: ‘intellectually less effective’, submissive, inhibited, have feelings of inferiority and have less mature social relationships.
Note: one of the questions asked by Crutchfield was; ‘true’ or ‘false’, ‘U.S males sleep 4 to 5 hours a night and eat 6 meals a day.’ Now that one I could believe!
Identification (or conforming to social roles and expectations) This happens because we learn expectations of how we should behave in certain situations and then conform to these expectations when that situation arises. Real life example: Feeling very full of ourselves when dressed in evening wear such as a Tuxedo. Sorry this is the best I can do! Example of psychological research Zimbardo’s Stanford prison simulation (1973) Won't insult your intelligence here! Again, in the unlikely event that the question asks for a description of the study, assume its party time but try to stick to the key details such as the way the guards were empowered by their dress (khaki uniform, dark glasses etc.), and the way the prisoners were humiliated by being strip searched. In the more likely case of the question asking for findings: Mention the effects on the prisoners who showed signs of ‘Pathological prisoner syndrome’ in which disbelief was followed by an attempt at rebellion and then by very negative emotions and behaviours such as apathy and excessive obedience. Many showed signs of depression such as crying and some had fits of rage. Zimbardo put these effects down to depersonalisation or deindividuation due to loss of personal identity and lack of control. Mention also the effects on the guards who conversely showed the ‘Pathology of power.’ They clearly enjoyed their role; some even worked unpaid overtime and were disappointed when the experiment was stopped. Many abused their power refusing prisoner’s food and toilet visits, removing their bedding etc. Punishment was handed out with little justification. Most notable was the way in which the ‘good guards’ never questioned the actions of the ‘bad guards.’ Evaluation Method The experiment was a role play so it lacks realism with participants behaving as they think they should behave. However, there is evidence for the guards not just simply role playing, for example their brutal behaviour wasn’t there at the start but developed over the first few days and they did not play up to the cameras as might be expected. In fact their behaviour was worse when they knew they weren’t being observed. Ethics
However, in defence of Zimbardo you can mention the therapeutic debrief given to all those who took part.
Minority Influence So far in all of the studies considered such as Asch etc., a majority have had influence over a minority, such as six stooges influencing one participant. However, in real life if this were always the case, and the minority always went along with the majority, there would be no change in Society. For change in ideas, religions, politics etc. there are times when a minority of people with different views have to exert their influence on the rest of us. This so called minority influence tends to be a slow process, but it does bring about a change both in public and privately held opinions. Real life examples: The suffragette movement changing attitudes towards women’s rights, Galileo’s ideas on planetary movements, the Nazi’s reign in Germany etc…
Psychological experiments: Moscovici et al (1969): ‘calling a blue slide green’ I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to remember this study, ‘cos ‘minority influence’ is a likely question and this is the only study to use! Procedure: Groups of six participants are presented with blue slides varying in intensity. Participants have to say what colour the slides are. Two of the participants are stooges and these answer in one of two ways:
Findings:
Conclusion: Consistency is vital for minority influence to occur. However, Nemeth et al (1974) agree that consistency is important but is not always enough in itself. They carried out a variation on the procedure but allowed the participants to answer with a combination of colours. This time there were three conditions:
Assuming Moscovici et al to be correct, we would expect the third condition, in which the stooges are consistent to have the greatest influence on the minority. However this was not the case.
Findings and conclusions: The majority were most influenced by condition 2 since it is seen as flexible. 21% of participants were influenced by the minority in this condition. In the other two conditions few participants were influenced. In the first there is lack of consistency, (supporting Moscovici’s findings), and in the third there is a total lack of flexibility and no attempt for the stooges to use the more complex descriptions allowed. Moscovici concluded that minorities are more likely to be influential if they are consistent but not to the point of being dogmatic. Hogg & Vaughan (1995) claim that the following are important for minorities to be influential:
Evaluation of Moscovici experiment: Ethics The experiment uses stooges so deception is employed. Whenever there is deception consent cannot be informed. Method It lacks ecological validity since it is a very trivial exercise, i.e. a silly disagreement over a slide that is very obviously blue. This is not the sort of thing we normally disagree over, so does it tell us anything about minority influence in real life when very weighty matters of principle tend to be involved. Explaining conformity and minority influence These two phenomena do seem to contradict one another. Indeed when Moscovici met Solomon Asch at a conference he reportedly felt embarrassed and concerned that Asch would be critical of his findings. In fact Asch was very enthusiastic about the research on minority influence since he thought it helped to redress the balance that his research had tipped towards conformity. Social impact theory proposed by Latane & Wolf (1981), is seen as one way of being able to explain both majority influence (conformity) and minority influence. Social Impact Theory This theory proposes that a person’s behaviour can be predicted in terms of three factors: I’ll use the Iraqi debate as a contemporary example:
A message is stronger if it is repeated by a lot of people who are all in agreement. This equates to Moscovici’s ‘consistency.’ You are more likely to be convinced that War on Iraq is right if all of your friends are in agreement.
The message will be strengthened if the person doing the convincing is an expert in the field. A person who has lived under the Saddam Regime is likely to be more convincing than a politician who has never visited the area.
The message will have more impact if it comes from friends rather than a strangers. Your friend trying to convince you of the need for war is going to have more impact than a bloke you’ve just met in the pub.
Other factors that may affect conformity Changes over time The original study by Asch was carried out in 1950s USA. America was a very paranoid society, fearful of Communist take over and under the grip of McCartyism in which the government and other institutions in positions of influence were being purged of possible ‘Commies.’ People were afraid of appearing different or stepping out of line, so it is not surprising that Asch found such levels of conformity. Later studies by Perrin & Spencer have found much lower levels of conformity. However, some of these studies were on engineering students at a British University. Since they were experts on accurate measurement of length it isn’t surprising that they failed to conform. Out of several hundred trials Perrin & Spencer found only one incidence of conformity, despite the students being ‘very puzzled’ by the stooges’ bizarre answers! When the study was carried out on young men on probation the rate of conformity was similar to those reported by Asch. Cultural differences If we consider culture in broader terms rather than narrow nationalistic ways, we can break societies into two broad kinds:
Smith & Bond (1993) carried out a meta-analysis (see your notes on ‘validity’ in Research Methods), and found that collectivist societies tend to be more conformist. Not surprising since they rely on each other to a much greater extent than selfish individuals in the West. See later notes on the Temmi and Eskimos for similar example. Deindividuation This is loss of self identity and was evident in Zimbardo’s Prison Simulation when the guards wore dark, reflective glasses. Zimbardo thought it was responsible for the behaviour he observed in a study he carried out in 1969. He found that female participants were more likely to administer electric shocks to other women if they were wearing lab coats and hoods that partly covered their faces. Role play Johnson & Downing (1979) disagreed with Zimbardo. They felt that Zimbardo’s participants were dressed like the Klu Klux Klan and were behaving accordingly, i.e. conforming to expectations. They got participants to dress as nurses and found that despite the deindividuation that resulted that participants were less likely to deliver shocks. They were conforming to the caring image of nurses. Personality, intelligence and gender Students are found to be less conformist. This could be due to higher intelligence or to education that teaches independent thought and inquiry. People who are measured high in ‘desire for personal control’ are less conformist than those measured lower. Eagly & Carli (1981) found that women tend to be more conformist than men.
Explaining Conformity
2. Obedience
Historical perspectiveThe work on obedience stemmed from Nazi atrocities during WW 2. It was widely believed that Hitler himself was an evil genius, but he relied on the co-operation of millions of people to carry out his plans, including ‘the final solution.’ Hannah Arendt (1963) published her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann titled ‘A Report on the banality of evil.’ Eichmann was the mastermind of the ‘final solution’ that involved using gas chambers in the death camps. In her account Arendt described Eichmann as ‘a dull, uninspired, unaggressive bureaucrat who saw himself as a cog in the machine.’ She concludes that the Nazis were mostly just ordinary people following orders. Most controversially she believed that the rest of us would behave in a similar way, given a similar set of circumstances. Milgram (1974) wrote ‘Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances.’
In the 1960s it was still comforting to see the Germans as somehow a race apart, Milgram set out to show this.
Milgram's shocker (1963) You are all aware of the study. The danger is that in any question on Milgram you will regurgitate the procedure. Read the question and tailor your answer to suit. If it asks for findings concentrate on the percentages and the variations such as how close the ‘teacher’ stands to the ‘learner’ etc. Procedure· An advertisement is placed in a local paper. Participants are paid $4.50 for taking part. (Issue of payment is important).
· The teacher sits in an adjoining room with the experimenter.
Findings:
Remember: No shocks were ever received!!! Milgram’s findings have been confirmed by others and there appear to be few sex differences. Although Milgram’s original study was only carried out on men others have shown the same effect with women participants. The experiment has also been replicated around the World. Below are some of the findings. Cross cultural variations
Evaluation of the evidence The research does tend to confirm Milgram’s original findings. Most of the studies do suggest very high levels of obedience. However, it is difficult to make comparisons between studies since there are differences in their methodologies.
The study that does stand out is the Australian study but this was women giving shocks to other women!
Evaluation of Milgram’s work It is traditional to split this into two main sections: 1. Methodology or validity a. Experimental validity b. Ecological validity 2. Ethics.
1a. Experimental (or internal) Validity By now you should know what validity means! Did the participants taking part in the study actually believe that they were administering electric shocks to Mr Wallace? Orne & Holland (1968) make a number of claims, each of which is refuted by Milgram:
1b. Ecological (or external) Validity Can the results of the experiment be generalised to situations outside of the laboratory setting? Since the person in the white lab coat was an authority figure, then Milgram believes that it does. After all he was trying to show that we do obey such figures in real life. Other studies that appear to support Milgram: Experimental validity Sheridan & King (1972) carried out a similar procedure but used a puppy as the ‘learner.’ The puppy carried out a learning exercise and each time it made a mistake it would receive an electric shock. Participants, acting as the teacher, were led to believe that the shocks were becoming increasingly severe, as in Milgram’s original procedure. In fact the puppy was getting a small shock each time, just enough to make it jump and show obvious signs of receiving a shock. Eventually the puppy receives an anaesthetic to put it to sleep, and the participants think they’ve killed it. Most participants continue to give it electric shocks. The participants can be in n doubt that the puppy is receiving the shocks, so answering Orne & Holland’s first criticism. Ecological validity Hofling (1966) set up an experiment (natural, field or quasi?), in which a nurse receives instructions over the phone, from a Dr Smith, to administer 20mg of a drug Astroten to a patient Mr. Jones. This instruction breaches three rules: a. The nurse did not know Dr Smith b. The nurse did not receive written authority c. 20mg was twice the maximum dose suggested on the bottle. Despite this, 21 out of 22 nurses were prepared to administer the drug. Since this is a natural setting, it does have ecological validity, and as such is telling us something about obedience in real life.
For future reference, there are clearly ethical problems with the study: a. Nurses were deceived b. There was no consent c. No right to withdraw. Bickman (1974). People in the street are asked to pick up a piece of litter or stand on the other side of a bus stop etc. The person doing the asking is dressed either as a milkman, a civilian or a guard. People were more likely to obey the guard, showing, presumably, the power of uniform or of perceived legitimate authority. 2. Ethics of Milgram (aaaaaaggghhh overload, overload!!!)
Other points worth making in an essay on ethics of Milgram. Milgram's main defence centres on the debrief that all participants received afterwards. During this participants were reassured about their behaviour: 1. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
