Conformity CourseworkIn this research I aim to discover if or how often people will conform to other (fake) answers

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Conformity

 Conformity is when a person alters their behaviour so that it is similar to that of other people.

 There are two motives for conformity (also known as majority social influence):

 Normative social influence: emulating the behaviour of others to fit into a group. People may conform if they want people to like them.

 Informational social influence: emulating the behaviour of others in an attempt to be right.

 

Conformity Studies

 Muzafer Sherif used the auto kinetic effect (an optical illusion, in which a small point of light appears to move around when shone on a wall in a dark room) in his conformity study (this is an ambiguous stimulus).

 When the participants were asked individually how far they thought the light moved; the answers given varied greatly (from 2 to 25cm). Participants were then put into groups of three and gave an answer In front of the other two in a series of identical tests, each time the participants were asked the answers given converged into a group norm. Afterwards the participants were tested individually again and their answers stayed close to the group norm, when asked whether they were influenced by the estimates of others the participants said that they did not feel that they had altered their estimates to fit in with others at all.

 Solomon Asch criticised Sherif’s experiment citing that there was no definite answer, and wanted to find out how likely people were to conform when the answer was obvious.

 Asch’s conformity experiments were a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups.

 Asch used cards similar to those above in his research.

 Asch asked students to participate in a test of visual perception. In fact, all but one of the participants was a confederate of Asch, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behaviour.

 The participants asked to answer questions on the length of several lines drawn on a series of cards. They were questioned about the length of the lines. The confederates had been briefed to all give incorrect answers in the tests.

 33% of participants conformed to the incorrect majority view (group norm) of the others in the room.

 When the confederates were not unanimous in their judgment, participants were much less likely to conform than when the confederates all agreed, even when the confederate gave an answer that was obviously wrong. A control group who were asked on their own with no other participants gave all the correct answers.

 Jenness asked students how many beans they thought were in a jar. He recorded their responses and then allowed the students to confer amongst themselves. The students were then asked again about the quantity of beans and Jenness found that the given estimates converged between the first and second answers into a group norm.

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 These three studies appear to show the effects of informational social influence.

Research Aims and Hypothesis

Aims

 In this research I aim to discover if or how often people will conform to other (fake) answers when asked to estimate how many rubber bands (the ambiguous stimulus) are contained within a transparent plastic container in an opportunity study.

Hypothesis

 My hypothesis is that people who are given a sheets with higher guesses on it will give higher estimates than the people who had the sheets with lower guesses on due to the ...

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