Aim: To investigate if conformity is due to normative influences or informational influences.
Experimental Hypothesis: Respondents will be more likely to agree with the incorrect answer given by the confederate than to give the correct answer. (i.e. normative influences will be more powerful than informational influences) when they are in a group compared to when they are on their own (control condition).
Null Hypothesis: There will be no differences in the correct answers given by participants regardless of whether they are on their own, or in a group and any effect found will be due to chance.
Method: A lab experiment where participants saw the picture on a card and were asked a question about the picture. (see appendix 1)
Design: A repeated measures design, where each participant was tested in both conditions. For example one participant is in the control condition and in the experimental condition.
IV: The condition the participant was in.
DV: Conformity measured by the number of incorrect answers.
Participants: An opportunity sample of 15 participants, 8 males and 7 females aged between 16 and 19 years, studying at Fullbrook Sixth Form to get an overview of the 16-19 year old population. They were approached in the common room and study room on Wednesday from 8:30am to 12:00am.
Materials: A3 card with questions on each card were used. There were 10 cards in total. (see appendix 1 for questions)
Procedure: 10 Participants from the common room and 5 from the study room were approached on Wednesday and were asked if they would participate in a visual judgements test. If they agreed, they were escorted into a room with 3 participants already present. A standardised briefing and instructions were given (see appendix 2). The other 3 people were confederates. When the participant was prepared to start, the experimenter held up an A3 size paper which had a picture. The participant saw the picture and was asked a question (see appendix 1). The participants had to say the answer out aloud. The ‘real’ participant was the last person to say his answer so that he could hear the confederate’s answers first. However he was told this was because he was seated at the end. The answer was recorded by the experimenter. Then they moved on to the next question. After 2 questions the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer. The experimenter carried on writing the participants’ response to see if he conformed. This was repeated until all 10 cards were shown and the responses were written. After this the participant was interviewed where the key question was why the participant changed the answer. After this the participant was debriefed. (see appendix 3)
Controls:
- Location (See Appendix 6)
- Standardised instructions (see appendix 1)
- Questions on main test (see appendix 1)
- Experimenter (Sairah Ahmed)
- Debrief (see appendix 3)
Ethics: Although the participants were not told the true aim of the experiment at the start, when the experiment finished they were debriefed (see appendix 3). The right to withdraw was emphasised from the start and consent was obtained before and after the experiment. Privacy was maintained as the participants were identified by a number in the research.
Results
The answers from the interviews suggest that they knew that the answer was wrong but, they didn’t give the right answer because they wanted to fit in with the group. This proves my hypothesis which was “respondents will be likely to agree with the incorrect answer given by the confederates showing that they are conforming due to normative influences,” to be true because respondents did give the incorrect answer when they were in a group however gave the correct answer when they were on their own.
To see if the results are significant a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test is used. The results from this test show the significance of the difference between the two distributions (control and experimental conditions). This test was chosen because the data was related, a repeated measure design was used and the sample is independent. The results from the test show that the data is significant because the actual value for W(-120) is less than the expected value (30) at a 0.05 level of significance for a one tailed test. (See appendix 4 for calculations) therefore my experimental hypothesis which was “respondents will be more likely to agree with the incorrect answer given by the confederate than to give the correct answer, showing normative influences will be more powerful than informational influences when they are in a group” is accepted and my null hypothesis is rejected.
I can conclude that respondents will be more likely to agree with the incorrect answer given by the confederate than to give the correct answer suggesting that normative influences are more powerful.
Discussion: I have concluded that people conform more when in a group. This is due to normative influences i.e. they conform to be a part of the group. I came to this conclusion by using a lab experiment where I had 2 conditions, a control and an experimental group. Conformity was measured by the number of incorrect answers. In the control condition the participant was on their own whereas in the experimental they were with others. In the control condition all the participants answered the questions correctly showing that conformity was not due to information influences since they knew answered correctly.
A strength is that the participants had standardised instructions and so this eliminated the chance of demand characteristics and also all the participants had the same test. This made the experiment fair because all the participants received the same ability type questions.
A weakness of my experiment is that the participants were a small sample and all from the same sixth form therefore were the same age. This makes the results hard to generalise as it may only be that specific age group who conform more readily. To improve the experiment, a larger sample needs to be used which includes people of different ages for example the general public. It may be that older people may be more confident about giving the correct answer. Also the participants were around the common room and study room and so this restricts the type of people being studied. To improve on this many locations could have been used such as the canteen or outside of school.
Another weakness is that fellow students may have wished to help my research and so be subject to demand characteristics. When Crutchfield did his experiment he found that participants did not want to spoil the results and so they agreed with the incorrect answer. This could have been the case in my experiment because the people I was testing were a part of the school I attend and so they wanted to make sure that I get the results I expected.
Another reason as to why the participants conformed could be that they saw the experimenter as being in charge and so they behaved mindlessly because they thought that the experimenter would step in if there was an absurd answer.
References
Cardwell M (1996) A-Z Psychology: Hodder and Stoughton UK (Page 67)
Aronson E (1999) Social Psychology: APS America Page (Page 26)
Coolican H (1994) Research Methods In Psychology: Hodder And Stoughton UK (Page 238)
Flanagan C (1994) Letts A Level Psychology: Letts UK (Page 112)
Word count: 1398
Appendix Contents
1:Questions the participants were asked. 10
2: Briefing 11
3: Debriefing 12
4: Calculations for the Wilcoxon Test 13
5: Raw Results 14
6: Location of the study 15
