Experiment investigating conformity in students.

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Ashley Elizabeth McLeod        Higher Psychology        981867807

Experiment investigating conformity in students.  

Abstract

Will participants give the wrong answer more frequently when others present are unanimously giving wrong answers?  Yes!!!

The effects of conformity on sixteen year olds were analysed using a simple experiment.  The results are rather shocking to see, that 50% of females and 83% of males conform to social pressure.  

On a whole that is 67% of a group of twenty-eight 16 year olds that conform from social pressure.  

Introduction

In recent years, there has been considerable interest to whether students will conform to social pressure.  Ever since The Milgram Experiment (1963), where he showed that under social pressure subjects would conform, psychologists have been intrigued by the way subjects conform to the social pressure set by others.

In difference from Milgram’s experiment (1963).  Here we investigate if participants will conform to social pressure and give a wrong answer.  Hypothetically believing that the participants will give the wrong answer more frequently when others present are unanimously giving the wrong answer.  Of course all participants, with exception to the subject being studied, are aware that the experiment is being carried out.

All of the participants are of the same age range (16 years) and are all of the same occupation (student) and ethical background (white).  The only difference between the participants is there gender.    

The present study is therefore set out to examine the conformity between the students to enable a result of whether conformity is in existence or not.

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In this age range conformity is the norm.  Teenagers follow fashion trends set by celebrities and regularly conform to social/peer pressure set by the people that they group with, for example smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and to the extreme of drug taking and crime.  It is a worry to society today that youngsters DO conform to social pressure and do not stand up for what they believe.  In a group of forty, twelve year olds, it was shown that 85% had tried smoking, and of that 85%, 49% of them had admitted to trying smoking because their friends had ...

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