Hypothesis
There will be a significant difference in the amount of conformity shown by the minority when they are shown answers of majority regarding the estimates of sweets in a jar compared to when the minority are not shown answers from the majority.
There will be 2 hypothesis for this study. The first one being a one tailed hypothesis. There will be an increase in conformity by the minority participants only, when the minority are shown answers of the majority of the estimation of sweets in a jar. However, if the minority are not shown the majority answers of the estimation of sweets in a jar , there will be a decrease in conformity.
The second hypothesis is a null hypothesis. There will be no significant difference in the amount of conformity shown by the minority when they are shown answers of majority regarding the estimates of sweets in a jar compared to when the minority are not shown answers from the majority.
Method - Design
The experimental design that will be carried out is a field experiment and will be carried out in the natural settings of the participants. One main reason why field experiment has been chosen is that, there will be less demand characteristics as participants may not know they are in an experiment. Furthermore, there is high ecological validty in field experiments as participants will be unaware that they are in a experiment, and answer naturally. On the other hand, if a lab experiment design was chosen, under control settings, demand characteristics are more likely thus participants are more likely to guess the aim of the experiment and act in a way that may help the experimenter. Furthermore, cause and effect relationships can be identified as there is an IV and DV.
The Independent variable is whether the minority participants are shown previous and majority estimations of sweets in a jar or not.
The Dependant Variable is the change that occurs as a result of the independent variable. The dependant variable is whether participants conform to the majority or not.
The experiment will have 2 conditions and experimenter will be using an independent measures design. This is so that the hypothesis can be concluded by comparing results from both conditions. Therefore, the experimenter can check whether showing majority answers or nots affects conformity in participants (cause and effect can be identified. 20 subjects will do the first experiment, 20 different subjects will be doing the second experiment. A large number of participants have been chosen for each condition to give better, fair and accurate results and so that. The participants will try to estimate the number of sweets in a jar. In the 1st condition participants will be shown the majority results. On the other hand, participants from the 2nd experiment will not be shown the majority results. This is so that the results can help conclude the hypothesis and aim.
Independent measures design would be most suitable for this study, as there are less demand characteristics, this is because if the same subjects were used in both conditions they would probably guess that they are involved in an experiment, thus they may give different answers. Furthermore, there will be no order effects, subjects will be wanting to take part in the study as the experiment is quick, easy and participants only take part in the experiment once. On the other hand, if they were told to do experiment a second time, they would be more frustrated, or even give a better answer or they may just give a stupid answer.
Ethics
The experiment involves quite a lot of ethical issues which need to be identified and resolved. Participants in the experiment should not be affected in anyway and must be left in the same state as before e.g. The first ethical issue is consent, the experimenter must provide consent form with terms, conditions, and other details regarding the experiment to the participants. The consent form will give participants information about their right to withdraw from the experiment, and guarantee them about the confidentiality of their results. Participants were also told by the experimenter that they had the right to withdraw during any time of the investigation and that their results were safe + secure (will not get in to anyone’s hands). The experimenter will give participants the consent form to sign to say they agree to take part and agree to everything that is on the consent form is anonymous + secure from other people viewing their details.
The second ethical issue is deception which may occur in the experiment. If participants have any queries or questions to the experimenter, he cannot withhold the truth and the experimenter must give a true and honest opinion on the subject matter. Participants will also be told in the consent form that the experimenter cannot refuse to hold the truth.
Thirdly is debriefing, the experimenter will tell each participant about the aims and objectives of the experiment, this will be done after all participants have estimated the sweets in a jar and the experiment is complete.
Fourthly, participants will be told in the consent form that they have the right to withdraw themselves from the experiment and leave.
Finally, it is the experimenters responsibility that participants should be protected from any kind of physiological, psychological distress or even harm.
Participants
The target population that will be used for the experiment will be students from st marys college, Blackburn. All students age range will be within 16-18. The reason the experimenter chose Students as the target population is that students are more readily likely to conform and are more impressionable compared to elder people. Therefore they would be good to study, especially for this experiment. There will be 2 conditions and each condition will have 20 different subjects as the other. The experimenter will use a multi cultural, using all ethnic background student to make the experiment fair. The sampling method that will be used is opportunity sample, thus the experimenter will use participants that are available at the time of experiment. The experimenter will use participants who are free and out of lessons therefore it it is less likely to disturb students who are in lesson. This will be done by using participants from the college canteen. Psychology students will not be used for the experiment as they may know that they are taking part in a psychology experiment and may guess the aim of the study, therefore they may give bias estimation to help the experimenter. Opportunity sample would be most convenient for this experiment, as it is very quick and most economical as it will be done within the college premises. Furthermore, opportunity sample would be very ideal for this investigation as the investigation will take place during the lunch hour (busy time), therefore finding participants would be very quick and easy.
Materials + Task
The apparatus that will be used is a Jar, and sweets. A table will also be used where the jar and sweets will be placed for participants will take the experiment Furthermore, the experimenter will provide consent forms, for participants to complete. See appendix 1. Standardize instructions will be used by participants and the experimenter will have 2 record sheets for each condition which will be used to jot down results. See appendix 2. There are 2 record sheets being used for comparisons between the two and for the purpose of testing the hypothesis. One record sheet for condition 1 and the other for condition 2. See appendix 3 + 4. Participants will be asked to read the consent form and sign if they agreed to take part in the experiment. If they did they had to estimate the amount of sweets in a jar, and before each participant estimated, they were shown previous results. A consent form will be used because permission must be gained before using participants details in for any purpose, and participants must know detailed information about the study. The experimenter will provide the same standardized instructions to all participants in both conditions to make the experiment fair. A debriefing sheet will also be provided at the end of the experiment. See appendix 5. This will provide participants information regarding the aims and objectives of the experiments in detail. If they felt deception had affected their results, they had the right to withdraw and terminate their results. Participants will be called on a one to one basis, they will firstly be shown the previous results of the majority. They will then be asked to estimate the amount of sweets in the jar. Results will be taken down on the record sheet. The 2nd condition will be exactly the same, however participants will not be shown previous answers.
Procedure
The students that will be in canteen will be approached by the experimenter. This will be done by; the experimenter at the entrance and experimenter will call upon every 3rd student that entered the canteen. After a total of 20 participants are found. Before consent forms were offered to participants, each participants were asked whether they studied psychology. If participants were found to study the subject, they will be asked to leave the group and told they could not participate. As some psychology students may be in the group, the experimenter will again call every 3rd person until the total is 40. After the total amount of students are found, the experimenter will request everyone in the group and ask them to read and sign the consent form. After 40 students are found to agree to partake in the experiment, they will be requested to read standardized instructions regarding the experiment.
At this point the experiment will start. And participants will be asked top estimate the amount of sweets in the jar on a one to one basis. Each estimate will be recorded on the record sheet by the experimenter. After the first participants estimate is taken down, every other participant will be showed estimates that have been made by previous participants. After all participants had estimated their opinion on the number of sweets, the participants were given a debriefing sheet see figure 2. They were then asked if whether they would like to withdraw their results and leave the experiment because of deception which may have affected their results
Consent Form – Figure 1
I am an as psychology student at St Marys college. The experiment will be taking place in the college premises. A total of 20 participants will be taking place in the experiment. The aim of the experiment is to investigate the impact of social influences. Please note you have the right to withdraw at anytime during the experiment. All results and names will be kept confidential and will be protected. I agree not to refuse to withhold the truth when you have any queries or questions to ask me regarding the experiment.
Please sign below if you wish to participate in the experiment.
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Thank you for your time and co-operation
Zakaria Master
Consent Form
I am an as psychology student at St Marys college. The experiment will be taking place in the college premises. A total of 20 participants will be taking place in the experiment. The aim of the experiment is to investigate the impact of social influences. Please note you have the right to withdraw at anytime during the experiment. All results and names will be kept confidential and will be protected.
Please sign below if you wish to participate in the experiment.
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Thank you for your time and co-operation
Zakaria Master
Figure 2
Debrief Sheet
The aim of the experiment to see how minority results were affected by the majority. This was done by using 2 experiments, so results could be compared to show if/how the minority confirm to majority answers.. The first experiment involved participants being showed majority results whereas in experiment 2, participants were not shown majority results. You have the right to withdraw and terminate your results. All results will be kept confidential and will only be used by myself to help conclude my hypothesis.
Record Sheet – Experiment 1
Participant 1 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 2 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 3 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 4 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 5 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 6 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 7 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 8 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 9 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 10 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 11 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 12 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 13 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 14 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 15 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 16 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 17 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 18 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 19 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 20 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Record Sheet – Experiment 2
Participant 1 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 2 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 3 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 4 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 5 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 6 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 7 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 8 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 9 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 10 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 11 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 12 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 13 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 14 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 15 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 16 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 17 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 18 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 19 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
Participant 20 Estimation of sweets in a jar ……………………
To gain a conclusion from the hypothesis, the experimenter must know how many minority participants conformed to majority participants. The minority participants will be from participant 14 to participant 20. To help decide whether the minority participants conformed to majority estimates, the results will need to be analysed. Firstly, the mean of the first 13 participants will be noted. After this, the minority results will be analysed separately from participant 14 – 20. If the minority estimates are in-between 9 below or 9
above of the mean scores, the participant will be noted to have conformed. This same procedure will be used for both experiments to find out whether the minority conformed or not to majority views.
Results
Summary table showing difference between participants who were shown previous results compared to results of participants who were not shown previous results.
The results shown above for experiment show that conformity had occurred by participants in experiment 1 as the mode and median are 60. The range was affected a lot due to the fact that there was 1 anomoly in the results.
Comparing experiment 2 to experiment 1, there are several differences. The main difference is the range which is much more higher than in experiment 1. Furthermore, the median is higher by 32.5 in experiment 2 compared to experiment 1.
Experiment 1 Results – Figure 6
Experiment 2 Results – Figure 7
From the pie chart above which is experiment 1, it can clearly be seen that in experiment 1 71% of minority participants conformed when shown results of the majority. Therefore 29% did not conform. On the other hand the results were opposite when the minority participants were not shown majority estimates. Only 14% of participants of the minority conformed, thus 86% did not conform.
Results
When comparing results regarding the amount of conformity shown between experiment 1 and 2 a conclusion can be made. This is because experiment 1 shows a large amount of conformity when minority are shown the majority results. However, experiment 2 only shows a very small amount of conformity when minority are not shown majority results. Therefore the experimenter has decided to accept the experimental hypothesis which is “There will be an increase in conformity by the minority participants only, when the minority are shown answers of the majority” + “if the minority are not shown the majority answers, there will be a decrease in conformity” . However, the experimenter has decided to reject the null hypothesis, as it is not possible to accept both experimental and null hypothesis. Furthermore, null hypothesis has been rejected because it can clearly be seen from my graph and pie chart that showing majority results certainly affects conformity.
Discussion
From the results gained from experiment 1 and experiment 2. There is a significant difference in the amount of conformity shown by the minority participants compared with minority participants in experiment 2. Because experiment 1 participants were shown the majority results a very high percentage of 71% conformity was made. On the other hand, a very small percentage of 14% conformity was made by minority participants in experiment 2 as they were not shown majority results. The experimenter has decided to accept the experimental hypothesis, basically because cause and effect could be identified. This means that the fact that participants are shown majority results and not shown majority results makes a lot of difference in the estimation of sweets in a jar and the amount of conformity overall. The experimenter rejected the null hypothesis which was “There will be no significant difference in the amount of conformity shown by the minority when they are shown answers of majority regarding the estimates of sweets in a jar compared to when the minority are not shown answers from the majority” . As the experimenter decided to use participants aged 16-19, the experiment could be said to be unfair, because we the hypothesis is not to see how age affects conformity but how minority is affected by majority. The results recorded may have been affected because of participants age. Because all participants were young, they are more likely to conform just by looking at other results. On the other hand if participants aged above this range i.e adults, the results could have been completely different and they hypothesis may not have been accepted. Therefore, the results the experimenter recorded i.e results show that minority conform to majority when shown previous results, could be because of the age range of participants.
If this experimenter had to do the experiment another time, instead of choosing participants aged 16-19, he would choose all aged participants. This would make the test more fair. Furthermore, the results will be unbiased. As the experiment took place in the natural setting of participants there was high ecological validity. This means it was less likely for them to know that they are in an experiment compared to an experiment which took place in a certain room on a one to one basis. Another improvement which could be made to the experiment is by asking participants the estimation of sweets in a jar in one group where each participant can hear other participants estimation. By doing this the minority maybe more likely to conform just to be accepted as part of the group compared to asking participants opinion on a one to one basis. Using a one to one basis means there is less pressure on the participant and he would more likely give his true honest opinion.
Relationship to Background Research
The study took place to see how minority results were affected by the majority results. Furthermore, it took place to see whether showing results of the majority or not made a difference in conformity. The study which the experimenter studied was linked and similar to few studies done by psychologists regarding conformity. The study was similar to the moscovici and facheaux study which was to see if and how a minority affects conformity to the majority, however this study was opposite I.e how minority is affected by the majority.
Conclusions and Implications
From the results as mentioned above the experimenter has accepted the experimental hypothesis and there is some evidence in this essay to say that minority conform to a majority view. However, this is the first time this experiment has been done, thus it is not reliable and we would certainly not get the same results as found in this experiment. The findings found from this experiment are slightly beneficial to our understanding of psychology as we do know that minority conform to a majority view. However, more experiments regarding conformity are needed to see if the results are always similar.
Limitations
Overall the experiment was successful as a clear conclusion had been found and the experimental hypothesis was accepted. However there were some limitations during and before the experiment which may have affected results, thus affect the conclusion. Firstly, due to the experiment taking place in the college canteen at a busy period i.e lunch break. There was a very large amount of noise, especially where the experiment was taking place. This may have affected peoples estimates as they may have rushed their estimate and maybe just give a random number. Secondly, the atmosphere which was very warm, therefore they may have been a little stressed which may have affected peoples ability to think and guess the amount of sweets in a jar.
Suggestion for improvement
There are many things which the experimenter could improve on to bring on a better and successful experiment. However, some factors are very difficult and time consuming e.g. using a random sampling method which could give more fair and accurate results. The first improvement which the experimenter could make if the experiment was to be repeated is the time of the experiment. As the experiment took place during a very busy lunch hour, participants may have been affected by the temperature (too warm) and the level of noise in the canteen. Thus a suitable time would be after lunch during lesson time. This means that there will still be students in the canteen but a lesser amount will be available, thus there is less noise and there is a suitable temperature. Furthermore, by choosing a suitable time besides the lunch break e.g. during free periods, participants are more readily willing to participate in the experiment, as they are in their free time. They are less likely to rush the experiment. Another improvement which could be made to the experiment is to use more participants. This is because the experiment had a minority and a majority, and the amount of minority participants was only 7. Thus the conclusion gained from the experiment “minority conform to a majority” may have occurred by luck and the minority may not have necessarily conformed. However, if more participants were chosen overall for each condition i.e 40 more accurate results would have been found.
Suggetions for further research
There are many different types of ways in which this experiment can be developed by making changes. One main change which could be made is age. To prepare an experiment which shows how age affects conformity. In one condition there could be young teenagers doing the same experiment, and in another condition adults e.g. above 30 could be used. This way we could reach a conclusion to see whether or not age affects conformity. Furthermore, jenness’s study which is described briefly in the introduction could be used with slight changes. An experiment using the same task as this experiment i.e sweets in a jar could be done, however the aim would be to see how the majority are affected by the minority.
References
Books
Pennington, D. (2002) Introducing Psychology, Hodder and Stoughton.
Websites
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