Psychology- Majority Influence
- Two psychological processes that are involved in majority influence are: Normative and informative influence. Normative influence is when somebody conforms with the majority because they feel as if they would look stupid or stand out from the crowd if they do not conform. Even if the majority is wrong and the naïve RP knows that he is correct, he still conforms to the majority because he doesn’t want to be the odd one out. Asch’s study shows this because he put naïve RPs in a group with stooges. The stooges would give the incorrect answer even if the correct answer is incredibly obvious. The naïve RP conformed 32% of the time. This shows normative influence does exist. Informative influence is when we conform to the majority because we do not know the correct answer for ourselves, so we look at other people for the correct answer. Sherif showed this by getting participants to sit in a dark room and showed them a dot of light that would move because of the auto kinetic effect of your eyes. He told RPs to judge how far the light wobbled and to write down their answers but the answers were not similar to the other RPs. Next he told them to shout it out but when people shouted it out their answers were very similar because nobody knew the correct answer but they knew what the majority were saying.
- Two reasons why someone might not conform to majority influence is group size and the difficulty of the task. If the group has two people then people would not conform because its one word against another like a two person debate. With three people there is a higher chance because it’s two against one but it’s still low at 14% conformity rate. With 4 people the percentage is much higher because there is more pressure for the naïve participant; the conformity rate is 32%. Conformity rate does not raise much after this because the naïve participant starts to suspect what is going on. The more difficult the task the more likely the RP is going to conform due to informative influence. This happens because the RP does not know the correct answer so they are much more likely to conform to the majority. This occurred in Asch’s study.
- Firstly I am going to evaluate Asch’s study of normative influence. Asch told participants to judge sizes of lines by showing them a card with a line on it and gave them another card. The second card had three lines on it and the particpants had to guess which line matched the line from the first card. However two of the participants were told to give the incorrect answer and one participant was a naïve RP. He was not told to give the incorrect answer. Asch wanted to know if the naïve RP would conform with the other two participants even if he knew he was right. The results were that he conformed 32% of the time. This is normative influence. 74% of all RPs conformed at least once in Asch’s study. In conclusion this shows that there is high majority influence. Asch’s study lacks external validity because it is not in every day life when people are asked to judge sizes of lines with other people. These sorts of events would not occur in everyday life. This stops people from acting realistically because it is not a realistic task thus affecting the results. Asch does have internal validity because it shows how people conform under majority influence using normative influence. Evidence to suggest this is the fact that the naïve RP conformed to the group of stooges 32% of the time and gave the incorrect answer. This shows majority influence clearly. This research does not cause anyone any ethical problems however it does make the naïve RP uncomfortable while during the experiment; however this is expected because that is how humanity works. If the naïve RP was more confident and believed in himself much more then this could have affected the results and stopped him from conforming to the other two stooges. This test cannot be generalised to most people because it was only tested on the naïve RP and two other stooges and also because it lacks external validity. If the RP realised that he was being tested then the conformity rate would drop because he would stick with his answer.
