This investigation was based upon research by Jenness (1935). Participants were presented with a jam jar, which contained skittles. They weere then asked how many skittles they believed to be in the jam jar. They had to record thier answers onto a sheet which already contained false answers which were either higher (condition 1), or lower (condition 2) than the actual amount. Jenness only caried out his research on males and it was thought that female rates of conformity would be similar.The aim of my experiment is to find out whether there is a difference between the rates of conformity between males and females. This will either prove that Jenness was right in assuming that males and females had similar rates of conformity, or disprove it.
The independant variable was gender, and the estimate provided the dependant variable. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyse the results. Where U = 68, N1= 12, and N2 = 12. The crical value at P>0.05 = 37, so the null hypothesis was accepted, for the experimental hypothesis to be accepted U needed to be = or less than 37.
INTRODUCTION
In order to 'fit in' to certain social groups people have to change or conform to the groups's ideology, and way of life. They may change thier actions, even though thier actions may be considered by themselves as wrong. This is obvious in teenagers. They often compli with 'peer pressure'. There also may be a difference other than age in the rates of conformity, pending what gender someone is. Below is a list of examples of conformity:
- People wear desisgner labels , e.g. Nike and Reebok
- Girls wear make-up to fit in
- People get tattoos and piercings to fit in
- Shoplift to impress
- Smoke and drink alcohol socially to impress
Over the years conformity has been studied many times, and has lead to different people giving it different definitions. In 1995 Zimbardo defined conformity as a 'tendancy for people toadopt the behavior, attitudes and values of other members of a reference group', whereas Aronson (1988) defined it as 'a change in behavior as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people'.
In 1958 Kelmanidentified 3 different types of responses to social influence:
- COMPLIANCE- a change in behaviour, but without a change in personal opinion.
- INTERNALISM- chaning in both opinion and behaviour.
- IDENTIFICATION- changing in both opinion and behaviour to fit in.
Insko (1985) suggested that people needed to fulfil two psychological needs:
- The desire to be liked which underlies normative socail influence- we conform because we want others to accept and like us.
- The desire to be rigt which forms the basis for informational social influence- we took to others, whom we believe are correct, and information on how to behave, espiecally in strange situations.
There are many studies concerning whether peoples judgement ias affected by other peoples views. However the three main ones are Ash, Jenness, and Sherif.
Sherif
Sherif made use of the auto kinetic effect (a point of light which moves erratically when viewed in darkness.).He asked participants, how far they thought the spot had moved. The light however remained stationary, but small movements in the eye gave the impression thatthe light was moving. They all gave different answers and all were consistant. When they were asked in groups, thier answers became the same, althoughthey were not told to work in groups together, which created a norm, that is necesary in ambigous situations. The fact that the group norm rapidly replaced that of the personal norm, shows the existance of social influence.
Asch
Participants were asked to judge thelength of the line in comparison with a test card, which was shown to them. the first five people were confederates of the experimenter answered the questions wrong in order to see if the sixth person would conform, and give an obvious wrong answer, because those previous had done so. The findings were that thirty-two percent conformed on a regular basis, seventy five conformed at least once, twenty-five did not conform at all, and five percent conformed all the time.
Jenness
Jenness asked individual students to estimate the number of beans in a jam jar, and then arranged them to discuss thier guesses. Later when asked to give thier answers again, he found that thier answers were alot closer to that of the rest of the groups.
All of the above studies used only male participants, so the results can't be generalised. My study will not only include females but will compare males to females to see if it is acceptable to generalise male results to the whole population. The findings of all the above research will relate to my study as it gives me an insight into conformity, and I can try to avoid problems by studing them first.
AIM
The aim of this study will be to see if gender effects the rate of conformity, because Jenness's 1932 study didn't take gender in to account and he only used male participants (which is unacceptable to generalise male results to the whole population), assuming that female rates or conformity were the same as male ones. This study will replicate Jenness's 1932 study.
HYPOTHESIS
- The experimental hypothesis for this study will be that there will be a difference between participants according to thier gender. This should be evaluated by a one tailed test, using a nominal level of significance.
- The null hypothesis will be that gender will not effect the rate of conformity.This should be evaluated by a two tailed test, using a nominal level of significance.
METHOD
Design
In this experiment, an experimental model was used. This is because the design was to distinguish between gender and used two conditions a low estimate (condition 1) and a high estimate (condition 2) sheets. The independant variable was gender, and the estimate provided the dependant variable. The independant variable is being manipulated to see the effect on a dependant variable. An independant groups design was used which means that the two groups participants are different.
Participants
The participants who took part were all studying in Handsworth grammar School's lower sixth form, and were all aged between 16 and 19 years of age. There were 10 male and 10 female participants.
Materials
The apparatus that was used during the course of this experiment consisted of 68 marbles, 1 plastic jar, and 20 answer sheets. All answer sheets had sets of numbers on them, which were either higher or lower than the actual amount of marbles in the jar. This would see whethger or not the participants conformed or not.
Procedure
Before the investigation began the marbles were counted and put into the small plastic jar. This number was needed was noted for future reference. After this 20 answer sheets were prepared, which contained 10 high estimates and 10 low estimates. The answer sheets were all handwritten as to not induce suspicion of the participants. This however raises ethical questions about not telling the participants, however once the experiment was over all the participants were fully debriefed.The answer sheets have 7 spaces, 5 of which had been falsely filled in, to see if people would conform when answering.
All of the participants were all studying in Handsworth grammar School's lower sixth form, and were all aged between 16 and 19 years of age. To ensure control procedures were standardised. To ensure confidentiality the participants were asked thier age and gender, not thier name or other details. Participants were shown the jar of marbles. Five males and five females were given the high estimate sheets and the remaining five males and five females were given the low estimate sheets, to record thier estimates. Once they had completed filling in thier sheets, they were fully debriefed. They were also told the actual amount in the jar. This minised the original deception. The resul;ts were placed into tables, which compared the differences between males and females.
Results
This investigation was constructed to determine the conformity rates between males and females. To give an indication of the typical answers males and females would give, an independant group design was used.
Table of Results
MALES FEMALES
CON 1 RANK CON 2 RANK
92 15 99 16
89 12.5 100 17.5
101 19 102 20
100 17.5 89 12.5
84 11 90 14
42 2 40 1
49 5 45 3
52 8 50 6
47 4 55 10
51 7 53 9
MEAN= 70.7 T1= 101 MEAN= 72.3 T1= 109
The above table is a brief overview of the results and shows the general trend to which the results follow. As can be seen, when given a set of higher manufactured answers, as in Condition 1, then slightly higher estimates are given, and the Males give the higher estimates in this Condition.
In Condition 2, the males give lower estimates when they are given relatively low manufactured answers and Females give estimates that are higher than those of the Males.
Mann Whitney U Test
U = n1n2 + (n1(n1+1)/2)-T1
Where- n1-no of subjects in condition 1 (n1 = 10, table1)
Where- n2-no of subjects in condition 2 (n2 = 10, table1)
Where- T1- rank total for condition 1
Therefore;
T1 = 101 and T2 = 109
U= 10*10+(10(10+1)/2)-101
=100+55-101
=U=54
U2=n1n2-U
Therefore;
U2=10*10-54
U2=46
In this experiment the lowest U/U2 value was 46. The critical value for 10 and 10 participants was 27. Therefore this study is not significant (at showing the different rates of conformity between males and females) as:
P>0.05 (not significant), thus supporting the null hypothesis that there is no differencesbetween males and females in relation to conformity, which indicates that the original researchers were right in generalising it to the overall population, even though they only carried out studies on males.
DISCUSSION
The null hypothesis, that gender will not effect the rate of conformity, was supported by the rate of conformity, was supported by the results of the investigation, that showed that P is greater than 0.05, thus not significant. This is because the the mean values in the table were not sparse enough to support the experimental hypothesis ( that there will be a difference between participants according to thier gender). This was also confirmedwhen these values were plotted on a graph, which again showed no relation of difference between males and females.
This experiment was very similar to that of Jenness. Like Jenness's participants, those who took part in this experiment were not asked in groups but individually, and confidentiality was maintained at all times. However this investigation set out to find the difference in conformity rates according to gender, whereas Jenness was not, as he only experimented with male participants.
Jenness generalised which was wrong, however my research shows that he was justified in doing so. Both experiments were carried out in the same way.
There may also be complications and limitations as the participants I tested, were people from Birmingham and therefore would not have any way seeing if there was a national differences or regional differences a in conformity between the sexes.
Also because I only studied people in a small community, no major generalisations could be made using this data. Follow Up studies could include a study into different nationalities to see how conformity changes in diferent societies e.g collecrtivist and individualists, and also the naivity people, and it's change as we move along the globe.
CONCLUSIONS
From the results it is clear to see that gender does not effect the rate of conformity (null hypothesis), as thier wasn't a big difference between male and female answers. This can clearly be seen on the above graphs and the tables.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ASH (1955) - Opinoins and social pressure. Scientific America, 193, 31-35.
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DEUTSCH AND GERALD - A study of normative and infrormational socail influence upon individual judgement. J. Abn & social psychology.51.629 - 636
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JENNESS - (1935) The role opinion J. Abn &of discussion in chganging social psychology. 27,279 - 296.
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KELMAN - (1958) Compliance identification and internalisatio;3 processes of attitude change. Journal Of conflict resolution. 2 pp 51 - 60.
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MANN - (1969) Social psychology New York Wiley.
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SHERIFF - A study of some factors in perception, Achives of pshychology, 27.
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ZIMBARDO - (1976) Stanford prison experiment.
