Crutchfield (1955) did a series of studies on individual differences and conformity. He arranged his participants in booths out of sight of each other but able to see the cards. This enabled him to have several naïve participants at the same time. All the participants sat in individual booths with a row of switches and lights. They were told that the switches were to be used to show their answers and that the lights would be the answers of the other participants. However, the experimenter controlled these lights and all of the participants saw the same display. Although there was no face-to-face contact when Crutchfield used Asch’s line drawing, conformity levels were still at 30%. When the task was made more difficult conformity levels increased even more.
Zimbardo also conducted a very influential study into conformity. He recruited 25 male volunteers to participate in a two-week study of prison life. The local police were also used to arrest 9 “prisoners” who were then taken to a prison where they were strip searched and given prison smocks to wear and their number to memorise. They were then treated like real prisoners and the “guards” were allowed to make up the rule (although no physical aggression was allowed) and conformed to their roles with such enthusiasm that the experiment had to be discontinued after 6 days. Many of the participants who were given the role of the “prisoner” showed signs of anxiety and depression.
According to Zimbardo, these results show how easily people can adapt to a new role in a new situation and behave out of character to fit that role. Two explanations have been given for this change in character. Firstly, that the participant was adopting the stereotypical role of the prison guard or the prisoner. The other explanation is that the participants were displaying demand characteristics and trying to act how they thought the experimenter wanted them to.
Whatever the explanation for conformity in this experiment and others, it is a fascinating area of psychology that has not yet been fully explored. In the following investigation the differences in gender and how they affect conformity is also going to be studied.
One study into gender differences found that women conformed more when they were faced with the task of identifying tools, whereas men were more confident in their decisions. This would suggest that familiarity with the subject being tested also plays a part in conformity and so gender could affect the results. For example, if the object were something that was stereotypically “female” then the expected results would be that men would conform more than women, and if the object were something that was stereotypically “male” then the expected results would be that women would conform more.
Experimenters remain interested in conformity in contemporary Britain today as it occurs in everyday situations and can have a negative and positive affect on a person’s behaviour. The affects can be vast like going along with robbing someone even when you know its wrong, or small like going to the cinema even though you don’t want to but the rest of your friends do.
This experiment is based on the Asch experiment carried out in 1952 as an aid in explaining conformity. Even though this experiment was carried out nearly half a century ago it explains conformity well and also it will be interesting to focus on any difference in conformity levels nowadays. Studies like the Asch experiment (as already referred to in the introduction), which was carried out half a century ago, shows a high number of people willing to conform with others. It will be interesting to see if there is a large amount of people who conform to others at the present time.
Aims
The aims of this investigation are to define whether a person’s gender affects their tendency to conform to an influence when given a neutral question to answer. When conducting the investigation other factors such as age and intelligence will not be taken into consideration. A sample of all populations will be used so that these factors do not become confounding variables.
Hypothesis
Null:
There will be no significant difference between the levels of conformity between male and female participants and any difference is due to chance alone.
Alternative:
There will be a significant difference between the levels of conformity between male and female participants.
This hypothesis is two-tailed, as it does not suggest which gender will conform more.
Design
Independent Variable:
The independent variable is the gender of the participant.
Dependent Variable:
The dependent variable is the tendency conformity by the participants.
For this investigation the experimental method was used. This was because the independent variable of the gender of the participant had to be manipulated to change the dependent variable of whether the participant conformed. By using this method as opposed to an observation or correlation this manipulation was easily controlled and other extraneous variables were also prevented from confounding the results.
The observation method could have been used, by using a naturally occurring situation to judge whether different genders conform more or less than the other. However, this would have been disadvantageous as there would have been no control over the situation and different genders may also have been exposed to different situations. This method would also have been very time consuming.
The sampling method used in this investigation was opportunity sampling, as time and resources are not readily available.
To test the levels of conformity, a jar of sweets was used as they are easy to display and the results given can be recorded easily as the participants either conformed to the experimenter or remained independent. A control group was also used to work out a mean score with the absence of my estimation. There was no in between stage as could be found using a test such as discussions on a contemporary issue.
So that only the independent variable affected the dependent variable certain controls had to be established to prevent other confounding variables having an effect on the overall results. Ensuring that all participants had been in the same place, under the same conditions before the experiment took place helped control extraneous variables i.e. they were all in the same small building. A standardised procedure was also implemented to reduce possible extraneous variables.
The independent variable in the experiment is the gender of the participant and the dependent variable is whether the participant conforms to my estimation.
The estimation of 100 sweets given by the experimenter shall remain constant. The result will be recorded as conformity if the given answer is between 90 and 110. The actual number of sweets in the jar will be 150.
Controls that were established during the experiment were:
· All of the participants were tested under the same conditions
· Standardised instructions were used
· The jar of sweets used was the same for all participants
The results were recorded in a table with the gender of the group and whether or not the participant conformed on the tests.
Participants
The target population is the staff and customers present at a dental surgery and a health clinic. These two samples are based in the same building for greater ease. This sample will give a sample of varying ages of mixed sex. The samples of people are all of very similar qualification and intelligence and have no reason that I am aware of to produce a biased answer to my question. A sample of thirty people will be used, 10 of which (5 male, 5 female) will be used in the control group and 20 (10 male, 5 female) in the experiment. Fourteen of the participants work in the clinics and sixteen will be clients. This produces a representative sample of the participant’s professions, improving the validity of the experiment. No other factors such as intelligence, age or personality traits were taken into consideration.
For the experiment the participants were all put in the same situation. Other than manipulating the independent variable in the two conditions all participants were exposed to the same conditions and were tested using the same test.
Apparatus
Glass jar
150 Sweets
Cloth to cover jar
Experiment room
Microsoft Word
Procedure
Before each participant participated they consented in doing a psychology study, and were told that they could withdraw at any time (protecting them from stress) and were notified that their answers will stay confidential. Also after the participant has finished the experiment they are debriefed and told what the study will show. Carrying out these controls will ensure the study is compliant with ethical guidelines.
Greet each participant using the following phrase:
“Hello, could you please be a participant in an experiment of perception”.
If they agree
“Would like to follow me please?”
Lead the participant to a room and ask them to take a seat
Use following instructions to inform them of the purpose of the experiment:
“Thank you for agreeing to participate in this experiment. It is a simple test on perception. You have the right to withdraw at anytime. Please do not attempt to respond until I ask for your answer. I will now remove the cloth from this jar of sweets. In a moment I will ask for your opinion on how many sweets there are in the jar. Like I think there’s about 100”.
Now pause and then use the following phrase to ask the participant to give their answer:
“Could you please now give me your answer?”
Record whether or not the participant conformed.
Thank the participant for taking part and ask them not to discuss the nature of the experiment with any other participants.
Repeat this procedure for all of the groups.
After all the results have been collected debrief the participants together explaining the purpose of the experiment and the results obtained and answer any questions the participants may have (see appendix for debriefing).
Controls
It could be just a concurrence that the answers the participants put down correspond to my estimation; therefore no concrete conclusion of the conformity levels can be made. Also the various ages of the participants may affect the results as older people have a wider general knowledge than younger people have and may have better perceptive skills and as a result will not conform to my estimation.
Results
Table to show Levels of Conformity:
Results Analysis
A conformer was determined as someone who gave an answer that was between 90 and 110.
To analyse the results the Chi-Squared test was used as the design was an independent measure design and the data was nominal.
As shown in the table above there was a positive difference between the observed results in levels of conformity between males and females. This difference is also demonstrated in the graphs drawn to show the initial results before statistical analysis.
Alternative Hypothesis – there will be a significant difference between the levels of conformity between male and female participants.
Null Hypothesis – there will be no significant difference between levels of conformity between males and females and any difference will be due to chance alone.
To test these hypothesise the Chi-Squared test was used to compare the observed results with an expected set of results to see if there is a significant difference between them. Expected results are the values that would have been obtained if the null hypothesis were correct.
The calculated value from the test was 5.06
The critical value was 2.71 when tested at a significance level of 95% (P=0.05)
At this level of significance the calculated value is more than the critical value and so the null hypothesis was rejected showing that there is a significant difference between levels of conformity between males and females.
The null hypothesis can also be rejected at a significance level of 97.75% (P=0.025) as the critical value is 3.84 and the calculated value of 5.06 is still higher.
Conclusion
The experiment proved that there is a significant difference in levels of conformity between males and females to a significance level of p = 0.025. This supports the original hypothesis and allows the null hypothesis to be rejected.
Discussion
Validity of results
This study has the same conclusion as previous studies into conformity as women appear to be greater conformers to informational social influence than men are. This supports the hypothesis as a difference in conformity between genders has been measured. Seeing if the results actually measure conformity in an efficient way can conclude the validity of the experiment. Therefore referring to the method and results it shows that this research method lacks validity. There could be various reasons for this. One of these reasons is that maybe the participants did not actually conform by giving an answer similar to the recommendation. Instead it is possible that out of coincidence the participant gave an answer, which they thought, was genuinely correct, which was also the same or very similar to my answer.
Even though conformity is an everyday occurrence and that the results show that people do conform, the research method does lack mundane realism. The reason for this is because when asked to give their estimation it is unlikely that the experimenter will present there own estimation. As a result participants may guess what the experiment was setting out to find out, and therefore not take any notice of the experimenters recommendation. Obviously this is another reason why this research method lacks validity.
There is also “the experimenter effect” were the subjects might have tried to please the experimenter by saying what they thought he would like to hear. Being told that the experiment was a study of perception also misleads the participants to an extent. They could possibly have guessed it was a study of conformity. The results could have also shown that males have better fundamental perceptive skills.
How to improve validity
The only real way of improving validity in this study is to change the research method totally. The reason for this is because the method only really tests informational conformity not behavioural conformity. Therefore having a research method like Asch’s study would improve the validity of this study a lot. This would also comply more with real life and then the study would be a lot more valid and respectable than just testing informational conformity.
Reliability
The research method lacks reliability for various reasons, as the extent of what the estimations measure does not really refer to measuring conformity consistently.
Reasons for this lack of reliability include the lack of full control of extraneous variables. Although the environment did not vary between participants some participants were asked to take the experiment when they had plenty of time on their hands e.g. when on a break. These participants would no doubt be able to concentrate more when making their estimation. Also a lack of reliability may be caused by there being a lot of differences between each participant. The only thing that changed between the participants was the gender, no account of origin, ethics or ages were involved in the study. Differences in age could mean that because the older people have lived longer they will have a better perceptive skills compared to younger people, therefore older people may conform less because they may know the answers better. Because of this if the female participants were of a younger age than the males it wouldn’t be a surprise if the males conformed less than the females because they have a wider range of general knowledge.
How to improve reliability
By having a standardised procedure i.e. giving each participant the same written instructions at the same time to give their answers would improve reliability because each participant would be under similar controls to the next participant. If the environment were the same for each participant before the experiment e.g. sitting each participant in the same room before being tested would also increase the reliability of the study, as each participant will be able to concentrate at the same level as another participant.
By controlling the age of the participants, for example only asking participants aged between 30 and 40, would cause there to be more reliability as the possibility of participants having acquired perceptive skills would be better controlled. As a result I would be able to compare the difference in conformity levels between males and females better.
Ethics
Many studies into social influence break the British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines e.g. Milgram broke deception, consent and protection of the participant. Because of these guidelines it was essential that the experiment complied with all the ethical principle set. Firstly all participants gave consent to the experiment and were told what might influence their willingness to participate i.e. that the scores of males and females were to be contrasted and evaluated. Of course the participants were not told that conformity was to be measured however. To protect the participant they were also debriefed to make sure they left the experimental situation at least as sound as when they entered. The debriefing also provided the participant with an understanding of the nature of the experiment and informed them that their results could be removed from the experimental evaluation at any time in the future. The participants’ experience of the research was discussed with each participant after the experiment to monitor any unforeseen negative effects or misconceptions.
Implications of the study
The results of the experiment appear to indicate that people are willing to conform on something they don’t know about rather than just use an intelligent guess. Between males and females there is a difference in conformity levels as the results show that females seem to conform more than males do.
Overall you can say from this study in contemporary Britain women are far more likely to conform than males but as my results showed people of both genders are willing to conform to an extent more than what they would by just going with their own opinions.
You can’t really say from these results correspond to the same conclusions that Asch and Sheriff gained form their studies, because their studies tested different types of conformity so no comparison can really be made. Sherifs experiment was far simpler and the situation was more ambiguous.
Generalisability
To a certain extent it can be said that the results form the study show that people these days will conform more than just giving their own opinions. However this experiment only used 20 participants to test the hypothesis, which is a small amount of people to make a generalised conclusion about, as individual differences could play a big part in the outcome of the results.
Individual differences also determine the degree to which conformity will occur. Although the uncertainty and agreement of the situation are powerful contributors to the occurrence of conformity, they are not the sole determinants. Personal characteristics and the individual’s position within their social or work group play a role as well.
Cultural factors are also influential. Certain cultures are more likely than others to value group harmony over individual expression. In fact, school administrators, organization managers, and even parents can establish an atmosphere or “culture” that either fosters conformity or allows for disagreement and individualism.
Real life application
Even though the research method lacks mundane realism the actual concept of conformity is an everyday occurrence. Conformity can have little effect e.g. going along with your friend to the cinema even though you don’t really want to, or a big effect, for example during World War II when Germany complied with Hitler to kill many Jews even though they knew it was wrong. Both effects, large or small, can be to some extent linked to the results, as it shows that people do conform to one another. Therefore no matter how big the effect of conformity people life’s can be affected by the fact that they are willing to conform more than going along to what they feel themselves.
Identifying possible causes for the effect
There are many plausible reasons why people conformed in this experiment. Kelman (1958) produced a theoretically important analysis of the three types of conformity- Compliance, Identification and Internalisation. These could help to explain the findings. In his own words he distinguishes Compliance as, “when an individual accepts influence because he/she hopes to achieve a favourable reaction from another person or group”. Identification is, “when an individual accepts influence because he/she wants to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining relationship to another person or group.... the individual actually believes in the responses which he adopts through identification, but their specific content is more or less irrelevant”. And finally, Internalisation is “when an individual accepts influence because the content of the induced behaviour.... is congruent with his value system”. Through these forms of conformity we can see that humans’ can act in accordance with others for numerous reasons, positive as well as negative.
The social learning theory would explain the findings slightly differently in that they see metacognition, an understanding of how our mind works, as a key to learning. For example, we learn how to go about learning something, we learn what we can and cannot do. There has been a significant amount of research studies carried out in this area, which have shown that our metacognitive skills are important in determining how we interact with others, which will in turn affect the type of social reinforcement we receive. We also develop a theory of mind, which we use to interpret other people’s behaviour, which is a fundamental aspect of human interaction. It is an important learning mechanism as we learn to adjust our behaviour to the accepted norms and values of society. This forms an important basis for the social mechanisms involved in conformity.
Conformity has also been linked to those with low self-esteem or those who are especially concerned about social relationships or those who have a strong need for social approval. As 14 of the participants used were staff at a dental surgery and health clinic it could be likely that they felt they were still part of an environment in which it was the norm to be obedient. This is called a socially obedient environment. In the workplace individuals are often rewarded for obedience and so would obey as opposed to conform to the experiment as it is normal for their working environment.
The fact that males conformed predominantly less than females could be because of their exertion of true independence whereby they have followed only their own conscience. However apparent non-conformity can occur when an individual is apparently not conforming but is simply just conforming to a different set of group norms. This apparent non-conformity could exist in the men of this study because conformity is inconsistent with the “macho” stereotype.
In summary to this experiment, it seems clear that women do conform more than men. However there are further differences in explanation as to why. Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) looked at biology as an explanation. To them women lacked assertiveness and were seen as a lower form of evolution than males. This would suggest why females are more likely to conform although Lombroso’s work oversimplifies a complex issue, taking attention away from other levels so that we fail to fully understand the behaviour.
References
Richard Gross, et al., Hodder & Stoughton General, Paperback, June, 2000
Richard Gross, Hodder & Stoughton Educational, Paperback, June, 2001
Hugh Coolican, Hodder & Stoughton Educational, Paperback, July, 1999
Richard Gross, Hodder & Stoughton Educational, Paperback, April, 1999
Cara Flanagan, Letts Educational Ltd, Paperback, July, 2001
N. Hayes, Longman, Paperback, June, 1998
Michael W. Eysenck, Psychology Press, Paperback, March, 1994
Merv Stapleton,
Hodder & Stoughton Educational, Paperback, November, 2001
Jeremy J. Foster, Ian Parker BPS Blackwell, Paperback, 1995
Christine Brain, Nelson Thornes, February, 2002
Andrew Colman, Oxford University Press, Hardcover, February 2001
Debriefing after the experiment:
The aim of this experiment was to determine whether we do or, do not conform to informational social influence. 10 of you were used in a control setting with no social influence. The other 20 were tested to see if your answer was close to the recommendation I gave during the test. Your results will be examined to see whether the level of conformity between the males and the females is significant. You may withdraw your results at any time. You will all remain anonymous at all times when the results are being analysed. If you wish to withdraw your results or have any other questions please ask me now or contact me on the phone number I have given you.
The expected results (under the null hypothesis) for the experiment are shown in the table below:
The difference in values calculated between the observed and expected results are shown below:
