Another early study into conformity was carried out by Sherif (1935) Sherif tested for conformity by using the autokinetic effect. It was discovered that when participants were tested individually their estimates on how far the light moved varied considerably. The participants were then tested in groups of three. The composition of the group was manipulated by Sherif as he put together two people whose individual estimates were very similar and one person whose estimate was very different. Then each person in the group had to announce out loud how far they thought that the light had moved. Sherif found that over numerous trials the group converged to a common estimate. These results show that when a person is in an ambiguous situation they will look to others for guidance and adopt the group norm, this is known as informational conformity. Asch (1951) criticised Sherif’s experiment on the grounds that the experiment was too ambiguous which made it difficult to outline any definite conclusions about there bring conformity. Another criticism of Sherif’s experiment is that he used deception as he told the participants the light was moving when it was not.
Asch’s (1951) study was aimed at discovering whether or not a majority would influence a minority even in an unambiguous situation. He used the line judgement task, all the participants were shown two cards, one displaying three vertical lines of different sizes and the other displaying only one, and they were asked to match the line on one of the cards to a line on the other card. Only one of the participants was a naïve one, all of the others were confederates of the experimenter who had agreed in advance the responses that they were going to give. The naïve participant was led to believe that just like themselves the confederates were too participants. Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third of the naive participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the experimenters confederates. Although Asch’s experiment showed conformity there are many criticisms of his experiment. After the experiment Asch interviewed the naïve participants and most of them stated that they did not believe that there conforming answers were right, they just went along with the group for fear of being ridiculed, this shows that the naïve participants were not conforming rather complying. Cardwell (2000) criticises Asch’s experiment on ethical grounds because the naïve participants were mislead with the use of confederates. However the criticism has no validity because there was no ethics code at the time of Asch’s experiment. Another strong criticism of Asch’s experiment was that it was low in ecological validity as it was unlikely to happen in everyday life. Eysenck (2005) criticises the results from Asch’s experiment on the grounds that the study took place in America in the nineteen fifty’s which was a period when conformity was high. Williams and Sogon (1984) argue that majority influence is greater among friends and Asch’s situation was limited because the test subjects were all strangers. However Asch later went on to do other experiments and changed different variables that he had been criticised on.
According to Eyseneck (2005) most research into social influence is focused on majority influence. Moscovici et al.’s. (1969) was aimed at investigating minority influence. The experiment was carried out in a laboratory, in which the participants, four of which were naïve and two were confederates, were randomly allocated one of three conditions, consistent, inconsistent or controlled. The participants were asked to describe the colour of 36 slides that were all blue, but varied in brightness due to different filters. In the consistent condition all 36 of the slides were described as green by the confederates. In the inconsistent condition the confederates described only twenty four out of the thirty six slides green and the remainder as blue. In the controlled condition there were not any confederates. The results of Moscovici et al’s experiment showed that, the consistent condition showed the greatest conformity to minority influence as thirty two percent of the participants conformed at least once. A strong criticism of Moscovici’s experiment According to McLeod (2007) is that he used an unrepresentative sample as he only used female students as participants, so it would be wrong to generalise his result to all individuals. However Moscovici’s results clearly showed that a minority can affect the judgements made by a majority especially in a consistent situation.
Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience was aimed at investigating how far individuals will go in obeying an authority figure. The participants were lead to believe that the experiment was aimed at investigating the effects that punishment has on learning. The subjects were tested one at a time and they were always given the role of teacher through a fixed lottery. The person who they were led to believe was their co-subject who was in reality an actor was given the role of the learner. The learner gave mainly wrong answers on purpose and for each wrong answer the teacher was to give the learner an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, they were given the instruction to carry on. The participants understood that the level of shock that they could administer could be fatal, they did not know that there was no real shock administered until the end of the experiment. All participants gave shocks up to the 300 volt level and sixty five percent of participants continued to the highest level. Milgram’s experiment concludes that ordinary people obey to orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Baumrind (1964) criticises Milgram’s research on ethical grounds because, the subjects did not know the purpose of the experiment therefore could not give their informed consent. However Milgram rejected this criticism because in his view this ethical problem does not exist as none of the participants were forced to do anything against their will. Baumrind (1964) also criticises Milgram’s research because the subjects may have suffered some sort of permanent psychological damage resulting from the experience they had. Milgram however defends himself because one year after the experiment had taken place they were examined by a psychiatrist who found no evidence of any psychological damage.
In conclusion all of the research evaluated in the assignment has brought to light the lengths to which human beings will go to conform, comply and obey. However as these experiments lack ecological validity the results cannot be generalised beyond the laboratory situations in which they took place. Although some of the experiments especially Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience has attracted much criticism, it has bought with it new ethical guidelines which in turn has helped future research. A strong criticism of all these studies is that deception was involved in some way, however without the use of deception there was no way of getting true results. The number of times these experiments have been repeated and replicated shows the importance of the issues that these experiments have risen.
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