The aim of this experiment is to find out if people will conform without face-to-face contact. Crutchfield's study of conformity (1955) was a faceless conformity experiment.

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ABSTRACT.

The aim of this experiment is to find out if people will conform without face-to-face contact. Crutchfield’s study of conformity (1955) was a faceless conformity experiment. This involved the false answers of confederates being placed into view of participants in order to see if they conformed. They were asked to answer general knowledge questions. This experiment is based on that study.

The operational hypothesis for this investigation is

‘Participants will be influenced by a fictitious list on a faceless conformity task’

meaning that my null hypothesis will be

‘Participants will not be influenced by a fictitious list on a faceless conformity task’.

The research method that was used was a field experiment and the design was an independent groups design. An independent groups design was chosen because otherwise the participants would know what was going on and would therefore void the results.

An opportunity sampling method was chosen in this experiment because of the abundance of available participants. The age range was 16-19 year old students, 10 male and 10 female.

The results showed that participants did conform, the mean of the experimental results (173) being closer to the fictitious results (217) than the control (79). The null hypothesis in this experiment was rejected; meaning my experimental hypothesis was accepted.

In conclusion, this experiment suggests that certain situations will result in the conformity of people to avoid being the ‘odd one out’ and labelled as a social outcast. The fear of rejection by peers helps to assure that conformity will be guaranteed.

INTRODUCTION.

This experiment will be to study the concept of conformity, and faceless conformity. Faceless conformity can be described as adhering to group pressure without any actual contact with the group face to face.

Social influence is the influence of social factors on behaviour. It refers to the effect that the presence of others has on the way people think, feel and behave. Conformity is a major aspect of social influence. Conformity involves the changing of ones attitudes, opinions, or behaviours to match the attitudes, opinions, or behaviours of other people. This pressure to act like other people, sometimes despite our true feelings and desires, is a common everyday occurrence. This is due to implied and spoken rules of the situation. Many factors can affect a person’s level of conformity. These include:

Group cohesiveness – The degree to which we are strongly attached to a group and the amount we would be prepared to do to stay within that group. The ‘closer’ the group the more conformity occurs. Group size – About three or four people will exert pressure to conform. However, a larger group does not necessarily mean more conformity.

In experiments, researchers have discovered that if the participants were allowed to give their answers away from the group, then conformity decreased. If people were allowed to give their answers in private, then it is said that they will be less likely to be swayed by other people’s opinions. Again in experiments, researchers like Asch (1955) have discovered that if the task is ambiguous or the problem is made harder, then conformity levels are likely to increase. Under conditions where the problem is less obvious, then people are likely to go with the majority of the group.

Levels of conformity are likely to increase if the status of the people in the rest of the group is high; low status people are likely to conform more to high status people, especially if those people are in some sort of power.

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Experiments that show conformity:

Solomon Asch (1955)

He devised an experiment in which participants were presented with two cards. On one card was a single ‘standard’ line; on the other were three ‘comparison’ lines. Participants were asked to judge which of the comparison lines was equal in length to the standard line. In the experimental group were one participant and 6 to 8 confederates. The confederates all gave the same wrong answer. There was a 75% conformity rate of the participants, meaning that they gave the same answer as the confederates, showing that people do not want to ...

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