Social comparison theory has been very influential in the field of small-group research. However, it is not a satisfactory explanation for conformity. The weakness in the theory is that the link between a need to evaluate oneself and a tendency to change oneself is not clear. Why should a negative self-evaluation lead someone to change and conform? Festinger saw this weakness in the theory. He offered one explanation for why a person would change in reaction to a negative self-evaluation of abilities. Festinger felt that there is a cultural value for self-improvement in our society. This, he said, is the link between judgement and change when abilities are involved. However, social comparison theory still could not explain why people would change their opinions in order to conform. Festinger created a new theory to help explain why this might happen. In 1957 he proposed the theory called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance theory maintains that people are not so much influenced by a need to be correct as they are influenced by a need to be consistent.
Festinger hypothesised that two beliefs are dissonant if one of them implies the opposite of the other. For example, a person may say, "I like my group," and also, "I disagree with my group." These are likely to be dissonant beliefs if the person also has a third idea that "I should agree with groups that I like." Festinger did not discuss the concept of this third idea, but it is necessary to make his theory work. Without the third statement, the other two may never cause a conflict for the person.
The implications of cognitive dissonance become more interesting if one of the belief statements involves an actual behaviour. For example, an individual may have three opinions about a group. One of these opinions involves a behaviour. He or she might say, "I don't like the group," and "I don't like the task," but also, "I helped the group with the task." There are two possible outcomes in this case.
The first outcome is that the person experiences dissonance and must change something to be consistent. The third statement above involves the idea that the person agreed to do something. This is relatively impervious to change because it is about an actual behaviour. Thus, the person can only really change the first two statements. He or she should come to like the group and/or the task more than he or she initially does. The theory is unable to predict for certain which of the two opinions will most likely change. This inability is a weakness of the dissonance hypothesis.
The second possible outcome when a behaviour statement is part of the equation is that the person will not experience dissonance and will not need to change beliefs. This can happen because he or she may come to believe that the act of compliance is a result of pressure from the group. The group, and not the person, is responsible for the conforming action. If this occurs, the fact that the person complied is irrelevant to his or her beliefs. There is no need to change opinions.
Thus, dissonance is a factor only when there is inconsistency between a person's beliefs and a behaviour for which the person feels personally responsible. If someone does not feel responsible for a conforming action, there is no internal conflict.
Sherif, Asch and Milgram conducted three of the main classic group influence studies
In 1936, Sherif reported a concern for the dramatic changes in social life associated with the '30s in America, the rise of totalitarian governments in Europe, widespread hunger and starvation, oppression of the powerless and the mobilisation of mobs through political sloganeering. He suggested "the study of such unstable situations of oppression, hunger, and insecurity and their psychological consequences demand careful attention from social psychologists...especially in our time of transition" (1936:193). Again - "when social life becomes difficult...the equilibrium of life ceases to be stable and the air is pregnant with possibilities...Such a delicate, unstable situation is the fertile soil for the rise of doubts concerning the existing norms, and a challenge to their authority" (1936:85). Sherif was preoccupied with the important tensions in society that arose during the Depression.
When the normal historical patterns of interaction break down, people spontaneously evolve their own norms - i.e. standards of behaviour that regulate the conduct of individuals. Norms are patterns of action which people feel compelled to subscribe to because they appear to be appropriate, moral or ethical.
Sherif wanted to re-produce in a laboratory setting how norms could be seen to be evolving in society to see what the individual would do when placed in a situation where the environment could not be defined objectively
Sherif’s design made use of the autokinetic effect - an optical illusion produced when people are exposed to a pinpoint of light in a darkened room - "auto-kinesis" means that it appears to be self-moving or unstable because the darkness provides no frame to capture and stabilise the light source. The participants were placed in a dark room; Sherif instructed them that a light will appear and that it will move around (expectation effects?). A tiny point of light is projected onto a screen and the participants are instructed to push an electrical key to signal when they perceive the movement. The variable being measured was the perceived "displacement" or "movement" of the light estimated in inches.
The conclusions reached by Sherif were that in groups making judgements about ambiguous stimuli (the autokinetic effect), there is a convergence towards a norm that then determines the subsequent individual choices. The participants did not report any conscious effort to follow the others. They reported that the displacement appeared to naturally behave the way the group was beginning to report it.
However the cause-effect relationship in Sherif's experiment is quite ambiguous. The more the people interact with one another, the more they converge in their definition of reality. The cause here could be time or even experience. The participants also claimed that the stimulus was ambiguous: "Darkness left no guide for distance. It was difficult to estimate the distance...There was no fixed point from which to judge the distance" (1936:97). Significantly, Sherif acknowledges that "the effect takes place even when the person looking at the light knows perfectly well that the light is not moving" (1936:92). This negates the use of the word "norm" when people "knew" differently from what they "saw".
Solomon Asch contributed a classic study of group influence on the individual. His work appeared after the Second World War. Where Sherif stressed how the group outlook influenced subjects, Asch was interested in the grounds of resistance to group pressure. In the introduction to his work, Asch reviewed the enormously important issue of propaganda which had been so influential in mobilising the German and Italian populations during the second world war to support the war effort, and which, in the German case, promoted racial hatred resulting in genocide. For Asch it was important to identify the grounds for resisting such evil influence.
The immediate objective was to create laboratory conditions in which the participants were asked to agree to views that were obviously contrary to fact - and to determine the conditions in which participants resisted the majority errors. Asch's basic experimental set-up had a participant asked to make judgements about the relative lengths of lines displayed on a screen. The task was not difficult. Social influence is applied by virtue of the arrangement whereby the innocent participant is asked to make their response in the presence of other people, who the participant is led to believe are also experimental participants but are in fact confederates of the experimenter; furthermore, the participant responds only after they have heard the others give their answers, and on the critical runs each one of the confederates gives the same incorrect response. Thus the participant hears a number of other people give what is for the participant an obviously wrong answer. Asch repeated this experiment with a number of modifications, but the basic result was that about a third of participants conform to the majority on nearly all trials, about a third stick to their guns and never conform, and about a third give conforming responses at least some of the time.
Asch conducted several variations on this theme, for example varying the degree of consensus to be perceived amongst the accomplices (Asch,1955). His basic findings have often been replicated directly (e.g. Rosner, 1957) and using modifications of the experiment (e.g. Crutchfield's ingenious electrical booth apparatus for simulating a group's responses, thus removing the need for the great many confederates that Asch's work needed - Crutchfield, 1955).
Once such powerful social influence under these apparently innocuous conditions became known, attempts were made to see what effect altering the conditions had: for example, using different tasks (more difficult or more complex) or different group conditions (increasing group attractiveness or cohesion, or the degree of acceptance by the group). Ross et al.(1976) gave a short review of these in the introduction to their paper. The usual conclusion was that by using such manipulations, manipulations that it might be argued made the experiments more natural, conformity could be greatly increased. So, Dittes & Kelley (1956) found that increasing acceptance by the group increased conformity to group norms, and Dittes (1959) later showed that conformity was particularly increased in those subjects with low self-esteem.
To discover why the participants conformed, Asch simply asked them. He quotes at length the replies of one subject by way of example, a participant who Asch describes as an apparently self-confident and poised individual:
"I did feel a responsibility to say what I saw in order to make the experiment valid .. (but) I did not want to look like a fool" Asch comments:
"He saw the group as a close unit, becoming progressively more united, while he was separated and in opposition" Asch cites this subject as adding:
"I have a horror of being an outcast. I have a basic feeling of insecurity"
(all Asch,1952:469ff.).
Social pressure to conform therefore seems extremely powerful even when only implicit, and powerful enough to make even a balanced personality ("an extremely attractive and bright young man") deny even the evidence of their own eyes.
Obedience can be quite closely linked to conformity. It differs however because obedience is about social power and status whereas conformity is about the need to be accepted. Stanley Milgram (1963) conducted an experiment on obedience that highlighted the persuasive power of authority in social psychology for the first time. His experiment exceeded all expectation and led to greater awareness of authority and how much power it credited the perpetrator of it.
Participants were made to give increasing electric shocks to someone (who was an actor pretending to be receiving the shocks through wires) when the person gave the wrong answer to a question. Many of the participants continued to the highest voltage (450V). There were many reasons why participants obeyed, such as the fact that the experiment was in a professional setting (Yale University). The experimenter was an authority figure and so was trusted; and the subjects were told that anything that went wrong would not be their responsibility. It was also because the participants could not see the ‘victim’ which made it seem less real to them or it could have been because the participant had taken on a role so they felt that they were someone else.
The Milgram experiment highlights just how much an ‘ordinary’ person is capable of doing though blind obedience. There were several factors of his experiment that affected the amount of obedience: physical closeness, presence of authority, status of institution and peer group support. These variations on his original experiments highlighted internal motivations for obedience. A point to note is that under today’s ethical guidelines this experiment would not be permitted. This is due to the participants having to endure a very emotional and distressing experience (as they do not know that the learner is a confederate, and think that the shocks are real). Though each participant in the experiment was thoroughly de-briefed after the experiment and told the aim and dimensions of the experiment.
Aim
The aim of this report is to investigate the extent of the influence of group pressure on an individual using an experiment based on Solomon Asch’s “Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgements” (1951).
Alternate Hypothesis (H1)
The participants will give significantly more incorrect answers when all confederates give an incorrect answer than when all confederates give the correct answer.
Null Hypothesis (H0)
The participants will not give significantly more incorrect answers when all confederates give an incorrect answer than when all confederates give the correct answer.
The stated H1 is a one tailed hypothesis as the direction of the results has been stated. The level of significance being applied is 0.05 therefore there is a 5% possibility that the results will be due to chance factors.
Method
(i) Design and Overview
The experimental method was used within this investigation. This method involves the manipulation of an independent variable and the study of its effect on the dependent variable. Everything else in the experiment is held constant (except the independent variable); therefore any change can be attributed to the independent variable. Within this experiment the dependent variable is the frequency of incorrect answers given by the participant within the group. The independent variable is the behaviour of the confederates in the answers given.
The design used within this experiment is a repeated measures design where all participants perform under both conditions of the experiment (they experience the control conditions as well as the experimental conditions) in order to achieve a high level of control over the subject variables.
(ii) Participants and Experimenters
An opportunity sampling technique was employed to gather participants for this experiment. Participants were selected on availability of the students entering the Kilwinning campus of James Watt College. A total of 26 participants were used, 13 male and 13 female. Each participant had no prior knowledge of the experiment and was required not to suffer from any visual impairment. The experimenters were all students studying for an HND in Social Sciences at the campus.
(iii) Apparatus
The material used in this experiment consisted of:
Visual Test Sheet (Appendix i) consisting of two boxes A and B. Box A contained one standard line and Box B contained 3 comparison lines (one of which matched the line in Box A). This was to allow the experimenter to deduct whether any of the participants had any visual perception problems and also ensured that all the participants understood the concept of the questions that they would be asked.
One sheet of paper containing the Standardised Instructions (Appendix ii).
6 sheets of paper containing two boxes A and B (Appendices iii to viii). Box A contained one standard line and Box B contained 3 comparison lines (one of which matched the line in Box A). Sheets numbered 1,4 and 5 were the control/congruent condition. Sheets numbered 2,3 and 6 were the experimental/incongruent condition.
Raw Data Sheet (Appendix ix) to record the results of the experiment – whether the participants conformed or not.
Pen
(iv) Procedure
Prospective participants were stopped in the foyer of the Kilwinning campus of James Watt College and asked if they would like to take part in a psychological experiment regarding visual perception which was a required part of a college course. Upon the participants agreement to assist in the experiment they were shown a visual perception test sheet that consisted of two boxes A and B. Box A contained one standard line and Box B contained 3 comparison lines (one of which matched the line in Box A). This was to allow the experimenter to deduct whether any of the participants had any visual perception problems that would interfere in the participant’s performance. The visual perception test sheet also ensured that all the participants understood the concept of the questions that they would be asked.
On successful completion of the visual perception test, the experimenter accompanied the participant to the classroom where the other members of the group were already gathered.
The confederates, who were already seated, were introduced to the participant as other participants. The seating arrangements were chairs arranged in a semicircle around a table and the participant was seated in the only available free seat. The standardised instructions were then read aloud by the experimenter and any questions asked regarding the experiment were answered to the participant’s satisfaction. Prior to beginning the experiment, the participants were asked to say their answers aloud working from furthest left to furthest right (where the genuine participant was seated).
In order to keep the experiment from being too obvious, the control sheets and the experimental sheets were mixed together resulting in sheets 1, 4 and 5 containing the control sheets and sheets 2, 3 and 6 therefore containing the experimental sheets. All the sheets were passed around the circle in numerical order. For the control sheets all the confederates answered correctly in a homogeneous fashion. For the experimental sheets all the confederates answered incorrectly in a homogeneous fashion. The participants were asked to answer which line in Box B was closest to the line in Box A. The resulting answers by the participant for each sheet was recorded on the raw data sheet.
This procedure was repeated for each of the twenty-six participants.
Participants were debriefed as to the true nature of the investigation, that it was to study the levels of conformity within a group. All of the participants were asked to keep their experience of the experiment to themselves for at least 3 days so as not to interfere with any of the future participants’ performances in the experiment thus invalidating the results.
Summary of Raw Data
Summary of statistical analysis conducted
Analysis of Results
The raw data of the results can be found in Appendix ix. These have been summarised to form a table which can be found on the previous page. The results reveal that a total of 17 participants overall conformed in the experimental condition and 9 participants did not conform at all in the experimental condition. Therefore the total percentage (to one decimal place) of participants to conform was 65.4% of the total sample size. From these 17 conforming participants, 10 were male and 7 were female (see pie chart in Appendix x). On calculation (to one decimal place) these figures show a 38.5% male conformity and a 26.9% level of female conformity.
The frequency of conformity by participants was also measured. These findings show that in the experimental condition 6 participants conformed only once, 8 participants conformed twice, and 3 participants conformed three times (See bar chart in Appendix xi). Overall the experiment revealed that 65.4% of participants conformed when subjected to the group pressure. This figure however is a 33.4% increase on Asch’s original findings of 32%.
In order to assess whether the alternative hypothesis can be accepted or rejected it is necessary to analyse the significance of the statistical results. The method used to appraise this significance was the chi squared test. This format allows for the comparison between the observed frequencies and expected frequencies by way of association. The data gathered met the necessary criteria for the test as it was of a nominal value level and was non-parametric. The repeated measures design implemented for the experiment was also a required element for the test.
The Chi squared test allows the experimenters to see if the observed frequency of the results differs significantly from the expected frequency.
The formula for the Chi squared test is: Χ2 = ΣO - E2
E
All the calculations performed for the Chi squared test can be found in Appendix xii and xiii). At the 0.05 level of significance for a one tailed hypothesis with 25 degrees of freedom, the critical value of Χ2 was found to be 37.65 and the total observed value of Χ2 was found to be 23.52 (to two decimal places).
As the observed value of Χ2 (23.52) is less than the critical value (37.65) the alternative hypothesis must be rejected and the null hypothesis accepted.
Discussion
The experiment conducted within this report predicted that the participants would give an incorrect answer significantly more times when under the influence of group pressure. The pressure exerted by the group in this case was confederates within the group giving an incorrect answer to an obvious task. The prediction was mainly based on prior findings from a series of experiments conducted by Solomon E. Asch (1951). Although the experiment within this investigation is not an exact replication of Asch’s it is a variant that can still be used as a comparison.
The resulting findings from this study showed that participants did not give significantly more incorrect answers when all confederates gave an incorrect answer than when all confederates give the correct answer. Therefore the alternative hypothesis must be rejected and the null hypothesis accepted. The findings showed that although there was a 65.4% level of overall conformity, the mean level of conformity (from 3) was only 1.19 (to 2 decimal places). 9 participants did not conform at all, 6 participants conformed only once, 8 participants conformed twice and only 3 participants conformed in all three experimental conditions. The mode level of conformity was the lowest possible at a value of 0. These results indicate that in performing the required tasks in the experimental condition, participants did not suffer any significant influence of group pressure to conform.
Perrin and Spencer (1980, 1981) suggested that the Asch effect was a "child of its time". They carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering, mathematics and chemistry students as subjects. The results were clear-cut: on only one out of 396 trials did an observer join the erroneous majority. They argue that a cultural change has taken place in the value placed on conformity and obedience and in the position of students. In America in the 1950s students were unobtrusive members of society whereas now they occupy a free questioning role.
Lalancette and Standing (1990) modified the social conformity paradigm of Asch (1956) to make the test stimuli more ambiguous and increase the likelihood of obtaining conformity in an experiment with 40 undergraduates. With the same aim, anonymous and individuated conditions were used. As with a previous attempt to replicate Asch (Perrin and Spencer, 1981), no conformity was observed. They conclude that the Asch effect appears to be an unpredictable phenomenon rather than a stable tendency of human behaviour.
Although the Asch experiment showed that people are willing to conform to an obviously wrong majority, it can also be seen that pressures to conform are not irresistible. In nearly two thirds of the trials, the participant did not conform, and 13 out of 50 participants never conformed. It should also be remembered that a minority of participants made more than half of the errors.
There are a number of different explanations as to why most of the answers were non- conforming ones. In his post-experimental interviews, Asch found three distinct categories of independent behaviour: confidence, withdrawal, and tension & doubt. Confidence: some of the participants were confident that their answers were correct.
Withdrawal: some participants felt the need to act as individuals no matter what the other participants did, and tried to isolate themselves from others by avoiding eye contact etc. They were therefore able to act as individuals by ‘removing’ the group, and therefore the need to group identification.
Tension and doubt: some participants felt that they had to perform the task as required, no matter what discomfort they were experiencing. They believed that they had to give what they perceived to be the correct answer, even if it may be wrong, as that was what they were asked for.
It can therefore be seen that reasons for not conforming are as diverse as those for conforming behaviour. More recently, two other theories have been put forward to explain non-conforming behaviour: individualism, and control.
Individualism is the wish to be distinguished in some way from others. Maslach claims that while we want to be like others generally, we still wish to remain individual in other respects, and will therefore sometimes risk the disapproval of the group. Participants who did not conform because of this need may not have actually been experiencing true independent behaviour. Rather, they may be experiencing anti-conformity, where their behaviour was still being determined by the group, but this would not have shown up in the results.
Burger (1992) has demonstrated that people who score highly in desire for personal control are more likely to resist conformity pressures than those who have a low score, and this was tested using experiments. In real life situations, independence may be higher still, as some participants may have felt that they were playing the role that the situation demanded: they did not want to ‘rock the boat’ by offering a dissenting view. In addition, in real life situations, it is rare that advice or an opinion from an independent third party could not be sought, but this was impossible in Asch’s experiment.
Conclusion
The experiment conducted tested the theory of conformity under the influence of group pressure. Upon analysis, the results showed that participants did not give significantly more incorrect answers in the experimental condition of the task than in the controlled condition. The null hypothesis was therefore accepted and the alternative hypothesis rejected at a 0.05 level of significance giving an Χ2 value of 23.516. These findings do not support earlier findings by Solomon Asch (1951) and concludes that the Asch effect appears to be an unpredictable phenomenon rather than a stable tendency of human behaviour and that group pressure does not significantly influence an individual to conform to pre established group norms.
References and Bibliography
Adorno, T.W., Frankel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, DJ. and Sanford, R.N. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality, New York, Harper
Burger, Jerry M. (1992), Desire for control: Personality, social, and clinical perspectives, New York: Plenum Press.
Crutchfield, RS (1955), Conformity and character, American Psychologist, 10, pp.191-198.
Dittes, JE (1959), Effect of changes in self-esteem upon impulsiveness and deliberation in making judgements, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, pp.348-326.
Dittes, JE & Kelley, HH (1956), Effects of different conditions of acceptance upon conformity to group norms, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 23, pp.100-107.
Eagly AH, Carli LL. (1981) Sex of researchers and sex-typed communications as determinants of sex differences in influenceability: A meta-analysis of social influence studies, Psychology Bulletin. 90:1-20.
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Forsyth DR (1995), Our Social World, Brooks Cole
Lalancette, M-F & Standing, L.G (1990). 'Asch fails again'. Social Behavior and Personality; 18(1) 7-12
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Appendix i
Appendix ii
STANDARDISED INSTRUCTIONS
You will be shown six sets of cards – one card at a time. On each card are two boxes A and B. Box A contains one line and Box B contains three lines numbered 1, 2 and 3. You are required to say aloud which number of the line in Box B is closest to that in Box A. (The same as you have already done when you were asked to participate in this experiment). This will be repeated for each of the six cards. Each set of cards will be shown only once. If there are any questions or if anyone does not understand the instructions would they please say so now. Thank you.
Appendix iii
Appendix iv
Appendix v
Appendix vi
Appendix vii
Appendix viii
Appendix ix
KEY
√ - CONFORMED
X – DID NOT CONFORM
Appendix x
Appendix xi
Appendix xii
Chi Squared Results
FORMULA = χ2 = Σ(O-E)2 = Σ (Frequency – Expected)2
E Expected
Expected Frequency for Participants 1- 26 = 1.1923077
Total = 23.51612665
∴Chi Squared = 23.516
Degrees of Freedom = 25
Level of Significance = 0.05
Critical Value of One Tailed Hypothesis χ2 = 37.65
