Conformity

CONFORMITY

Conformity: The process of yielding to majority influence (a response to social influence). 

ASCH'S EXPERIMENT:

    

Asch proposed an experiment to find out whether people would conform to a majority's incorrect answer in an unambiguous task. 123 naive male undergraduates were tested individually with a group of 8 confederates. They judged line lengths by saying which comparison line matched the standard line. Asch discovered that when there were 2 confederates, conformity levels increased by 14%, furthermore when there were 3 confederates conformity rose to 32%. This reveals that as group size increased, the rate of conformity increased in correlation to this. Additionally, another controlled variable was unanimity - the presence of a fellow confederate dissenter - showed that conformity levels dropped to 20%, due to the confederate feeling a sense of social support. Overall, this suggests that normative social influence may have played a part in the study, as individuals conformed in order to be accepted by the overwhelming majority. 

DEUTSCH AND GERARD:

Deutsch and Gerard developed a two-process theory based on the two central human needs - the need to be liked , and the need to be right. Both theories, Informational social influence and normative social influence, give a reason as to why an individual may feel the need to conform in a situation. 

Informational social influence is a psychological phenomenon whereby people assume someone has the better information. This cognitive process may result in the individual accepting the majorities answer in order to be right. Studies and experiments by Lucas et al show that as ambiguity increased in the task, conformity increases, due to individuals perceiving themselves as less mathematically able compared to the group. Evidently, this shows that people are more likely to doubt themselves and assume others know better, especially in more difficult situations. This individual will conform for the sake of being right. 

Whereas normative social influence is an emotional process whereby an individual feels pressured to conform in order to be liked and accepted by a group. Asch's experiment demonstrate this theory, as individuals conformed by accepting the majorities answer, despite the task being straight forward. This was proven to be a result of the participants fearing rejection. 

However, this evidence cannot be accountable or a representation of all responses to NSI. The theory doesn't account for individual differences. Research by McGhee and Teevan shows that NSI does not affect everyone'es behaviour in the same way. They found that students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform. These students have been categorised as nAffiliators. On the other hand, people who are less concerned about being liked are less affected by NSI. Overall, this shows that the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. 

Furthermore, additional evaluation of the two-process theory suggests that both processes work together; instead of the initial approach being that 'behaviour is either due to NSI or ISI'. In Asch's study results shows that conformity reduced when there was another dissenting participant. The dissenter may reduce the power of NSI by providing the social support to the other naive participant. However the dissenter may also reduce ISI as they have now become an alternative source of information.