Social Control Essay Research Paper Conformityh Conformity

Social Control Essay, Research Paper

Conformity

h Conformity focuses upon the ways in which other people exert their influence upon us in such a way that we go along with them. For example some teenagers may go along with what their friends do when they themselves would have preferred to have gone elsewhere.

h Conformity normally involves some kind of social pressure in which the individuals intentions conflict with those of the groups. This kind of social pressure is known as conformity. Below are three definitions of conformity. They all have a common theme; that other people bring about a change in an individual or at least induce a situation of conflict.

A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined

Pressure from a person or group of people. Aronson (1998)

Yielding to a group pressures or expectations. Crutchfield (1995)

The tendency to allow ones opinions, attitudes, actions and perceptions to be affected by prevailing opinions, attitudes and actions. Reber (1985)

h However this is hard to prove and since the 1930 s this form of social influence has been studied experimentally using a variety of techniques. The major experimenters in this area are M.sherif, S. Asch, R.S.Crutchfield and S.Milgram, who are all social psychologists.

h MUZTAFER SHERIF (1935)

When a stationary spot of light is seen in a dark room it appears to move, this phenomenon is known as the autokinetic effect. Sherif used this effect by firstly bringing individuals into the room and asked them to estimate how far the light moved, for several trials. After this, Sherif allowed the subjects to hear the other subject s answers and found that their answers converged and became similar. Sherif had not told the people that they had to agree on the correct answer, but each could hear the others estimate. The light had only appeared to flicker so there was no right answer and it seemed that a shift of opinion had occurred as a result of knowing what others had estimated.

h One shortcoming of this experiment was that it provided no absolute correct answer against which the participants degrees of conformity could be measured. It would be better to conduct an experiment in which people had to answer questions for which there was a correct solution, so that their degrees of conformity relative to this could be gauged.

h SOLOMON ASCH (1951)

In Asch s experiment, subjects were invited to participate in a study of visual perception that involved judging the lengths of lines against a comparison. Each participant was first tested separately. Only three mistakes were made when 36 people did about 20 trials each. In fact, only a few of the participants were real. The rest were accomplices (also known as confederates or stooges) of the experimenter. These people had been instructed to give the wrong answers on some of the trials. Under these conditions, if the assistants said that line A was the same as the standard line, some of the participants conformed and changed their response from the correct answer B, to A. Seventy-four percent of the candidates conformed at least some of the time and the mean average conformity rate for participants was thirty-two percent.

h RICHARD CRUTCHFIELD (1954)

The type of experiment undertaken by Asch is very time consuming, as only one person can be tested at a time. Richard Crutchfield decided to change the experimental method so that several people, usually five, could be tested simultaneously. The same kind of problem as Asch used, was used. Each participant sat in a booth with an array of lights and switches in front of them. They were told to give their answers and each were told that they were last to guess and the others guesses were indicated by the lights on the panel. However each participant was actually given the same display, which on about half the trials was actually incorrect.

The results found were really similar to Asch s but had a lower conformity rate. They were asked if the star had a larger area than the circle and 23 out of 50 of the military men tested agreed that the star had a larger area than the circle. The military men were also tested on their opinions. They were asked privately if they agreed on the statements and when asked privately none of the fifty military men agreed with the statement

I doubt whether I would make a good leader.

But when given bogus agreements in their booths thirty-seven percent agreed.

Crutchfield found that conformity increased with the difficulty of the judgement being made. Crutchfield learnt that the group does not have to be visible to have an effect on their behaviour and that it is enough to know what everyone else is doing.

h STANLEY MILGRAM (1961)

Stanley Milgram took conformity took to another level he showed that people from different cultures display different amounts of conformity. For example he compared Norwegian and French people.

He tested them on a task that required them to judge which of two sounds lasted longer. Milgram made them wear headphones and hear the two tones followed by the judgements of five other people. The five other people were in fact assistants of milgrams and they were instructed, on over half of the trials, to give an incorrect answer. Stanley Milgrams results showe

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