Conformity

1. Conformity Blake Bonilla Bethany Roessler

2. Solomon Eliot Asch • Born: September 14, 1907 in Warsaw to a Jewish family. • Immigrant: 1920, at the age of 13, his family immigrated to America. • Death: February 20, 1996 at the age of 88 in Pennsylvania.

3. Asch’s Education & Career • 1928: Bachelor’s from the College of the City of New York. • 1930: Master’s from Columbia • 1932: Ph.D from Columbia • Professor of psychology at Swarthmore College for 19 years. • Worked with Wolfgang Kohler & Herman Witkin • Student included Stanley Milgram

4. Asch as a Psychologist • Social Psychologist • Known as a world-renowned American Gestalt psychologist. • 1950’s: Became famous for his experiments involving social pressure and conformity.

5. Key Terms • “Confederates”: those who are introduced to the “naive” participant as fellow participants who actually have knowledge of the purpose of the study. • Conformity: A change in behavior due to explicit or implicit social pressure. • Individuality: The ability for one to go with their gut instincts. • Group think: Where dissenters from a unanimous opinion to suppress their doubts and reservations rather than stand alone in opposition.

6. Social Pressure Study • Purpose: To see the extent in which social pressure has on an individual. • Hypothesis: The majority of people would not conform to something obviously incorrect. • 123 males in groups of 6-8 • “visual test” • 18 trials • Twist: All the men (confederates) except 1 (real participant) were in on the experiment.

7. Social Pressure Study • Trials 1 &2: All men answered what they believed to be correct. • Trials 3-18: Confederates were told to all respond with the same incorrect answer.

8. Results: SOCIAL PRESSURE AFFECTS THE INDIVIDUAL! • 32% of the participants answered incorrectly when surrounded by people saying incorrect answers. • 2% (1 of 35 subjects) answered incorrectly when there was no pressure to answer erroneously. • 75% of the participants answered incorrectly to at least 1 question. • 5% conformed every single time!

9. Additional Results Do the confederates play any role in the tendency of the real participant to conform? • Number: 3+ confederates were needed for conformity to be relatively stable. • Unanimity: If at least one confederate voices a different answer than the rest of the confederate group, the more likely it is that the real participant will give their true answer.

10. Asch vs. MilgramBlame Game • Asch • Misjudgment • Poor eyesight • Fear of being ridiculed or being “peculiar” • Group is better informed • Milgram • Experimenter

11. What does this mean about our society? • "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.“ –Asch

12. SO…..What did we do? • Re-create Asch’s experiment • 1st grade boys • 5th grade boys • 8th grade boys & girls • Hypothesis: • Those of a younger age will succumb to the social phenomena of conformity. • If an all female group was compared to that of group entirely of males then one would expect to see more individuality rather than conforming to the group.

13. 1st Grade Boys Results: • 8 confederates • 1 real participant “John” • “John” only conformed in one trial: Trail #4. • Conformity: 16% • He originally said the correct answer, but then looked around and gave the same incorrect answer that the rest of his peers gave.

14. 5th Grade Boys Results • 8 Confederates • 1 Real Participant “Ralph” • In this trial “Ralph” conformed to 3 out of the 4 “trick” questions. • Conformity: 50% • Reasons for Conforming: • “Ralph” wanted to change his answer back to B after he both stated and marked his answer. • After the debriefing “Ralph” stated that he chose C at first because, “He saw everyone else do it.”

15. 8th Grade Boys Results: • 4 Confederates • 1 real participant “Brian” • “Brian” conformed twice: in trials #4 and #5. • Conformity: 33% Reasons for conforming: • He “did not conform”. • He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. • He honestly thought he gave the correct answer in trial #4.

16. 8th Grade Girls Results • The study consisted of six confederates and one real participant. • “Rose” was the real participant • Out of the six trials “Rose” conformed only twice. • Trails 4 and 5 • Conformity: 33% • Reasons for Conforming: • In trial 4 specifically “Rose” stated that, “she didn’t want to be singled out from the group, to have other’s think that she was stupid for not siding with them.”

17. Conclusion Conformity Results • It is clear from the Data that our Hypotheses in regards to female individuality and younger age conformity was rejected. In fact there was less individuality among females when comparing them to there male constituents. Likewise, we see less conformity in the younger age group than in the older age group which runs opposite of our hypothesized theory. If we take a look at the overall average of conformity you can see that it closely parallel’s Asch’s findings of 32%. This is significant in showing that conformity maybe universal, or across the board regardless of age group or sex. • 1st Grade Boys: 16% • 5th Grade Boys: 50% • 8th Grade Boys: 33% • 8th Grade Girls:33% • Overall Avg. =33.33 %

18. Conclusions Cont. • Troubles: • 1st Graders: Would not remain quiet, frequently forgot which answer to say, Would tell the subject they were trying to “trick” him, and unable to experiment with 1st grade girls. • 5th Graders: A few forgot what answers to say aloud, and were unable to do the experiment with girls. • 8th Graders: No problems.

19. If we could do it all over… • …we would have liked to have larger groups. • ….we would have liked to have more girls in the experiment. • …we would have liked to include different factors such as: • Mixed-age groups • Some confederates answering correctly to test Asch’s numbers theory.