Conformity In Social Psychology

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Recommended: Chapter 9 history of psychology

Psychology Report

Introduction

Conformity denotes, acting in a manner which is accepted by a social group. It can also denote, a change in an individual or minorities behaviour to suit a majority. Conformity is part of social psychology, which investigates into how people behave, think and feel when communicating, interacting or simply in the presence of people, and how these behaviours, thoughts and feeling have an effect on the individual or minority group.

Throughout the years of study social psychology, there have been many studies carried out, and many have been experiments, which tests the level of conformity participants have towards a majority. One of these studies was by Asche in the 1950’s. Asche’s study was unambiguous, which …show more content…

Jenness’ experiment was ambiguous, which means that there was no right or wrong answer. The study focused on the participant’s estimates on the total number of beans in a bottle. Jenness asked each participant, individually, an estimate on how much beans were in the bottle. Jenness then grouped the participants together, and asked the participants to provide him with just one estimate. The researcher once again asked individual participants for an estimate and found that nearly all participants changed their original estimate, which was changed to a closer estimate to the group estimate. Therefore this showed a level of conformity.

Jenness’ study closely relates to the experiment of conformity which was carried out was to measure the level of conformity and the influence others’ have when estimating the number of sweets in a jar. The aim of the experiment was to discover whether having made up estimates in front of participants - which was the independent variable (IV) - participants would conform to a group norm which is the dependent variable - when estimating the number of sweets in a …show more content…

The type of design used was the independent measures design. This design was used as it was suited to the investigation as it contained one experimental group and one control group. Therefore, the design used had to be fitting for the investigation. Participants were asked whether or not they would like to participate, thus making it the sampling method opportunity. This meant that the participants were readily available for the

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