Unit: Conformity and Obedience
Produce a written description/evaluation of Sherif’s (1935) and Asch’s (1956) studies of conformity, with an emphasis on the reasons why people conformed in the experiments.
Conformity is defined by Aronson (1988, cited in Psychology for A Level, pg. 43) as ‘a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
Sherif’s (1935) study of the autokinetic effect, which was an optical illusion, is one of the classic conformity experiments. He placed people in a completely dark room and let them observe a pinprick of light for some time; this gave them the illusion that the light moved erratically. Sherif asked individuals to estimate how far the light moved on several trials. Their estimates were typical to that individual. He then asked people the same question in-groups of two or three. Their estimates were of a normative value, (typical to that group). When people were......
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Approximate Word Count: 854
Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |