Conformity Studies Essay

Conformity Studies
Conformity is defined as the occurrence of people yielding to social pressures as a result of pressure from a group of their peers; when faced by the pressure to conform, people will alter their behaviour and actions to fit the norm demonstrated by their peers (Lilienfield et al., 2012). Conformity is studied so that is can be understood and used in society to facilitate positive outcomes, and help avoid situations where peoples’ predisposition to conform leads to negative consequences (Lilienfield et al., 2012). By understanding conformity and other social processes society as a whole is able to understand themselves better and motivates them to work on improving as a whole (Lilienfield et al., 2012).
A factor that could influence conformity is deindividuation; deindividuation is when people engage in unusual behaviour because their normal identities have been compromised (Lilienfield et al., 2012). This could be when Ku Klux Klan members put on their masks, when prisoners are referred to by their numbers not their name or when a person logs onto the internet and takes on a certain persona (Lilienfield et al., 2012).
Conformity is a social phenomenon that has been investigated for many decades; the first prominent and widely known study that came out was done by Asch in 1955. Asch’s first study set up involved five participants with four of them knowing what was going on and they had been briefed by Asch on how to answer, the fifth had no idea and just assumed everyone was clueless like him, he would also be the last to answer (Asch, 1955). There were two cards one with the ‘standard’ line and a second card with three ‘comparison’ lines with only one being correct (Asch, 1955). The first question had all of ...

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...wers. The independent variable was the table of false information and the dependent variable was the participant’s answers. The aim of this experiment was to see whether conformity will occur when exposed to information online using participants from a range of ethnicities, class and genders. It is theorised the majority of people will conform when online because the internet offers a degree of anonymity which leads to a need of acceptance because of deindividuation. The expected findings of the research are that the majority of participants will conform because of deindividuation.
Discussion
The aim of this experiment was to determine if conformity would be occur in the virtual world. It was predicted the majority of people would conform when online because the internet offers a degree of anonymity which leads to a need of acceptance because of deindividuation.