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Social Psychology

Research Examining Conformity

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Social Psychology

Lesson Objectives: To outline Jenness’ (1932) research on conformity.

To replicate and outline Asch’s (1951) research on conformity.

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Guess The Number Of Sweets In The Jar…

Task: ON YOUR OWN & WITHOUT DISCUSSING YOUR ANSWER, writedown how many skittles you think are in the jar on my desk, on thepost-it note provided.

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Guess The Number Of Sweets In The Jar…

Task: Now as a group, discuss how many skittles are in the jar andwrite your group estimate on a mini-whiteboard.

Group Estimate

1

2

3

4

Task: Now, rewrite yourown estimate on the samepost-it note.

Did you change youroriginal estimate? If so, byhow much?

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Jenness (1932)

There were 347 skittles in the jar.

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Jenness (1932)

Jenness (1932) was one of the first psychologists to studyconformity. His experiment used an ambiguous situation involving aglass bottle filled with beans. He asked participants individually toestimate how many beans the bottle contained.

Jenness then put the group in a room withthe bottle, and asked them to provide agroup estimate through discussion.

Question: What do you think Jenness (1932)found?

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Jenness (1932)

Jenness found that nearly all participants changed their originalanswer when they were provided with another opportunity to estimatethe number of beans in the glass bottle.

Males FemalesAverage estimate before 790 925Average estimate after 695 878Average change 256 382

Maths Question: Calculate the % change in estimations before and after, for both males and females.

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Jenness (1932)

Jenness then interviewed the participants individually again, and askedif they would like to change their original estimates, or stay with thegroup's estimate. Almost all changed their individual guesses to becloser to the group estimate.

Task: Answer the two questions on your handout.

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Asch (1951)

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Asch (1951) – Replication

Task: You will be divided into two groups. Your task is to reproduceAsch’s (1951) research on conformity. You will then have 20 minutesto put together your performance which must ACCURATELY portraythe research.

You will then perform your version of Asch’s (1951) research and lookfor errors in each other’s performances.

An accurate outline of the Asch method canbe found on your handout.SAMPLE

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Asch (1951) – Replication…

How accurate were you…

Task: While watching the performance, make a note of ANYinaccuracies with their replication.

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Asch (1951)

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Evaluating Asch

Outline and evaluate research into conformity. (12 marks)

Task: Try to come up with 4-5 evaluation points for Asch’s study.Consider the method, ethics and application to everyday life…

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Evaluating Asch

Task: Now select one of the points bullet-pointed and write one‘perfect’ burger paragraph.

3 Minutes

Be ready to shareyour point in 3minutes!

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Research Examining Conformity Jenness (1932) was one of the first psychologists to study conformity. His experiment used an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with beans. He asked participants individually to estimate how many beans the bottle contained. Jenness then put the group in a room with the bottle, and asked them to provide a group estimate through discussion. Jenness found that nearly all participants changed their original answer when they were provided with another opportunity to estimate the number of beans in the glass bottle.

Males Females

Average estimate before 790 925 Average estimate after 695 878 Average change 256 382

Task: Do you think the results are due to normative/informational social influence, and why?

Is this an example of compliance, identification or internalisation, and why?

Asch (1951) Procedure: Asch’s sample consisted of 123 male students from three different colleges in the USA, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed one naïve participant in a room with seven to nine confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The naïve participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven to nine people were also real participants. The naive participant was always seated second from last. In turn, each person had to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length. The correct answer was always clear. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect. Results: Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.

Maths Question: Calculate the % change in estimations before and after, for both males and females.

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Asch (1951) – Replication Group 1 Group 2

How accurate was their performance; were there any errors with their replication?

How accurate was their performance; were there any errors with their replication?

Outline and evaluate research into conformity (12 marks) Task: Try to come up with 4-5 evaluation points for Asch’s study. Consider the method, ethics and application to everyday life… Evaluation Point 1

Evaluation Point 2

Evaluation Point 3

Evaluation Point 4

Evaluation Point 5 Task: Now select one of the points bullet-pointed and write one ‘perfect’ burger paragraph.

Poin

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Evid

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/ Ex

ampl

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Expl

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