نفساني - عرض مشاركة واحدة - مختصرات مهمه جدا من كتاب UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGY لــBARBARA WOODS

14-04-2006, 06:47 PM

اولا رح نبدأ في Social Psychology

واول درس في هذا القسم من علم النفس هو CONFORMITY

CONFORMITY

Definition: "yielding to group pressures." We try to fit in or go along with the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of whatever group we belong to. We go along with group norms or the expected behaviours of the group.

Studies of conformity:

1. Sherif: In a series of experiments he brought a group of participants into a dark room to observe a pinpoint of light and then asked them to estimate how far the light moved. When alone the participants gave various estimates. Once the participants had discussed the estimates with each other, their estimates unconsciously became more similar.
What is wrong with this experiment? – Asch thought that since there was no correct answer participants were bound to agree.

2. Asch: Participants were asked to choose a line from one of three to match a standard line. The participants were in groups where everyone else was a stooge. When tested alone individuals made mistakes less than 1% of the time but with group pressure this increased to about 32% of the time.
What is wrong with this experiment? - The task the participants were asked to do was not like real life. This experiment was carried out over 40 years ago at a time in America when there were great social pressures to conform - is Asch's study "a child of its time"?

What can affect the levels of conformity? ( these are known as the factors involved) Asch found that the number of stooges was increasingly effective up to three and then there was little increased effect; if the participant had a supporting partner then the conformity decreased; if the task was difficult conformity increased.

3. Perrin & Spencer: They achieved very different results when they replicated Asch's study with students of engineering, chemistry and. medicine in Britain in 1980. It may be that people conform less now or that students of these subjects are less likely to conform. Other studies have found similar levels of conformity to Asch - even these days.

4. Crutchfield: He tested several participants at once in booths on a series of questions like Asch's. Participants thought that a display of lights on a panel in front of them were the responses of the other participants.37% conformed. Conformity increased with the difficulty of the judgments being made.

What is wrong with all these experiments?
Do these experiments bear any relationship to real life?

Kelman identified three main types of conformity (reasons for conformity)
1. Compliance - going along with the group demands to avoid rejection or gain rewards, but not really believing them, privay disagreeing but publicly agreeing. (See Asch )
2. Identification - going along with another because of a desire to be like them, to maintain some kind of relationship.
3.Internalisation - agreeing because they believe it is correct and fits in with their own value system, privay & publicly agreeing. (See Sherif's study)