Vernon L. Allen

Situational Factors In Conformity1

Publisher Summary Conformity to the group is a complex phenomenon, which should be differentiated into several distinct psychological processes, and has often been contrasted with nonconformity or independence. This chapter describes the various aspects of conformity, public compliance and private change, conditions of responding, characteristics of the group, and nature of the task. Nonconformity consists of two conceptually distinct types of behavior, and may reflect independence, or it may actually be anticonformity. These three types of behavior—conformity, independence, and anticonformity—are related to each other as the apexes of a triangle. It makes a great deal of difference whether agreement with the group is public compliance, or true private change, or whether nonconformity represents independence or anticonformity. Although, there have been a few studies of generalization of conformity, little is known of the generality of conformity, and investigations have not been conducted on the generality of conformity across situations outside the laboratory. A subject in a conformity situation has information and beliefs about several important features of the situation: the task, other members of the group, and the experimenter. Theories of conformity, which have been advanced in recent years, include psychoanalytic, cognitive, reinforcement, and even mathematical models. Research should be directed toward understanding the variables that affect nonconformity, as well as conformity.

Research on Children Tutoring Children: A Critical Review

Tutoring programs that use children as tutors for other children are increasing in number and variety (Gartner, Kohler, & Riessman, 1971; Thelen, 1969). Although these programs are purported to be valuable in many ways for both tutors and tutees, the evidence supporting generalizations about tutoring has often been inconclusive. Typically, anecdotal reports rather than hard data have been gathered from tutorial programs in the schools (Bell, Garlock, & Colella, 1969; Costello & Martin, 1972; Goodman, 1971; Moskowitz, 1972; Office of Education, 1967; Swett, 1971). Some well-controlled research has been conducted, however.

Learning Through Tutoring: Low-Achieving Children as Tutors.

Low-achieving fifth-grade children either taught a third-grader or studied alone for a series of daily sessions: At the end of the two-week period, the low-achievers’ performance was significantly better in the tutoring condition than in the studying alone condition–a reversal in direction of the initial difference between conditions. There was no differential effect on tutees of being taught versus studying alone. Results suggest that serving as a tutor may be a particularly useful method for enhancing the academic performance of low-achieving children.

Social Support for Nonconformity

Publisher Summary This chapter aims to improve the understanding of the underlying processes responsible for the effectiveness of social support as a means of producing nonconformity. The term “social support” refers to the presence of one person in a group who gives a response that agrees with the subjects private belief or perception—in a word, a partner. Although social support is a very effective technique for reducing conformity to the group, other approaches to conformity reduction are also possible. One could argue that simply reversing the direction of the variables that increase conformity would, in like manner, result in a decrease in conformity. The chapter discusses the generalization of nonconformity. Within-content generalization does appear to occur even when the subject is alone, provided the partner does not actually change his pattern of answering and begin to agree with the group. Under the broad classification of social and cognitive factors, several experiments have been reported that examined the psychological mechanisms hypothesized to account for the social support effect. Among the social factors that contribute to the effectiveness of social support are the expected reactions of the group and attribution of the causal locus of dissent to situational rather than to dispositional sources. Cognitive factors shown to contribute to the effectiveness of social support include a restructuring of the meaning of the stimulus and the response, and independent assessment of physical and social reality. Relationship with the social supporter has also been discussed in the chapter.

Consensus and conformity

Abstract Group consensus was broken either by a partner agreeing exactly with the subject (Social Support) or by a dissenter giving a response even more incorrect than the groups (Extreme Dissent). Using the Crutchfield apparatus, 157 male and female subjects responded to visual, information, and opinion items. Results disclosed that Extreme Dissent, in comparison with a unanimous group, significantly decreased conformity on visual and information items but not on opinion items. Social Support, on the other hand, significantly reduced conformity on all three types of items. The results cast doubt on Aschs contention that breaking group consensus, per se, is responsible for the effectiveness of Social Support in reducing conformity.

Social Support and Conformity: The Role of Independent Assessment of Reality.

Abstract This study investigated the role of one factor in the reduction of conformity produced by a partner who agrees with the subject in the face of group pressure: the independent assessment of social and physical reality provided by the partner. Two social support conditions were created, differing only in the subjects perception of the partners adequacy as a valid referent for making judgments. A unanimous group was also included to provide a conformity base line. Results indicated that the Valid Social Support condition produced a significantly greater decrease in conformity than did the Invalid Social Support condition, though both conditions reduced conformity relative to the unanimous group. Results support the hypothesis that independent assessment of reality provided by a partner is an important factor underlying the efficacy of social support in reducing conformity.

The Effects of a T-Group Laboratory on Interpersonal Behavior

This is a study of 71 participants in the 1959 Western Training Laboratory in Human Relations. Both FIRO-B questionnaires (administered before, after, and six months later) and open-ended questions administered after six months (subjected to content analysis based on the method of dichotomous decisions) supported the hypothesis that the training laboratory changes people selectively, depending on their initial personality, the overly dominant becoming less dominant, the overly affectionate more discriminating, and so on. The hypothesis was also supported that change after a period of six months is in a positive direction with respect to the participants self-concepts and behavior and feelings toward other people, as well as the behavior of others toward the participant. Despite methodological deficiencies in the study, results seem to support the assumption that intellectual and emotional benefits are derived from a T-Group workshop.

Nonverbal Cues as Indicators of Verbal Dissembling

Sixty-three elementary school-age children in an experimental teaching session provided either genuine or dissembled verbal praise to a student (confederate). Nonverbal behavior of the subjects was analyzed both by trained coders and by naive observers. As hypothesized, nonverbal cues disclosed when the participants were dissembling. Dissembling participants smiled less, showed less pleasant mouth expressions, paused more, and were judged to be less pleased with their students than nondissembling participants.

A Role Theoretical Perspective on Transitional Processes

All of us enact a variety of social roles: age roles, occupational roles, family roles, and the like. Over the course of life we will, cocoon-like, slough off one role and take on another many times. Such changes are ubiquitous throughout life and across cultures over the world. Consider, as examples from this book, the following cases: a woman is divorced; a worker loses his job; a couple retires; a person becomes leader of a group; a man changes his job; a person goes into or out of prison; a family emigrates to a new country; a couple become parents, etc. As diverse as these events appear at first glance, we suggest that our understanding will be enhanced by concentrating on the psychological processes they have in common rather than stressing features that distinguish among them.

Social support, dissent and conformity.

The present study investigated the effect on conformity of direction and degree of dissent from the erroneous judgments of a simulated group. Results showed that in judging visual items, conformity was significantly reduced either by a dissenter giving the correct response or by a dissenter giving a response much more incorrect than the groups. On opinion items the presence of a veridical dissenter significantly reduced conformity, but the presence of an extreme erroneous dissenter did not. It was suggested that for objective visual stimuli any response that breaks group consensus leads to rejecting the group; this rejection accounts for conformity reduction in the presence of either a veridical dissenter or an extreme erroneous dissenter. In contrast, for subjective opinion stimuli, the emotional support of a partner, provided by the veridical dissenter, seems necessary for conformity reduction.