Conformity In Psychology

Conformity involves changing your behaviours in order to “fit in” or “go along” with the people around you. In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as “normal” by the group

Types of Conformity

Compliance (or group acceptance)

This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because he hopes to achieve a favourable reaction from another person or group. He adopts the induced behaviour because….he expects to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid specific punishment or disapproval by conformity’ (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).

In other words, conforming to the majority (publicly), in spite of not really agreeing with them (privately) Compliance stops when there are no group pressures to conform, and is therefore a temporary behaviour change.

Internalisation (genuine acceptance of group norms)

This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because the content of the induced behaviour – the ideas and actions of which it is composed – is intrinsically rewarding. He adopts the induced behaviour because it is congruent [consistent] with his value system’ 

Internalisation always involves public and private conformity. A person publicly changes their behaviour to fit in with the group, while also agreeing with them privately. This is the deepest level of conformity were the beliefs of the group become part of the individual’s own belief system. This means the change in behaviour is permanent. 

This is most likely to occur when the majority have greater knowledge, and members of the minority have little knowledge to challenge the majority position.

Identification (or group membership)

This occurs ‘when an individual accepts influence because he wants to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining relationship to another person or group’ 

Individuals conform to the expectations of a social role, e.g. nurses, police officers. It is similar to compliance as there does not have to be a change in private opinion. A good example is…

The Asch Experiment, by Solomon Asch, was a famous experiment designed to test how peer pressure to conform would influence the judgement and individuality of a test subject.

For the experiment, eight subjects were seated around a table, with the seating plan carefully constructed to prevent any suspicion.

Only one participant was actually a genuine subject for the experiment, the rest being confederates, carefully tutored to give certain pre-selected responses. Careful experimental construction placed a varying amount of peer pressure on the individual test subject.

The experiment was simple in its construction; each participant, in turn, was asked to answer a series of questions, such as which line was longest or which matched the reference line. (Fig 1)

The participants gave a variety of answers, at first correct, to avoid arousing suspicion in the subject, but then with some incorrect responses added.

This would allow Asch to determine how the answers of the subject would change with the added influence of peer pressure.

The Asch Experiment results were interesting and showed that peer pressure could have a measurable influence on the answers given.

The control group those not exposed to peer pressure where everybody gave correct answers, threw up only one incorrect response out of 35; this could probably be explained by experimental error 

The results for the other groups were interesting; when surrounded by people giving an incorrect answer, over one third of the subjects also voiced an incorrect opinion.

At least 75% of the subjects gave the wrong answer to at least one question, although experimental error may have had some influence on this figure. There was no doubt, however, that peer pressure can cause conformity.

Why Do We Conform?

Researchers have found that people conform for a number of different reasons. In many cases, looking to the rest of the group for clues for how we should behave can actually be helpful. Other people might have greater knowledge or experience than we do, so following their lead can actually be instructive.

In some instances, we conform to the expectations of the group in order to avoid looking foolish. This tendency can become particularly strong in situations where we are not quite sure how to act or where the expectations are ambiguous.

Deautsch and Gerard (1955) identified two key reasons why people conform: informational influence and normative influence.

Informational influence happens when people change their behaviour in order to be correct. In situations where we are unsure of the correct response, we often look to others who are better informed and more knowledgeable and use their lead as a guide for our own behaviours. In a classroom setting, for example, this might involve agreeing with the judgements of another classmate who you perceive as being highly intelligent.

Normative influence stems from a desire to avoid punishments (such as going along with the rules in class even though you don’t agree with them) and gain rewards (such as behaving in a certain way in order to get people to like you).

 

Obedience In Psychology

Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure. It is assumed that without such an order the person would not have acted in this way.

Obedience occurs when you are told to do something (authority), whereas conformity happens through social pressure (the norms of the majority). Obedience involves a hierarchy of power / status. Therefore, the person giving the order has a higher status than the person receiving the order.

Obedience is compliance with commands given by an authority figure. In the 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a famous research study called the obedience study. It showed that people have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures.

Milgram’s Obedience Study

 Milgram told his forty male volunteer research subjects that they were participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. He assigned each of the subjects to the role of teacher. Each subject was told that his task was to help another subject like himself learn a list of word pairs. Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to give the learner an electric shock by flipping a switch. The teacher was told to increase the shock level each time the learner made a mistake, until a dangerous shock level was reached.

Throughout the course of the experiment, the experimenter firmly commanded the teachers to follow the instructions they had been given. In reality, the learner was not an experiment subject but Milgram’s accomplice, and he never actually received an electric shock. However, he pretended to be in pain when shocks were administered.

Prior to the study, forty psychiatrists that Milgram consulted told him that fewer than 1 percent of subjects would administer what they thought were dangerous shocks to the learner. However, Milgram found that two-thirds of the teachers did administer even the highest level of shock, despite believing that the learner was suffering great pain and distress. Milgram believed that the teachers had acted in this way because they were pressured to do so by an authority figure.

Factors That Increase Obedience

Milgram found that subjects were more likely to obey in some circumstances than others. Obedience was highest when:

• Commands were given by an authority figure rather than another volunteer
• The experiments were done at a prestigious institution
• The authority figure was present in the room with the subject
• The learner was in another room
• The subject did not see other subjects disobeying commands

In everyday situations, people obey orders because they want to get rewards, because they want to avoid the negative consequences of disobeying, and because they believe an authority is legitimate. In more extreme situations, people obey even when they are required to violate their own values or commit crimes. Researchers think several factors cause people to carry obedience to extremes:

• People justify their behavior by assigning responsibility to the authority rather than themselves.
• People define the behavior that’s expected of them as routine.
• People don’t want to be rude or offend the authority.
• People obey easy commands first and then feel compelled to obey more and more difficult commands. This process is called entrapment, and it illustrates the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.

Some animals can easily be trained to be obedient by employing operant conditioning, for example obedience exist to condition dogs into obeying the orders of human owners. Obedience training seems to be particularly effective on social animals a category that includes human beings; other animals do not respond well to such training.

Learning to obey adult rules is a major part of the socialization process in childhood, and many techniques are used by adults to modify the behaviour of children. Additionally, extensive training is given in armies to make soldiers capable of obeying orders in situations where an untrained person would not be willing to follow orders. Soldiers are initially ordered to do seemingly trivial things, such as picking up the sergeant’s hat off the floor, marching in just the right position, or marching and standing in formation. The orders gradually become more demanding, until an order to the soldiers to place themselves into the midst of gunfire gets an instinctively obedient response.

The multi-store model (MSM)

The multi store model (Atkinson, & Shiffrin 1968) describes memory in terms of information flowing through a system. Accordingly, it can be described as an information processing model (like a computer) with an input, process and output. Information is detected by the sense organs and enters the sensory memory. If attended to this information enters the short term memory. Information from the STM is transferred to the long-term memory only if that information is rehearsed. If rehearsal does not occur, then information is forgotten, lost from short term memory through the processes of displacement or decay.

The three permanent memory structures: Sensory register (SR), Short term memory (STM) and the Long term memory (LTM). They differ in terms of…

coding – the form in whichc the information is stored.

capacity – how much information can be stored.

duration – how long information can be stored for.

The sensory register

All information contained in the long term memory will have originally passed through the SR  in an unprocessed form.

There are two main parts of the sensory register: visual memory, also called iconic memory, and auditory memory, also called echoic memory. These senses take in most of the stimuli you are exposed to. Visual memory holds images we see for less than a second before it fades.

coding – It is stored in a raw, unprocessed form…

echoic store – auditory info, iconic –  visual info, haptic – tactile info, gustatory – taste info and olfactory – smell info.

Research – Crowder (1993) found that the SR only stores information for a few seconds but also suggests that different sensory stores have different durations.

Short – term memory (STM)

Short term memory has three key aspects:

1. limited capacity (only about 7 items can be stored at a time)

2. limited duration (storage is very fragile and information can be lost with distraction or passage of time)

3. encoding (primarily acoustic, even translating visual information into sounds).

STM temporarily stores information from the SR. It is an active (changing) system and contains only information currently being thought about. The coding, capacity and duration of the STM differs greatly from that of the long term memory (LTM).

coding – information arrives in a form such as sound or vision and then is turned into a form the STM can more easily deal with for example…

if the input from the SR was the word ‘donkey’ the STM would use one of the following ways to code it…

• visually – by imagining a donkey
• acoustically – repeatedly saying ‘donkey’
• semantically – (through meaning) such as they are herbivorous land mammals that have been widely domesticated and are often used to carry loads.

Long term memory

LTM stores memory for a long period of time, all information in the LTM will have passed through the STM  and the SR. Research indicates that there are several types of LTM and they are not of equal strength for example you can remeber when your birthday is but you may need more prompting to remember when your aunty’s is.

The potential capacity of LTM is unlimited, although due to interference and decay some may be lost. Bahrick et al. (1975) showed 400 partcipants aged between 17 and 74 years a set of photos and a list of names, some of which were ex-school friends and asked them to identify ex-school friends. those who’d left high school in the last fifteen years identified 90 percent of names and faces while those who’d left 48 years previously identified 80 percent of names and 70 percent of faces suggesting memory for faces is long lasting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Revise Effectively

Revising can be a hard thing to do, in fact most people struggle with finding effective ways to do it. I hope this blog can give you some useful tips and maybe make it a little bit easier for you.

1. Don’t get stressed! Being stressed and worried will not help you at all. Make time to relax everyday and do things like listening to music, going swimming, seeing friends etc. These activities will help you to feel relaxed. You can also practice relaxation exercises, meditation, or simply just lying back and chilling out now and then.
2. Ask your family to help you. Your family can be a fantastic help even if they don’t  understand what you’re doing. They can help by testing you, helping you understand things and help to motivate you. You may need emotional support as much as other support and if you can trust in someone to talk to about your anxiety or worries, this can help you to offload many unneeded troubles to a caring listener.
3. Talk to your teachers. Teachers are a vital source of information and can really help you. Make sure to ask them for help if you need it before it’s to late.
4. Revise with other classmates. Find a suitable group of good students who hope to succeed, and schedule regular meetings in between your other revision activities. Discuss the topics of revision, helping each other solve problems, understand the materials, and test one another over the reading. Studying in a group can be a great way of reducing anxiety levels and making revision fun, as well as productive.
   • Find ways to test each other, playing revision games as challenges. Use flash cards or structure your study sessions like a quiz game. Chat online if you haven’t time to catch up in person.
   • Make sure your revision time with friends is spent actually revising. You may actually be better off revising with classmates you’re not friendly with to make it productive.
5. Take regular breaks. If you take breaks regularly, your concentration will be better and you will find yourself retaining more information than if you try to plow straight through. Don’t waste energy and time revising with an over-tired mind that won’t remember what it just read.
   • Try to stick to your schedule. Make sure to check off topics and subjects as you accomplish revising them. It may even be a good idea to reward yourself with a treat on the completion of a target to help you get there. It is a good motivation to not consider giving up as an option.

     

6. Find someone who knows nothing about the topic and explain to them. Even if it is explaining to the mirror or your cat, just take the time out to talk to someone as if the person is learning about it for the first time, and you are the teacher. It is hard to forget information once you have done this, and also forces you to clarify the information and lay it all out in the most concise and simple way possible.
   • If no one’s around, pretend you’re on TV or the radio being interviewed about the topic. Ask yourself a series of questions and reply as succinctly and clearly as you can, pretending people are listening and wanting to learn all about it.
7. Use past papers and text books. Answering past exam or test papers in the same time limit, as the real exam or test will be gives you an opportunity to test yourself under the same constraints. It will be a chance to see whether there are gaps in your knowledge that you need to go back over and it’ll also be useful to see if you can get down all that you want to say in the time allotted. Do the practices under timed conditions by using a timer, which could be on your phone.You may also find some important questions, who knows?
8. Recall and summarize. As you’re studying, stop every few minutes to recap what you’ve read. Write a short summary–a few sentences–in your notes, or at the bottom of the page. Use your own words. A good way of recalling is writing your notes down from memory and then going back over them and filling in the gaps with another color of pencil or pen. You’ll know the different color refers to information you might have trouble remembering.
   • Periodically, Try to repeat the process of summary, writing down on a separate sheet of paper what you know about a given topic or subject without consulting your books or your previous notes. Compare your new notes to your old, finding what you’ve left out and what you still need to memorize.
9. Set achievable goals and targets. Going over twelve chapters of trigonometry the night before a big exam is probably going to do more harm than good. Likewise, trying to revise all that Shakespeare several weeks out before being tested might not be the best way to remember the information by test-time. Organize in the most effective way to remember the most important information you’ve got to study.
10. Find a good place to study. Find a quiet, well-lit place to work that will be comfortable and free of distraction.
11. Draw a timetable for your revision and stick to it. What do you hope to cover by the end of the week? By the end of the day? Working from a revision timetable helps you to make clear goals for each revision session and allows you to check them off as you progress. Revision plans can reduce anxiety, reassuring you that you’ve taken the necessary steps.

Classical Conditioning

What is classical conditioning?

Dictionary – a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response which is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.

John Watson proposed that the process of classical conditioning (based on Pavlov’s observations) was able to explain all aspects of human psychology. Everything from speech to emotional responses were simply patterns of stimulus and response. Watson denied completely the existence of the mind or consciousness.

Watson believed that all individual differences in behaviour were due to different experiences of learning. He famously said:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors” (Watson, 1924, p. 104).

Here is an example of real life classical conditioning

Classical Conditioning Examples

Classical conditioning theory involves learning a new behaviour via the process of association. In simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal. There are three stages of classical conditioning. At each stage the stimuli and responses are given special scientific terms:

Stage 1: Before Conditioning:

In this stage, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces an unconditioned response (UCR) in an organism. In basic terms, this means that a stimulus in the environment has produced a behaviour / response which is unlearned (i.e. unconditioned) and therefore is a natural response which has not been taught. In this respect no new behaviour has been learned yet.

This stage also involves another stimulus which has no effect on a person and is called the neutral stimulus (NS). The NS could be a person, object, place, etc. The neutral stimulus in classical conditioning does not produce a response until it is paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

Stage 2: During Conditioning:

During this stage a stimulus which produces no response (i.e. neutral) is associated with the unconditioned stimulus at which point it now becomes known as the conditioned stimulus (CS).

For example a stomach virus (UCS) might be associated with eating a certain food such as chocolate (CS). Also perfume (UCS) might be associated with a specific person (CS).

Often during this stage the UCS must be associated with the CS on a number of occasions, or trials, for learning to take place. However, one trail learning can happen on certain occasions when it is not necessary for an association to be strengthened over time (such as being sick after food poisoning or drinking too much alcohol).

Stage 3: After Conditioning:

Now the conditioned stimulus (CS) has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) to create a new conditioned response (CR).

For example a person (CS) who has been associated with nice perfume (UCS) is now found attractive (CR). Also chocolate (CS) which was eaten before a person was sick with a virus (UCS) is now produces a response of nausea (CR).

Classical conditioning case study

Example – Little Albert Experiment (Phobias)

Ivan Pavlov showed that classical conditioning applied to animals.  Did it also apply to humans? In a famous (though ethically dubious) experiment, Watson and Rayner (1920) showed that it did.

Little Albert was a 9-month-old infant who was tested on his reactions to various stimuli. He was shown a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey and various masks. Albert described as “on the whole stolid and unemotional” showed no fear of any of these stimuli. However, what did startle him and cause him to be afraid was if a hammer was struck against a steel bar behind his head. The sudden loud noise would cause “little Albert to burst into tears.

When Little Albert was just over 11 months old the white rat was presented and seconds later the hammer was struck against the steel bar.  This was done 7 times over the next 7 weeks and each time Little Albert burst into tears. By now little Albert only had to see the rat and he immediately showed every sign of fear. He would cry (whether or not the hammer was hit against the steel bar) and he would attempt to crawl away.

In addition, the Watson and Rayner found that Albert developed phobias of objects which shared characteristics with the rat; including the family dog, a fur coat, some cotton wool and a Father Christmas mask! This process is know as generalization.

Watson and Rayner had shown that classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear, i.e. a fear that is out of proportion to the danger. Over the next few weeks and months Little Albert was observed and 10 days after conditioning his fear of the rat was much less marked. This dying out of a learned response is called extinction. However, even after a full month it was still evident, and the association could be renewed by repeating the original procedure a few times.

Paranormal Psychology

People have always believed in the paranormal, throughout history there have been copious reports of the supernatural. Even Winston Churchill reportedly saw the ghost of Abraham Lincoln on a visit to the Whitehouse soon after World War II. A recent survey showed that as many as three quarters of us believe in the paranormal and nearly one in five claim to of seen an actual ghost!

What is Paranormal Psychology?

Psychical Research and Parapsychology are scientific approaches to the study of apparently paranormal phenomena. Paranormal psychology or ‘Parapsychology’  is the investigation into paranormal and psychic phenomena. It is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. Parapsychologists study paranormal claims including near death experiences, reincarnation and telepathy.

The History of Parapsychology

Joseph Banks Rhine, initially a botanist by formal training, studied psychology at Harvard and then Duke with William McDougall. Rhine is generally considered to be the founding father of parapsychology (he and McDougall coined the term) as an area of scientific inquiry. Inspired by a lecture by Arthur Conan Doyle on the possibility of communicating with the dead, he initiated formal laboratory and field research on paranormal phenomena at Duke University. He also started the Journal of Parapsychology, founded the Parapsychological Association and edited several editions of the book “Extra Sensory Perception”. His Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, originally affiliated with Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, later became a wholly independent entity. Although there is evidence that data produced by some of his assistants may have been fraudulent, Rhine himself was known for rigorous lab research and approach to statistical analysis.

Case Study –

The Flying Saint

Saint Joseph of Cupertino (San Giuseppe da Copertino, 1603-1663; born Giuseppe Maria Desa in Cupertino, southeastern Italy) was considered rather dull witted (in modern terms, he may have suffered from learning disabilities), and said to possess a violent temper (a point we will return to). Joseph was extremely pious, however, and became a Franciscan friar. Joseph exhibited various mental psychic phenomena; for instance, it is said he was aware of the thoughts of people who came to confession and would know if they were not being completely honest. Due to his mental deficiencies, he could learn only a small amount of material at a time. When preparing for exams he simply studied one specific topic, and then prayed that that would be the very subject, of all possible subjects, that would be asked of him – and so it was. Was this an example of precognition, or was Joseph telepathically influencing or accessing (perhaps unconsciously) the examiners in terms of the questions they would put to him?

Joseph was also said to have the power to heal the sick. But it was his bodily levitations, his literal flights in the air, that he is most famous for, and which by many are considered to be absolutely mysterious and miraculous, either justifiably earning Joseph the appellation of Saint (he was canonised in 1767), or in the skeptic’s opinion dismissal as either a fraud, or at the least someone who incited  it is still difficult to dismiss all of the varied eyewitness accounts of Joseph’s flights. Reportedly the first levitation was in his hometown of Cupertino during an outdoor procession on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. Joseph took off, flying over the crowd. After it was over, in embarrassment, he fled to hide in his mother’s house. From then until the end of his life, Joseph experienced uncontrolled fits of bodily levitation. Various minor incidents could potentially initiate a levitation: a casual remark about the wonders of God, or viewing an image of the Virgin Mary, could send Joseph into ecstasy, and then with a loud sob or cry he would fly into the air.

His reported flights were not trivial. On one occasion he flew from the middle of the church to the high altar, a distance of forty feet, and remained there for about fifteen minutes before descending. He once flew over the heads of bystanders to reach a statue of the Immaculate Conception, and then flew back again over their heads once more. Another time he reportedly flew eighty yards, over a pulpit, to a crucifix.⁵ During another levitation he ended up in a tree, and once he came out of his trance he was unable to get down until a ladder was fetched. On several occasions he carried another person up with him, holding them by the hand or hair.

Although it is “only” eyewitness testimony (but what else can we have from the seventeenth century?), it is incredibly varied and consistent, and Joseph’s levitations were not always viewed positively. Indeed, his superiors often found Joseph to be an embarrassment. His unannounced flights during solemn ceremonies could cause a disruption. Once floating before the altar holding the Holy Sacrament, his sandals fell off. Joseph was at times banned from choir practices, public masses, and even from meals with his fellow friars. Joseph and his “miracles” attracted a huge following, and especially later in his life, the church authorities periodically attempted to place him in seclusion. In my mind, these facts only reinforce that the levitations may well have been genuine.

Watch the link below to find out more about him.