Majority influence – just complying?

Asch’s classic study judging the length of lines demonstrated people will go along with majority opinion even when the answer is clearly wrong. One of the key questions was whether they were just going along with the answers (called ‘compliance’), or whether the majority influence actually changed their opinions (i.e. they internalised the majority view). […]

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Conformity and minority influence

In the AQA A AS Complete Companion we have subdivided conformity into majority and minority influence. There was a reason for this – when the new specification was first published minority influence was a named topic so we wrote material on it. However, in a very late revision, minority influence was removed from the specification. […]

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Conformity and MPs

Why did so many MPs claim expenses which, although apparently ‘within the rules’, were clearly not morally justifiable? It has been suggested that this was a conformity effect, as research has shown that bending the rules or breaking social norms increases, sometimes doubling, if people see that others are doing this. It’s a ‘me too’ […]

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