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Conformity has been an important topic of interest in the psychological field whereby it suggests human behavior is influenced by the presence of a group due to social pressure. A pioneering piece of research in conformity studies is Asch’s (1952) Line Study, which the paper replicates. It investigates whether people conform to a wrong answer because of group pressure. This paper extends research in conformity to its effect on learning a new language. It investigates whether there is an effect and if this differs from the effect of conformity on cognitive tasks such as shape tasks. The paper also acknowledges the factor of the length of training on conformity when learning a new language by having a longer length condition and a shorter length condition. The study found consistency with Asch’s original findings where participants were informed of the obvious wrong answer. The was no significant difference in conformity between tasks and no significant difference in conformity with differing the length of training. The result indicates that there is still conformity in the modern-day and also suggests that conformity is not task-dependent. The implications of this research provide a greater understanding of how language may evolve.
Introduction
Conformity? A topic of interest for many years within the psychological field. It is widely accepted that human behavior is heavily influenced by social factors, such as esteem, popularity, or acceptance (Bernheim, 1994). The definition of conformity, although debated across the schools of disciplines, is generally accepted to be a behavior intended to fulfill normative group expectations as these expectations are perceived by the individual. (Willis, 1965). Research into conformity arises from Jenness (1932), who focused on conformity in an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with beans in which participants had to individually guess the number of beans. Participants then took part in a group discussion where they had the opportunity to hear about the other estimates given, and after participants had a choice to stick to the original answer or change their estimate, Jenness found most students changed their estimate to be closer to the group estimate. Sherif (1935), who examined the effects of conformity in ambiguous situations, found similar results in his conformity research. Participants underwent a visual illusion experiment and when tested in a group over numerous trials, participants conformed to the group norm. From both studies, it could be concluded that when in an ambiguous situation a person will look to others for guidance as opposed to using their judgments. However, these experiments are criticized due to their methodology, because of the ambiguity and lack of a true answer this makes participants more likely to conform because they are never, nor is it possible, to complete certain of their answers, (Crano, 2000). Whereas incorporating an unambiguous task avoids this issue, which Asch (1951), researched. His method involved placing real nave participants in a room with confederates who had agreed on their answers ahead of time. The real participant was deceived into believing the other seven people were also real participants. Each person was then required to say out loud which line (A, B, or C) was most similar to the target line in length. It was intended to find out whether the real participant would accept the majority view, even if it was wrong and it was found that a majority of participants conformed to the incorrect answer. Asch’s study has been very influential in conformity research and the implications of this study impact many different areas.
A particular area of interest that sparked discussion around conformity is its impact on society and politics. Coleman (2007) argues that when conformity influences voters’ choice it could hijack a democratic government and lead to serious violence, particularly against minority groups. Thus indicating that conformity in a particular context can have serious consequences. Similarly, conformity research has also discussed its impact on law and jury decision-making. Tanford and Penrod (1986) found that during jury deliberation, jurors who changed from guilty to not guilty were the result of conforming to group pressure, despite not changing their private decision thus showing signs of compliance, a type of conformity (Deutsch and Gerad, 1955). Further solidifying the importance of research on this topic of conformity as it may have a detrimental impact on individuals in society. Further research also explored the relationship between conformity and the education system, a key institution for secondary socialization. Menter (2016) finds that teacher education is highly influenced by conformity to the wider institutions and their frameworks of standards, and thus it could be argued that education is politically controlled. They find that a consequence of this is that in teaching, which is meant to be a creative and critical occupation that can ensure the health of a society, it may be discouraged to incorporate new ideas and change and instead it is encouraged rather to conform to old, widespread practices which could lead to a system of stagnation and regression (Peters, 1966). Despite that, another key institution of socialization that research has found is influenced by conformity in the workplace. Facades of conformity (FOC) are similar to, yet different from, other forms of conformity (Wong, 2018) and are defined by Hewlin (2003) as suppressing a personal view to embrace organizational values to survive in an organization. Hewlin et al (2016) found a positive relationship between perceived job insecurity and FOC, which is in line with Stormer and Devine’s (2008) research that found FOC is highly affected by the internal psychological factor of perceived risk to their livelihood. Thus clearly showing the impact of conformity in the workplace.
Therefore, it is clear that Asch’s research and findings on conformity have serious implications in many different domains. However, a key area of interest that conformity may influence that hasn’t been explored is language. Previous research has focused on conformity and its influence in many institutions that affect many in society however, what has been neglected is the impact on language as this is the basis of communication between people, which is a recurring theme of how conformity is translated in the various areas as previously discussed. Therefore it is crucial to research how conformity can influence and create biases in language, particularly in learning a new language. Bakhtin (2010) believed that language existence is purely used for socializing, and described language learning as a struggle to learn the language for the sake of participation in specific speech communities (Norton and Toohey, 2011). As it is clear that language has a social function it is important to acknowledge social biases in language learning. Previous research discussed other forms of biases in learning a new language. Language is a socially transmitted system, whereby biases at a small individual level can have strong effects on language structure (Smith and Wonnacott, 2010). Smith (2011) argued the biases in learning a language for an individual can determine the learnability and cultural stability of language. In language learning, there may be biases that could affect how languages change over time and generations. Conformity bias in language learning is also crucial to understanding how language can change over time, therefore the present study aims to explore the influence of conformity on learning a new language.
Just as important as it is to understand the implications of conformity, it is also important to understand factors that could prevent conformity. One factor that previous research from Allen and Levine (1971), is social support. They found that effective social support reduces conformity to a unanimous group and the factor that underlies this is a social supporter providing an independent confirmation of social and physical reality. The present study aims to explore another factor that may reduce conformity and its influence on learning a language which is the length of training. Boiling and Hardin-Pierce (2016) found that the longer the training the greater the confidence and therefore reducing conformity. Thus indicating that length of learning could influence individual confidence in their understanding rather than relying on and conforming to others.
This study, therefore, aims to replicate Asch’s (1952) study. There is a need to research whether these original findings still hold today and have ecological validity. Participants will join a video call with four confederates and one experimenter. Participants will be asked to match an original shape to labeled shapes and pick the same size, answering verbally. All confederates will be unanimous and give the same incorrect answer, to test whether the participant conforms to this wrong answer, even when the correct answer is obvious. The study also intends to explore the effect of conformity on learning a language where similarly participants will be taught an artificial language and during the testing phases will be surrounded by a unanimous group of confederates giving the wrong answer, to test whether they conform to the wrong word or rely on own their knowledge of what they have learned and not fall into the social pressure. It will also examine the effect or length of training on conformity, whereby participants will either undergo a short training to learn the words or a long length of training. This research will be a between-study design and is most appropriate to prevent demand characteristics that may influence the results. The study intends and predicts that in this replication, participants will conform to the wrong answer even when the answer is obvious. It also predicts that there will be a difference in conformity during the language task and cognitive shapes task. It also predicts that there will be a decrease in conformity when participants undergo a longer length of training compared to a short length.
In the language task, 58.6% of participants did not conform, 10.3% conformed in only one critical trial and 31% conformed to both.
Ordinal logistical regression was conducted to address the research question of whether conformity differed between the cognitive task and language task. The odds of conformity in the cognitive task was 0.825 (95% CI, 0.291 to 2.343) times that of the odds of conformity in the language task, a statistically non-significant effect, Wald X2(1)= 0.130, p=.718.
Another ordinal logistical regression was conducted to address the research of whether conformity differed between the short length of training compared to the long length of training. The odds of conformity when the length of training is short was 4.284 (95% CI, 0.887 to 20.691) times that of the odds of conformity when the training was longer, a statistically non-significant effect, Wald X2(1)= 3.278, p=.070.
Discussion
The first aim of this study was to replicate Asch’s (1952) original findings and examine whether social pressure may make people conform even though the right decision is obvious. The second aim of this study was to investigate the effect of conformity in learning a new language and examine whether there would be an increase in conformity rates for this compared to a cognitive task. Alongside this, the third aim was to investigate the effect of length of training on conformity and examine whether there would be a decrease in conformity rates for a longer length of training compared to a shorter length of training.
About our first hypothesis, our data were consistent with Asch’s (1952) original findings, as results found that participants did conform to the incorrect answer in both trials. In the original findings, 33.2% conformed to the incorrect answers and 66.8% did not conform. Similarly, our findings found that 33.33% conformed to the wrong answer and 66.67% did not conform. This may suggest that because of the social pressure to look to others, participants conformed to the obvious incorrect answer. A possible explanation for this consistency of findings is the group size. In Asch’s (1956) study he found that the number of confederates was an important factor in conformity. With only one confederate the conformity rate was 3% and with two it was 13% however with 3 or more confederates conformity increased to 33% with no further increase in conformity after 4 confederates. This indicates the importance of group size on the conformity rate. The same conclusion was reached by Hogg and Vaughan (1995), who found that conformity peaks with three to five people. Our study understood this impact and ensured we had 4 confederates to fully examine conformity.
About our second aim, results indicated that there was no significant increase in conformity in the language task compared to the classical cognitive task. This demonstrates that conformity may not have a strong influence on learning a new language. A possible explanation for this might be the fact that the majority of the participants are students studying at a university that may have an individualistic culture. Research has found that there is a difference between individualistic and collectivist cultures whereby those in an individualistic culture prioritize human independence and freedom and see people as separate individual units. Compared to a collectivist culture that values group cohesion rather than individual pursuits and perceives individuals as interdependent with each other (Oyserman and Lee, 2008). Further research shows the impact of culture on conformity, as individuals with a collectivist culture are believed to be more likely to conform because collectivist cultures ‘promote a higher level of commitment amongst members than individualist culture’ (Fukushima et al, 2009). Therefore, it is possible that given that most participants may come from an individualistic culture, this leads to more confidence and assurance in their knowledge and makes them less likely to fall into social pressure and conform to the wrong word. In support of this, for the present study it was found that when analyzing the facial expressions and tone of the non-conforming participants, most indicated expressions of assertiveness in their answers and confusion for the Confederate answers. Meanwhile, for conforming participants, facial expressions also included confusion and those who partially conformed were most likely to conform to the 3rd trial as they showed even harder efforts to find the ‘right’ answer by squinting their eyes and moving close to the camera and then saying the obvious wrong answer, as they conform to the group.
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