SITUATIONAL AND INTERACTION FACTORS IN A PROCESS MODEL OF CONFORMITY

The investigation examined conforming behavior as a function of three stimulus information sources, i.e., task ambiguity, task sense modality, and group feedback. Two hundred and forty undergraduate women were subjects. For 20 trials each subject saw the responses of other group members only after making a response. For 20 subsequent trials, group responses were presented before the subject was required to make a response. All group responses were controlled by the experimenter. Responses on the last 20 trials matching those of the group constituted the measure of conformity. Subjects participated in one of 24 conditions, in a 3 x 2 x 4 design. The conditions of task ambiguity included: (1) task stimulus ambiguous for both sets of 20 trials; (2) ambiguous for 20 trials and unambiguous for 20 trials; (3) unambiguous for both sets of 20 trials. Responses to a light stimulus throughout for one group of subjects and changing from tones to lights for the other group of subjects constituted the factors of task sense modality. Conditions of support included complete agreement by the group on either 100%, 70%, or 50% of the first 20 trials, or no information (control) from the group. Major results were: (1) More ambiguous stimulus conditions yielded higher conforming; (2) Change in modality from tones to lights yielded higher conforming than did repetition of the light task; (3) Support conditions did not differentially affect conforming across all conditions, except the completely unambiguous task conditions, where greater support yielded higher conforming. Doctoral thesis.