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Doing what the mob do: priming effects on conformity
Author(s) -
Pendry Louise,
Carrick Rachael
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.33
Subject(s) - conformity , psychology , priming (agriculture) , social psychology , norm (philosophy) , prime (order theory) , law , botany , germination , mathematics , combinatorics , political science , biology
This study considered whether participants' tendency to conform to a group norm could be influenced by priming them with categories associated with either conformity or anarchy. Participants were primed with one of two categories: ‘accountant prime’, ‘punk prime’ (plus a baseline ‘no prime’). They then participated in a variant of the Asch (1951) conformity paradigm. Results indicated that ‘punk’‐primed participants conformed significantly less than did ‘accountant’‐primed participants, with the mean for the ‘no‐prime’ condition lying in between the two. ‘Accountant’‐primed participants conformed to the group norm more than did the ‘no‐prime’ participants. In addition, the performance of ‘punk’‐primed participants was comparable to that of participants who performed the judgment task in isolation (‘solo’ condition). This indicates that conformity pressures did not affect estimates for ‘punk’‐primed participants. Implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.