The influence of the Group

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research on the conditions under which more or less influence occurs
The investigators define normative social influence as an influence to conform to the positive
expectations of others informational social influence they define as an influence to accept
information contributed by others as evidence of reality. Commonly, they say, these two types of
influence are found together, but they are separable: it is possible to say thigs which one
disbelieves, but which agree with the beliefs of others, in order to conform to the expectations of
others, and it is possible to accept someone else’s beliefs as evidence of reality even though one
does not have a specific motivation to conform to his expectation. In their experiment, they set up
there main conditions: a face-to-face situation much like Asch’s; an anonymous situations in which
the subjects were separated by partitions and indicated their judgments by pressing a button; and
a group situation in which the subjects were separated physically but were given instructions about
perfoming well as a group in order to win a prize. With in these conditions, some subjects were
divided into those who committed themselves privately to their judgments by writing them down,
others who committed themselves privately, but could erase their judgements, and still others who
committed themselves publicly, since they knew that their judgments were to be handed to the
experimenter.
In an experiment of this kind, the major measure of conformity is the numbers of a group made
more errors (conformed more) than those who did not participate in the task as members of a
group. This result illustrates normative social influence, where the expectations of others are
important insofar as subjects think they are cooperating in order to win a prize. Conversely, when
the individual feels that his judgment cannot be identified (when he remains anonymous),
normative social in fluence is reduced: the subjects conform less, since there is less chance for
them to be identified as violating the expectations of the group and there fore to be deprived of
social rewards. Fur-
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thermore, whwn people commit themselves to their own jugdments either publicly or privately,
normative social influence is also reduced; commitment to doe’s own judgment results in less
conformity to the judgments of the group. Finally, the more uncertain the person is about the
correctness of his own judgment, the more likely he is to be susceptible to social influences in
making his judgment.
These results indicate that when groups are created for a given purpose, normative social
influence increases as people strive to conform to the expectations of the group. When normative
social influence is removed through anynomity,conformity declines; there is presumably less
motivation to conform to others expectations when one cannot be punished for deviation. Even
whithanonymity, however, there is more conformity to the judgments of others insofar as they are
seen as trustworthy sources of information about the objective reality with which the subject is
confronted. The more ambiguous the objective reality, of course, the more conformity as the
person uses others as stable points of reference (see, for example, Kelley & Lamb,1957)
A good deal of what we ordinarily refer to invidiously as conformity thus appears to be related
to the judgments. To the degree that we see other people as motivated and competent to judge
accurately, we use them as based for our own jugments. Our entire experience of socialization
teaches us that the perceptions and judgments of others are often reliable sources of evidence about
reality. Hence, as Deutsch and Gerard point out, if the judgments of two or more people in the
same pbjective situation are discrepant, each tends to re-examinne both views to see if they can be
reconciled. This process resembles that of referring to a computing machine for support. Except
in the most indirect sence, these processes can hardly be tered normative, or tending toward what
we usually call conformity; rather, they are informational.
Much of the research involving so-called conformity can be