In his famous study of conformity, Solomon Asch investigated the effect of group pressure on individual behaviour using a visual perception task and a group of confederates(actors). While his study found that most people conform to group pressure, 25% of participants still never conformed. These findings suggest that people can differ in their susceptibility to group influence.
So... what makes us more or less likely to conform? How can personality and individual characteristics make us decide to go against the group? Dispositional factors are may affect conformity.
- We are going to explore how dispositional factors affect conformity.
- First, we will provide a definition of dispositional factors, highlighting dispositional factors in psychology.
- Then we will discuss various dispositional factor examples.
- We will then go on to analyse the difference between situational and dispositional factors in psychology.
- As we explore how dispositional factors affect conformity, we will discuss personality, locus of control, and expertise.
Fig. 1 - Dispositional factors may affect levels of conformity.
Dispositional Factors: Definition
Dispositional factors refer to individual characteristics that can influence a person's behaviour, such as how they behave or conform. Individual characteristics include personality differences, biological differences like attitudes, genetic make-up, gender, intelligence, spiritual beliefs and any other characteristic that makes individuals who they are.
Dispositional Factors Examples
Let's examine how individual characteristics can influence behaviour.
Being an extroverted person can make you more likely to socialise, attend big events or choose a job that involves a lot of interactions with people.
Does it mean that introverts never socialise? Not really, but if we take a thousand extroverts and a thousand introverts from a population, the chances are that there will be a difference in how often they engage in activities that require socialisation.
People born prematurely, have a chronic illness or have a greater susceptibility to illnesses are more likely to use medical services frequently.
Optimistic and spiritual people might be more resilient to setbacks than people who tend to catastrophise and always see the worst in every situation.
Dispositional Factors in Psychology
Psychology acknowledges that several things influence our behaviour and cognition, and not everyone reacts to the same situations the same way. Dispositional factors affecting behaviour focus on individual-level characteristics that affect behaviour.
Difference Between Situational and Dispositional Factors in Psychology
Dispositional factors affecting behaviour refer to individual characteristics, while situational factors are external factors that impact our behaviour, like context or the environment. Situational factors can include group pressure or cultural influences.
NatCen (2011) Dispositional Factors and Involvement in the August riots in England
In August 2011, riots broke out in Tottenham (North London) following a peaceful protest. Protestors gathered to protest the shooting of Mark Duggan. After the outbreak, the riots lasted five more days and damaged vehicles, shops and homes across London, which were set on fire or looted. The August riots are deemed the biggest in modest English history.
Fig. 2 - Dispositional factors affected people's decision to involve themselves in the August riots (2011).
To understand what factors motivate people's involvement, NatCen conducted interviews with 36 people who were put in custody or took part in the riots and who didn't directly participate. Based on the interviews, NatCen identified many dispositional factors that affected young people's decision to get involved in the riots.
Bleak job prospects, negative experiences with the police, attitudes towards those in power (politicians), and past criminal history were all individual factors that influenced people's decisions to get involved in the riots.
Dispositional Factors Affecting Conformity
As mentioned before, different people will react differently when put under the same group pressure. Researchers have identified dispositional factors that correlate with the likelihood of conforming. These factors involve locus of control and level of expertise.
Personality
Personality encompasses the patterns of how we think, feel and behave. One aspect of personality that has been identified as relevant for affecting conformity is the locus of control (LOC).
Locus of control is the degree to which individuals feel in control of the outcomes of their actions and what happens to them.
Having an internal locus of control means feeling responsible for your behaviour, its outcomes and what happens to you in life. Having an external locus of control means that feeling like your behaviour, its outcomes, and what happens to you depends on factors outside of yourself.
Fig. 3 - Demonstration of the LOC spectrum.
If a person with an internal locus of control passes their driving test, they are likely to attribute this achievement to their hard work, and if they fail, they are more likely to blame themselves for it.
A person with an external locus of control is likely to attribute passing the test to luck and attribute their failure to a mean examiner rather than their driving skills.
Locus of Control and Conformity
People high in internal locus of control tend to be less likely to conform to group behaviour. Since internal locus of control involves taking responsibility for your behaviour no matter what situation one is in, individuals with this disposition are less likely to conform, especially if the group is incorrect or acting harmfully.
On the other hand, someone that doesn't tend to take responsibility for what they do is easier influenced by the action of others
Expertise
The more expertise you have on a topic, the more confident you feel in trusting your judgement (instead of the group's judgement).
For someone that knows little about vaccines, the decision to vaccinate might be largely influenced by the opinions of the people around them. However, for a vaccine specialist that clearly understands how vaccines work, the decision is unlikely to be influenced by people around them that don't have the same expertise.
Expertise and Conformity
Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated the famous conformity study originally conducted in 1951 by Solomon Asch. Their study took place in the UK, and their sample consisted of Engineering students. The same line judgement paradigm was used as in the original conformity experiment.
Fig. 4 - Demonstration of stimuli used by Perrin and Spencer (1980).
Perrin and Spencer found that across 396 trials, only one participant conformed to the group pressure to choose the wrong answer to the task. While in the original Asch study, 75% of participants conformed at least once.
These findings can be explained by the fact that engineering students might have greater expertise and are, therefore, less concerned with the judgements of the other group members.
Dispositional Factors - Key takeaways
- Dispositional factors refer to individual characteristics that can influence a person's behaviour. They differ from situational factors, as situational factors refer to the external factors that impact our behaviour, like context or the environment.
- NatCen identified several dispositional factors that affected young people's decision to get involved in the August riots (2011). Bleak job prospects, negative experiences with the police, attitudes towards those in power (politicians), and past criminal history all influenced young people's decision to get involved in the riots.
- Researchers have identified dispositional factors that correlate with conforming. These factors involve locus of control and level of expertise.
- Locus of control is how much individuals feel in control of their actions and outcomes. People high in internal locus of control tend to be less likely to conform to group behaviour.
- The more expertise you have on a topic, the less likely you will conform. Perrin and Spencer (1980) found that only 0.3% of engineering students conformed in laboratory conditions.
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