Effects of Sex, Response Order, and Expertise in Conformity: A Dispositional Approach

Abstract

In this research the effects of sex of both subject and confederate, response order, and perceived confederate expertise upon the establishment and mainte- nance of conformant responses were examined. The subjects' perceptions of the expertise level (high or low) of the confederate was insured by a careful but unobtrusive manipulation. As predicted, sex effects proved minimal when examined across the levels of expertise. The expertise manipulation, affecting the subject's perception of the quality of socially derived information, proved influential in training (p < .001), and continued to exert an influence even in the effective absence of the confederate (p < .001). Differences as a func- tion of response order, affecting information quantity rather than quality, were significant in training (p < .001), but disappeared with the removal of the confederate. The advantage of conceptualizing conformity as a difference in the degree to which perceptual or social modes of information-weighting are activated in arriving at a decision was discussed, with special emphasis upon variables affecting differences in information quality and quantity. Few issues in experimental social psychology have stimulated as much research as the study of factors influencing the process of conformity. Of all the theoretical advances made in this area, one of the most significant was Festinger's (1953) differentiation of public compliance with a source of influ- ence from conformity, the private acceptance of that influence. Kelman (1958) also noted this distinction, and examined experimentally the conditions under which one or the other of these processes was more likely to occur. Implicit in the definitions of both Festinger and Kelman was the conceptualization of conformity behavior as persistent. Compatible with this position conformity in this report refers to a socially influenced, counter-perceptual response that