Question

Psychology of learning: Learning about risk from others.

a) In the Asch task, 33% of the time people conformed to others (and chose the wrong answer), while the rest of the time people chose the ‘correct answer.’ However, from a social learning perspective, conformity could be justified as the ‘right’ answer. Make an argument for or against why conforming to others may be the ‘right’ choice in this task.

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily.

(Answer) In the Asch task, there are two theories at play. First is the ‘bystander effect’ and the second one is ‘conformation bias’.

According to the bystander effect, people actually refer to the behaviour of their fellow bystander and tend to mimic it. For instance, if a person were to suddenly stop before starting to walk along the zebra-crossing, then a few bystanders would mimic that behaviour without knowing what is really going on. In the case of this theory, people generally act because of the immediate need for a response. They may not always agree with a certain response that they adopt. However, they merely respond to a stimulus.

Here conformity could be the right answer. Because a person does not have the time to think and respond, they choose to directly copy and respond. This is not the wisest of ideas but in an immediate situation, like at the zebra-crossing, it is a “better safe, than sorry” issue. In such a situation, conforming would be the “right” answer.

On the other hand, with the “confirmation bias” theory, people who have a certain opinion, actively seek out people who have the similar notion as them. Together, they validate their behaviour by offering confirmation to each other’s beliefs. This can be observed in the ‘YouTube’ comments section. If we do not like a particular song, we may scroll down in the comments until we find someone with the same opinion as ours. Furthermore, we may react by liking or responding positively to that particular comment.

Unlike the ‘bystander response’, which occurs in situations with the need for immediacy, the ‘confirmation bias’ is where a person has the time to think and come up with their own response. However, they will seek out another individual whose response matches their own, instead of evaluating their own response. This is where conforming would be the “wrong” answer.