Achievement Motivation, Affiliation Motivation, and Task Difficulty as Determinants of Social Conformity

Sistrunk, Francis; McDavid, John W.

doi:10.1080/00224545.1965.9919619

Cited by 32 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In line with previous research, we predict that participants will integrate perceptual and social information to inform their decisions and reduce uncertainty [ 5 , 29 – 32 ]. At the same time, social norms have an increased impact on decisions under high information uncertainty [ 33 , 34 ]. Hence, decisions in line with social information are potentially elicited by available perceptual and social information, social norms or both [ 24 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm compliance affects perceptual decisions through modulation of a starting point bias

2018

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Adaptive decisions in social contexts depend on both perceptual information and social expectations or norms. These are potentially in conflict when certain choices are beneficial for an individual, but societal rules mandate a different course of action. To resolve such a conflict, the reliability of information has to be balanced against potentially deleterious effects of non-compliance such as ostracism. In this study, we systematically investigated how interactions between perceptual and social influences affect decision-relevant cognitive processes. In a direction-of-motion discrimination task, participants received perceptual information alongside information on other players' choices. In addition, we created conflict scenarios where players’ choices affected other participants' monetary rewards dependent on whether their choices were in line or against the opinion of the other players. Importantly, we altered the strength of this manipulation in two separate experiments by contrasting motivations of either preventing harm or providing a benefit to others. Behavioural analyses and computational models of perceptual decisions showed that participants successfully integrated perceptual with social information. Participants' reliance on social information was effectively modulated in conflict situations. Critically, these effects were augmented when the strength of social norms was increased, indexing conditions under which social norms effectively influence decisions. These results inform theories of social influence by providing an account of how higher order goals like social norm compliance affect perceptual decisions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm compliance affects perceptual decisions through modulation of a starting point bias

2018

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“…This is especially important in studies that investigate e ects of conformity determinants other than majority group sizei.e., nature and di culty of task, personality of participant etc. For instance, several conformity studies that examined e ects of the experimental task (objectivity and di culty) and participants' personality on conformity behaviour in physical [20,157] and CMC settings [139] used Crutch eld's paradigm to ensure that non verbal user cues (e.g. peer gender/age) do not in uence participants' decision to conform to the majority.…”

Section: Asch Vs Crutchfieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perceptual (visual) Select the larger out of two clusters of dots [37], and two shapes [157] Select the longest line in a set of lines [51] Count the number of dots on a slide [122] Perceptual (auditory) Count the number of metronome clicks on a recording [20,123] Select the recording with the longer tone [144]…”

Section: Task Type Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alternatively, task di culty can be more objectively determined based on how a control group of participants complete the experimental tasks in private settings [31,157]. For example, Blake, Helson, and Mouton [20] analysed responses of a control group (n = 50) to logical (solving arithmetic questions) to categorise questions with >75% of correct answers as "easy", 25-75% correct answers as "moderate" and less than <25% of correct answers as "di cult".…”

Section: Task DI Icultymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding the Dynamics of Online Social Conformity

Wijenayake

2020

Companion Publication of the 2020 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

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“…Sherif's (1937) experiment represents an example of informational conformity as elicited by the task used in the study (participants estimate, but do not know the correct response), while Asch's (1951) study demonstrates pure effects of peer pressure (as it is trivially easy to answer which line is longer/shorter). In addition to the distinction between normative and informational conformity, there are numerous variables that moderate the level of conformity, such as achievement motivation and affiliative motivation (Sistrunk & McDavid, 1965). The distinctions between different types of conformity and motivation were not the focus of the present study; therefore, we refer to social influence as conformity throughout the paper.…”

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confidence: 99%

Peer influence on conformity and confidence in a perceptual judgment task

2020

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Undergraduate college students were presented with two arrays of dots varying in numerosity on a computer screen and asked to indicate if the arrays differed in number. They also rated their level of confidence in their responses. Trials varied in difficulty based on the size of the arrays. On half of the trials, participants were shown the ostensible responses of confederates to test the effect of peer influence on numerosity judgments and participant confidence. On the other half of the trials, participants received no information about the responses of the confederates to provide a measure of baseline performance. Higher levels of conformity were observed for the difficult trials, on which participants were both less accurate and less confident. However, confidence ratings were influenced by peer judgments for easy trials but not for difficult trials. These data suggest that task difficulty influences conformity when making perceptual judgments.

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Achievement Motivation, Affiliation Motivation, and Task Difficulty as Determinants of Social Conformity

Cited by 32 publications

References 9 publications

Norm compliance affects perceptual decisions through modulation of a starting point bias

Norm compliance affects perceptual decisions through modulation of a starting point bias

Understanding the Dynamics of Online Social Conformity

Peer influence on conformity and confidence in a perceptual judgment task

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