Abstract:

Conformity can be simply defined as “yielding to group pressures” (Crutchfield, 1955). Conformity is present in our everyday lives, especially in groups or clusters of people, whether the reason is social or informational. The reason to study conformity in group work was because teachers often hand out both teamwork, and individual work. I wanted to examine how the two compared, and if the answers for teamwork differed from individual work, and to see if there was any clear conformity in the former. In the experiment, the participants were asked to complete two assignments consisting of an individual assignment and a group assignment. My results produced inconclusive results, because it was unclear that there was any conformity, but other actions cancelled this out as well. To conclude, this social experiment produced experiments cannot deny conformity nor conform conformity.

Literary review:

Dr Saul Mcleod stated while writing in Psychology Today, that “Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group.” In other words, that means changing your actions, or opinion to match others within a group or community. There are many types of conformity, and most people have encountered this at least once in their lifetime.

Types of conformity include Compliance, or agreeing to group ideals on the outside but keeping personal ideals on the inside such as when all of work/friend group say that they want to go to the beach, and just because of the majority, you agree but privately want to go to the bar instead. Another kind of conformity would be Internalisation, which means actually and entirely agreeing and changing your beliefs to match those others. An example of this would be when you are in a study group and you have no clue of what is happening. You then go to the group for guidance since they seem better informed than you and believe what they say. Identification, which means agreeing so you have some kind of status in a group. Another example of this would be to agree with the leader of the group to avoid being kicked out, or to grab a promotion. The final type of conformity would be Ingrational, which means you conform to gather favour from others such as dojo points. (Dr. Saul Mcleod, Psychology Today)

There are two ways to conform. You can conform inwardly, which means an ideal, and opinion changes to match completely such as when you are clueless and latch onto the first opinion. The other way to conform is outwardly which means though it seems like you believe one thing on the outside, such as when you talk, your body action and expression, but you privately maintain your set of ideals on the inside.

People think that conformity could either be an ancient urge that keeps you alive by staying in the group, or something else that drives you to follow and agree with the group. There are two influences that drive you to conform. Either it is to go with the group to avoid being thrown out, and to avoid social instability (Normative Influence) or the fact that you have no knowledge of what is happening, so you agree with the group to avoid looking lost, or dumbfounded. (Informational Influence). (Jeffrey Walsh, Khan Academy)

There have been many experiments to prove conformity exists. According to Jeffrey Walsh, from Khan Academy, conformity probably stems from a primal desire to survive or fit in. Though humans try to maintain their own sense of individuality, such as in the west, in many experiments people do conform, and even try to cover it up by coughing, adjusting the hat, or sneezing.

One of the most famous experiments studying conformity is the Asch experiment with three lines. In quick summary, Asch invited 8 people into a room under the pretence of an eye checkup. One was a naive test dummy which had no idea that this was an experiment or that the rest were actually faking it, and the rest of the group were actors who knew what was going on. He showed three lines on one board, and one line on the other. He asked his participants which of the three lines the solo line looked most like. Out of the 17 tests, 12 of the actors gave the wrong answer. Of that, 75% of the naive test dummies conformed and gave the wrong answer. The other five test runs consisted of only test dummies, actors giving the right answer, and heightening the ratio of dummies. The limitations of the experiment include that Asch only tested male students, not female students. This means that Asch has a limited test group, both with age and gender because you are only looking at a person from this education, this age, and this gender which does not generalise the answers. Another issue is that the ratio of actors to the naive ones is 7:1, so you cannot observe if a person can conform with less people involved. The type of conformity can be placed as Compliance because a person may only conform because the majority of the group are doing a certain action, and we don’t know if a person conforms inwardly as well, and we can only look at their actions to confirm..

Another experiment by Solomen Asch, is the elevator experiment that took place during 1962. In this experiment, there are four actors, and one dummy. The naive dummy walks into the elevator, and when the door closes, the actors slowly turn one way. You see the test dummy trying to retain their individuality, but struggling, and trying to cover up their actions. The naive dummy tries to face the same direction as the actors every single time the door closes. This process is tried repeatedly with multiple naive dummies, and in each one they conform eventually. The result of this experiment proves that a person, when faced with a decision to either stick out and be individual, or to blend in and do what the crowd does, will in general choose to blend in with the crowd. The type of conformity could be placed as Compliance because a person looks confused and conflicted for a moment, and remains so for the entirety of the experiment.

“Are 2 heads better than One?” experiment by C. Melissa Fender, and Lisa T. Stickney is an experiment that tests conformity in teamwork, and involves a worksheet with the state capitals. It compares individual work with the group work by why answers were given and the social scale of the students. The limitations of this experiment are that it does not tell you how old a child is in this experiment, so the results are more specific, thus assuming the person conducting the experiment is experimenting on one grade or one age group only. As well as that, it does not work well outside of the US, as they either have never been to America, or have not taken the time to study a encyclopaedia or atlas laboriously. The type of conformity can be placed as Internalisation because a child may not know exactly what the answer is, and seeks out the group for reassurance and knowledge, but can also be placed as Compliance based on the individual answers, and are only conforming because the rest of the group is. The child does not seek favour from others, nor do they seek some kind of status within the group.

Hypothesis:

In this experiment, I wanted to examine the effects of conformity in teamwork and whether it is beneficial to students. From the literature review above, it is hypothesised that conformity is not advantageous in group work. It is assumed that if the number of correct answers in the group work is lower than the amount of correct answers in their individual work, conformity in teamwork is not beneficial for students.

Methodology:

This experiment is based on “Is two heads better than one?” Some adaptations made included changing the questions from the fifty states, to twenty one flags. The reason for changing the states into flags is because Hong Kong is a very global city, and in our school the American flags are not part of the curriculum, while the flags of the world are covered. Flags are also more appropriate to this situation because it is uncertain how varied the knowledge among the participants is regarding the 50 states.

A range of students across multiple grades were chosen so that results of this experiment could be more generalised across different age groups. This would also show whether conforming behaviours exist in multiple age groups or not.

This experiment took place in 4 phases:

Phase 1: Introduction

Participants were greeted and given a brief overview of the experiment. Instructions to join Google Classroom were given. Expectations regarding google searching were also set in place.

Phase 2: Individual Task

Participants were given the worksheet of 21 flags and were given 5 minutes to complete it independently.

Phase 3: Group Task

Participants were then split into three groups and were given 15 minutes to fill in the same worksheet of 21 flags as a group.

Phase 4: Debrief Session

Students were given a questionnaire to fill in regarding their thoughts on the results as well as their group mate’s participation. Afterwards, a debrief session was given to explain the aim of the experiment.

Results:

Results from this experiment show that when students were working individually, their scores had a large range from 1 correct answer (by student B) to13 correct answers (by Student A). The group with student A had a relatively high score, with 14 out of 21. The group with the highest individual score was group three with 15.5 out of 21, and the group with the lowest score was group 1 with 4/21. In general, students were able to get the flag of the country in which they are residing in, or the country they are originally from. In the final analysis form, the students from group 1 and 2 both agree that their groups had little to none participation rates. People think that on a scale from 1-5, their individual work scored 2.5, and group work scored 3.1 on average. Group 1 had little to none participation, with the only talk being in the beginning where a student asked about the flag of italy. According to a participant from group 1, students ignored each other. Group 2 was extremely quiet, and participants were silently working on the group document by themselves. Group 3 was observably talkative, and one student took up a leadership position.

Discussion:

These results point towards the fact that conformity could be unhealthy in group work. When a student took up a leadership position, two students believed that their opinions were ignored. This could be due to the amount of children in the group, or simply because there wasn’t enough time for everybody to get to know each other enough to call on them for answers, or have a willingness to share an answer. Something to note was that in a student's individual work, they knew the answer to the Cote d'Ivoire flag, and yet in their group assignment, the question was left blank. Why this student decided to disclose information could be due to time constraints or other factors. Many students say that nobody contributed, and nobody talked at all. The reason for this could be that nobody knew each other, though in group 3, one said that the leader was a little bit bossy, and somewhat demanding. Most people felt negatively about their groups, and this could be attributed to the fact that they did not know each other, or had an unwillingness to participate because no one else would speak up. However, aside from these facts, the experiment does not give any evidence to sway the answers to or against conformity, and I am yet unsure of the reason why nobody talked in certain groups.

Limitations of this study:

There are many different limitations to this study. The first of which is the most important, and is the timeframe. This experiment was rushed and squeezed into a small frame of 30 minutes. This is a limitation because many parts of the experiment could have just been affected by time, and that there was not enough time for students to finish parts of the experiment fully. Another limitation includes the fact that one student was missing, and that student dropped the generalisation rate from a cross of 4 grades, to a mix of only 3. This is a limitation because there is not much generalisation, so we are really looking into one age group. There were an uneven number of students, and in one group only three students were in the meeting. This is a limitation because participation rates could have gone down because there were not many participants in a certain group, so communication was harder. There were also different age groups and knowledge levels, because some struggled over questions, while others took charge and answered most of the questions by themselves. As well as that, out of the 14 people who decided to participate, only 10 decided to fill out the questionnaire so the answers were through a short range of children. This is a limitation because we only have the thoughts and ideas of a few children, not the entire group. This means we can’t look at the full scope of things, and the opinions will only be from a few people, not the entire group. The final limitation is that only 2 people observed the experiment, which made it hard to focus on just one group.

Conclusion:

How does conformity influence group performance in a group activity or assignment? In this experiment, There is no clear evidence to support or disprove the hypothesis. If conformity existed within that experiment, it was minimal. However, as the reason why people never talked, or quietly agreed with the leader is unclear, conformity in teamwork cannot be ruled out either. To improve this experiment and to further investigate this hypothesis, then more observers will be needed so that more people can focus on certain groups instead of having to watch two at the same time. It would also be preferred that this experiment will take place on-site so that it is easier for people to have conversations, and there is no “mute button choice”. The time limit on this experiment could also be extended because thirty minutes is too short of a time to hold a social experiment like this.

Who was King Henry VIII?

King Henry VIII (born Henry Tudor) was the king of Britain, who reigned from 1509 to 1547. He was famous for the reformation of the Roman Catholic Church and establishing the Church of England. He is also known for his six marriages and his attempts for a male heir. He had many ambitions and was desperate to fulfill them.

Early Life

Henry Tudor was born in Greenwich, England, on 28 June, 1491. He was the second son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. He grew up with his mother and two sisters in Eltham, London. He also had an older brother, Arthur, who was the heir to the throne. Arthur lived in the court with his father, learning to be king while Henry lived at home, training for a church career.

A bright, charming and intelligent boy, Henry had the privilege to be taught by many great European scholars and theologians. He learned many languages and sports, such as archery, and practiced the recorder. Of all that he learned, Henry was taught to adore and respect Theology and Catholicism, as it was the main religion of the time and extremely important if Henry wanted to have a successful church career. One of his tutors was revered English poet laureate, John Skelton. He taught many important lessons to Henry, such as, “do not be mean,” “loathe gluttony,” and “do not violate widows.” Most of them were verses from the Bible, and the rules of the Church.

Henry’s Early Role

Henry's father, King Henry VII of England, strived for an alliance with Spain to strengthen the Tudor regime, as Spain had just become extremely powerful. He arranged for the marriage of Henry’s brother, Arthur, to Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon at the age of 15. This marriage successfully sealed the union between England and Spain and established England as one of the European powers of the time. In 1502, King Arthur died from an unexpected health issue, suddenly making Prince Henry the new heir to the throne. Henry, who had not been expected to become king, had to train for the role of being king very quickly and he did so admirably. Henry VII decided that Henry would marry Catherine to save the alliance with Spain. However, the canon law dictated that man was not allowed to marry his brother’s widow. Catherine and Henry were only able to marry after Catherine testified that her marriage with Arthur was not consummated, deeming the marriage to be, therefore, invalid.

Afterwards, Henry moved to the royal court and became next in line to the throne. However, tragedy struck. Just a few months later, Henry’s mother, whom he was very close to, died in childbirth. Meanwhile, Henry’s father, King Henry VII, became more and more suspicious of the people around him. He started levying heavy taxes and the nobility in England suffered. When Henry VII died, the people were quite happy. Not only was the tyrannical king gone, but his heir was the generous and popular King Henry VIII, at age 18. He was perceived to be intelligent, handsome, well-dressed and sporty and someone who knew how to have a good time.

King Henry VIII and his Military Conquests

One of King Henry’s political ambitions during his reign was to invade and conquer France for military power and land. In 1511, the pope Julius II waged a holy-war with France to remove the French from Italy and asked Henry to help him. Henry agreed. The English already held the French city of Calais. From there, Henry made a glorious victory at the Battle of Spurs, August, 1513. He took the French cities of Therouanne and Tournai. Word of his victories spread and Henry got his glory. Meanwhile, his wife, Catherine, also led victories in Scotland. Unfortunately, Henry ran out of money. As the French prepared to attack Italy, all Henry could do was go back home.

Cardinal Wolsey, one of Henry’s friends and Lord Chancellor, suggested Henry be a peace-maker if he couldn’t be a warrior. Thus, the Field of the Cloth of Gold was held, a peace treaty between England and France. However, it didn’t last long. There were three superpowers in Europe at that time. England, ruled by Henry VIII, France, ruled by King Francis I, and Spain, ruled by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Charles was Catherine of Aragon (Henry’s wife)'s nephew. Henry had given money to Charles to put down a Spanish rebellion a few years ago. Now they wanted to make an alliance. To seal the union, Henry organized a marriage between his daughter, Mary Tudor, age six and Charles V, age 22. Together, they decided to attack France together.

In 1522, the English landed and stormed as far south as Agincourt, but Charles didn’t commit significant forces. Charles promised to join next year. The next year, England swept Northern France, nearly taking over Paris but Charles failed to support England again. Charles promised again that he would join next year. The next year came; unfortunately, money was running out and this time, Henry decided not to engage in war. While these incidents strained the Spanish and English alliance, Charles successfully ravaged the French at the battle of Pavia and managed to capture the French king.

In 1544, Henry arrived in Calais to fight against the French one last time. The French had been supporting the Scottish in their wars with England, and they also owed Henry some money. So the king personally led a siege against the French city of Boulogne. On the 13th of September, the French surrendered resulting in a glorious victory for Henry. However, this conquest nearly bankrupted England and they gave back Boulogne to the French a few years later.

Henry never really succeeded in conquering France during his reign.