Is there a correlation between Autism and Conformity?
Comformity
Considerations (ethics and sampling)
Variables
Research investigations options
3 types of conformity
Internalization
Identification
Compliance
Alters behaviour for praise/group membership (Public, though secret disagreement)
Change opinion&behaviour as they convert fully (Not dependent on group)
Accept social influence to avoid disapproval (only with group)
Delphi Technique (Interviewing an expert in the field, or a small group of experts. Good for long, in-depth answers and Qualitative data, bad for Quantitative data and slow response time)
Why do people conform?
Informational Conformity: people may conform in order to learn what to do in different situations. They tend to engage in informational conformity when lacking knowledge, and may change behaviour to avoid looking foolish.
Conformity is the tendency to change behaviour/match or align with the behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes of other people. (Cherry, K. (2022). What Is Conformity? [online] Explore Psychology. Available at: https://www.explorepsychology.com/conformity/. )
Normative Conformity: They may conform to avoid being singled out for standing against the flow. May engage to avoid punishment, ridicule, or exclusion. May also conform in order to get a specific person to like them.
Age
Basic Factors:
Personal characteristics, situational factors, group size, status, belongingness, cultural influences, difficulty level.
Possible research topics?
Affect of Autism on conformity?
Observational (Good for finding results in natural setting so higher external validity, though can have observer bias)
Who, what ,when, where, why??
What's the control factor
Sample size
Method
Who
What
When
Why
IQ
Mental wellbeing
Sex
Gender
Peer pressure
Sleep levels
Neurodivergence/Neurotypical
ETHICS
Informed consent
Possible debriefing
Confidentiality
To discover correlation of Autism and Conformity
Accurate reporting of information
Voluntary participation
Experimental (using a control group and experimental group to find relationship between independent and dependent variable. Good for reliability and internal validity, need high control over extraneous variables and participants may cause bias)
Survey people (similar to the survey in class, but ask if participants are Autistic and seperate data sets based on that)
Autistic and neurotypical teens
Within the span of a week
Survey
Background research on Autism and Conformity
.
Autistic individuals are as likely to alter their judgements than Neurotypicals. (Lazzaro, S.C., Weidinger, L., Cooper, R.A., Baron-Cohen, S., Moutsiana, C. and Sharot, T. (2018). Social Conformity in Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), pp.1304–1315. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3809-1.).
A study similar to a classic Asch conformity study was conducted with two groups of 15 neurotypical children and 15 autistic children. In each trial the child had to state which of three lines matched in length. On some trials children were mislead about the answer. The study found that autistic children were much less likely to conform in the misleading situation than neurotypicals. Yafai, A.-F., Verrier, D. and Reidy, L. (2013). Social conformity and autism spectrum disorder: A child-friendly take on a classic study. Autism, 18(8), pp.1007–1013. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361313508023.
Withdrawal rights
In a study conducted on conformity 22 autistic participants and 22 neurotypical participants completed a memory test of previously seen words and were then exposed to answers supposedly given by four other people.Both autistic and neurotypical participants were both as likely to alter their answer to align with inaccurate group members. This suggests that autistic adults conform as much as neurotypicals. Lazzaro, S.C., Weidinger, L., Cooper, R.A., Baron-Cohen, S., Moutsiana, C. and Sharot, T. (2018). Social Conformity in Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), pp.1304–1315. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3809-1.