Conformity: Factors and Mori–Arai
Apply individual, situational and cultural influences and analyse the prescribed Mori and Arai study.
How to study Higher Psychology
Build each answer from accurate psychological knowledge, named evidence, application to behaviour, analysis and justified evaluation.
Core concepts
Concept 1
gender and self-esteem
Exam cue: Explain the mechanism connecting each factor to conformity.
Concept 2
group size, unanimity and task difficulty
Exam cue: Use Mori and Arai’s no-confederate procedure accurately.
Concept 3
collectivist and individualistic cultures
Exam cue: Avoid assuming a group difference explains every individual.
Concept 4
Mori and Arai’s aims, method, results, evaluation and conclusions
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Treating culture or gender as deterministic.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Saying larger groups always produce unlimited increases in conformity.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Attributing Mori and Arai’s results to Asch’s original confederates.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Memory anchors
Unanimity
A dissenter can reduce pressure to conform by breaking agreement in the majority.
Task difficulty
Greater uncertainty can increase informational influence.
Group size
Conformity may rise with a larger majority, but the relationship is not unlimited.
Self-esteem
Self-evaluation may affect confidence in resisting group pressure.
Cultural factor
Collectivist and individualistic norms can shape the value placed on group agreement.
Mori–Arai feature
Special visual materials reproduced an Asch-type task without using confederates.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
How does group unanimity generally affect conformity?
What often happens when one person breaks a majority's unanimity?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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