Independent Behaviour

iINDEPENDENT BEHAVIOUR (12 MARK ESSAY) Some reasons people show signs of independent behaviour (i. e. do not conform or obey) is influence by many factors, Gender being one of them. Neto carried out the same study as Asch, but this time all the participants were female (as in Asch’s study they were all male). In Asch’s study he found that 37% of the participants conformed, whereas Neto found that 59% conformed. However Asch’s study was criticized for lacking ecological validity and Neto’s study is a replication of Asch.As the participants were not in a natural situation Linz and Semykina took data from a survey of over 2,600 Russian employees between 2000 and 2003. They found that men are more likely to have internal Locus of Control and a need for challenge and women more likely to exhibit external locus of control and need for affiliation (belonging to a group). High Internal females earned more than external women. The fact there is a large sample size of 2600 means the findings are reliable, good sample size.However it can be argued that there is a potential cultural bias as the data was only taken from Russian employees. When Asch debriefed his participants, he found a common factor of confidence in the people who hadn’t conformed if someone felt confident in their judgments; they were more able to resist group pressure. This idea is supported by Perin and Spencer’s study. They replicated Asch’s study with engineering students. Conformity levels were much lower. Perin and Spencer attributed this to the fact that engineers had confidence in their skills in making accurate observations.