Valerie:
I hope you'll summarize and post any responses you get to your question; I
for one would like to see wht's out there.
Here's an article that I came across that adresses conformity to authority
vs. nonauthority:
Bregman, N. J., & McAllister, H. A. (1982). Eyewitness testimony: The role
of commitment in increasing reliability. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45,
181-184.
Participants who heard an "authority"; a supposed off-duty police
officer (actually a confederate) provide a speed approximation (of a
videotaped car) were more likely to change their own approximations than
those who heard no confederate. However, P's who had made a previous
commitment (had given prior written testimony) were resistant to
conformity.
Actually, here's the PsycINFO abstract information:
ACCESSION NUMBER
1983-10425-001
DOCUMENT TYPE
Journal-Article
TITLE
Eyewitness testimony: The role of commitment in increasing reliability.
AUTHOR
Bregman,-Norman-J.; McAllister,-Hunter-A.
SOURCE
Social-Psychology-Quarterly.1982 Sep; Vol 45(3): 181-184.
ISSN
0190-2725
PUBLICATION YEAR
1982
ABSTRACT
Investigated the role of commitment, conformity pressure, and source
credibility in eyewitness testimony. A videotaped auto accident was used
as the witnessed event. 80 undergraduates were employed in a 2 (commitment
vs no commitment) * 2 (conformity pressure vs no conformity pressure) * 2
(authority vs nonauthority) design. As expected, Ss who made a previous
commitment were able to resist the pressure to conform to speed estimates.
(10 ref) ((c) 1997 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved) .
Hope this is of some use to your student. Looking forward to reading your
replies.
- Max
On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Valerie Eastman wrote:
> I have a student who is doing a research project on conformity and so far has not
>found any research studies specifically related to her topic. She wants to see if
>people are more likely to conform to an obviously incorrect answer (similiar to
>Asch's study) if the source of information is an expert vs. a nonexpert. (She is
>looking to see if the participants change their answers; also if their confidence in
>their answers changes after talking to the expert/nonexpert.) Any help would be
>greatly appreciated. TIA
>
> Valerie J. Eastman, Ph.D.
> Dept. of Behavioral Sciences
> Drury College
> 900 N. Benton
> Springfield, Missouri 65802
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> phone: 417-873-7305
> fax: 417-873-6942
>
Maxwell Gwynn, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology (519) 884-0710 ext 3854
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 Canada
