Doing what the mob do: priming effects on conformity

This study considered whether participants' tendency to conform to a group norm could be influenced by priming them with categories associated with ei ther conformity or anarchy. Participants were primed with one of two catego ries: 'accountant prime', 'punk prime' (plus a baseline 'no prime'). They t hen participated in a variant of the Asch (1951) conformity paradigm. Resul ts indicated that 'punk'-primed participants conformed significantly less t han did 'accountant'-primed participants, with the mean for the 'no-prime' condition lying in between the two. 'Accountant'-primed participants confor med to the group norm more than did the 'no-prime' participants. In additio n, the performance of 'punk'-primed participants was comparable to that of participants who performed the judgment task in isolation ('solo' condition ). This indicates that conformity pressures did not affect estimates for 'p unk'-primed participants. Implications of these findings are discussed. Cop yright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.