Conformity Investigation
Aim
The main aim of this investigation that will be carried out is to look into how students at school conform to the ‘social norms’ in the school society and how conformity affects people’s potential double sided personality or behaviour.
It will have to be a longitudinal study that takes place over a period of around 2-4 weeks to ensure that we are not making assumptions about certain people’s behaviour, this way we can get a real insight into the evidence and see whether or not people are constantly conforming to certain factors/variables, and not just if it is conforming for one day, which is why more evidence needs to be collected, hence a longitudinal study is best.
Variables
The dependent variable is some sort of way of measuring the conformity, and so the DV in this investigation will be pure observation of a ‘before and after’. However, the evident limitations with observing, is that I would have to get informed consent, however, if the participant is aware that an observation for an investigation is being made, then this can lead to demand characteristics where they act in the way they believe the observer wants them to behave. By 'before' it means that an observation will be made when they are alone or with perhaps one other person, and see if they conform to any sort of behaviour then, and then an observation will be made after whilst they are in a group of friends, and see if they show signs of conformity here. This will then be repeated over