Bond and Smith (1996) Cultural factors in conformity.Pooja Punja

Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the sociocultural

level of analysis. Meta analysis

• A combination of the results of several studies that address a similar or shared research hypothesis.• A meta-analysis summarises data from

individual studies that concern a specific research question.• Meta-analyses can be used to check whether

results of a study are universal or confined to one particular culture.

Meta-Analysis

• A type of social influence where people alter their behavior, attitudes and beliefs to perceived group and cultural norms.• According to:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html#def• Conformity is a type of social influence involving a

change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group.

Conformity

• Found that psychology is ethnocentric (western centred)• They reviewed textbooks and found that only 10% of the

world is sampled in psychological research.• Reviewed 31 conformity studies.• Found that:

• that levels of conformity—that is, the percentage of incorrect responses—ranged from 14 per cent among Belgian students to 58 per cent among Indian teachers in Fiji, with an average of 31.2 per cent.

• Conformity was found to be lower among participants from individualistic cultures (North America and North West Europe = 25.3%)

• Found that the higher your score on Hoefstede’s collectivism scale the more likely you are to conform.

Bond and Smith (1996)

• Effectively use meta-analysis on research studies from all around the globe, including Fiji, Belgium, France, USA, Canada, Zimbabwe and Lebanon.• Study shows that different areas have different

conformity rates: • This can help while trying to explain how some cultures

function and their social norms.

• America was overrepresented in the meta-analysis therefore resulting in a low generalizability.• There is no cause and effect relationship but a

correlation.

Evaluation of Bond & Smith (1996)

• There is a criteria used to evaluate the validity of the Meta-Analysis. According to:http://omerad.msu.edu/ebm/Meta-analysis/Meta5.html

• 1. Did the authors ask a focused clinical question?• 2. Were the criteria used to select articles for inclusion

appropriate?• 3. Is it unlikely that important, relevant studies were missed?• 4. Was the validity of the included studies appraised (study

quality)?• 5. Were assessments of studies reproducible (data abstraction)?• 6. Were the results similar from study to study (homogeneity)?

• Ethics is also considered with generalizability and ecological validity.

Evaluation of meta-analysis

Electronic sourceBond, R. &. S. P. B., 1996. Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch's,

Sussex: Psychological Bulletin.Leung, S., 2012. ib psych notes. [Online]

Available at: http://ibpsychnotes.com/scloa-lo/lo3/[Accessed 26 october 2013].

McLeod, Saul , 2007. Simply Psychology. [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html#def[Accessed 29 october 2013].

Neill, J., 2006. Wilderdom. [Online] Available at: http://www.wilderdom.com/research/meta-analysis.html[Accessed 29 october 2013].

OMERAD, 1998. OMERAD. [Online] Available at: http://omerad.msu.edu/ebm/Meta-analysis/Meta5.html [Accessed 28 october 2013].

Unknown, 2005. PsychWiki.com. [Online] Available at: http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Meta-analysis[Accessed 27 october 2013].

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