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This study was an attempt to test the hypothesis that individuals with a high need for social approval will distort their judgments of objectively determinable stimuli in response to perceived group pressure more frequently than persons less concerned with social approval. A group atmosphere was simulated by means of a tape recording. Ss were presented with the conflicting demands of an unambiguous auditory stimulus and the unanimous reports of 3 preinstructed and prerecorded accomplices who gave inaccurate estimates. Conformity was the number of times the naive S gave the same incorrect response as the accomplices. Personality measures were the M-C Social Desirability scale (an index of need for social approval) and the Barron Independence of Judgment scale (a measure of conformity). Results indicated that Ss with a high need for social approval conform significantly more often than those Ss with a weaker approval need. Further, the Barron scale was found to be significantly related to behavior in the simulated conformity situation, lending support to this means of simulating group pressure (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

This study was an attempt to test the hypothesis that individuals with a high need for social approval will distort their judgments of objectively determinable stimuli in response to perceived group pressure more frequently than persons less concerned with social approval. A group atmosphere was simulated by means of a tape recording. Ss were presented with the conflicting demands of an unambiguous auditory stimulus and the unanimous reports of 3 preinstructed and prerecorded accomplices who gave inaccurate estimates. Conformity was the number of times the naive S gave the same incorrect response as the accomplices. Personality measures were the M-C Social Desirability scale (an index of need for social approval) and the Barron Independence of Judgment scale (a measure of conformity). Results indicated that Ss with a high need for social approval conform significantly more often than those Ss with a weaker approval need. Further, the Barron scale was found to be significantly related to behavior in the simulated conformity situation, lending support to this means of simulating group pressure (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)