| dc.description.abstract | The general purpose of the study was to determine what relationships, if any, exist between conformity in social, authoritarian and religious situations on the one hand and field dependence versus field independence in spatial perception on the other. The individual's mode of spatial perception was determined by his mean score derived from 18 trials on the standard tilting-frame, tilting-chair apparatus. The score on each trial was the number of degrees, to the nearest 1º , by which the subject's setting of the rod deviated from the true vertical. The 18 trials were divided into four sub-categories, based on the rod, frame and chair positions at the beginning of each trial, in order to test the supplementary hypothesis that only certain types of rod-setting trials would effectively discriminate between field dependent and field independent perceivers. Mean scores for each sub-category were found for each subject. Since males and females differ significantly on the rod-setting task, they were handled as two separate populations each in turn being divided into two matched sub-groups, "peer" and ''authoritarian," on the basis of rod-setting scores. Three conformity measures were obtained next. Religious conformity was measured by the Religious Conventionalism Scale of the TAP Social Attitude Battery. Measures of conformity to social peers and authoritarian figures were obtained in the actual social situations involving the determination of the degree to which a subject's judgments of the length of lines were influenced by incorrect judgments made by peers (other undergraduates) or authority figures (graduate students). All 120 subjects (59 female and 61 male) took the TAP; they were divided into two groups, one undergoing "peer" pressure and the other subjected to "authoritarian" pressure, in order to obtain measures of social. conformity. To obtain an individual's conformity score, he first estimated line lengths independently. Several weeks later he made the same type of judgment, however, in this case the judgment he made on each line followed the orally given incorrect judgments of his respective social group. If the subject's second judgment was closer to the group mean of false judgments than his original estimate, his score on the item was plus the amount of the difference; if it was further from the group, the item score was minus the amount of the difference. A single score for each subject was obtained by summing, with regard to sign, the individual item scores. Evidence bearing upon the primary hypothesis and the supplementary hypothesis was obtained by correlating each of the three conformity measures with the mean scores on the 18 rod-setting trials and also with the four sub-categories of trials. This evidence gave support to the primary hypothesis. For both males and females, the correlations between religious conformity and field dependency were significant at the .01 level; however, some of the correlations found by using the sub-categories of the rod-and-frame task were either significant at only the .05 level or non-significant. With regard to conformity in social group situations, the total mean score of the 18 rod-setting trials and the four sub-category scores were correlated with the summed difference scores on the line length judgment task. The resulting correlations were significant at the .01 level when the complete series of rod-setting trials was used in the computations. For the most part, the correlations were reduced (in some cases to below the level of statistical significance) when the conformity measures were correlated with the scores obtained from sub-categories of the perceptual task. A secondary hypothesis was added which stated that there was a progressive increase in the degree of relationship between field dependent perception and the three measures of conformity. The results obtained from female subjects were in line with this hypothesis; for the male subjects, however, the hypothesis was not supported. | |
