Personality patterns, source attractiveness, and conformity.

There has been a concerted attempt on the part of personality theorists to develop systems in which behavior is analyzed as a joint function of the particular stimulus conditions under which the individual operates and intrapersonal variables. In the present experiment, the predictions concern interactions between intrapersonal variables and the experimentally contrived situation in which the individual is placed. The intrapersonal variables in this case refer to processes that mediate the detection and interpretation ion of interpersonal disagreement. Previous studies have used the conformity situation to create circumstances of interpersonal disagreement. In one, for example, subject (S) was required to report how many metronome clicks he heard after having been exposed to a set of spurious judgments reported by other members of the group. Among those subjects who yielded to the group judgment, two discrete patterns of yielding were noted. In one case, S yielded whenever large differences in judgment were evident, because he wanted to avoid alienating himself from the group S also revealed in another situation that his self evaluation was markedly influenced by how much he liked the person who disagreed with him.