在记忆力作业上共同利益与性别环境对从众行为的影响

The Impacts of Common Interests and Single-Sex Situation on the Conformity Behavior of False-Memory Test

摘要: 从众(conformity)是一项相当普遍的社会行为。在团体组织进行讨论决策时，从众行为常会默默地发生。而传统性别刻板印象中，普遍认为女性是较为从众的群体，男性则较不会，故本研究探讨从众行为在女性群体中的表现。其中，本研究探讨的变项之一，即是在不同性别环境下，女性从众行为会如何增减？是否会受到周围异性影响而增强或削弱从众行为；此外，本研究亦好奇是否存在其他使人更从众的因素如——“共同利益(common interests)”，藉此探讨在有共同利益影响下的环境，女性是否会更从众。本研究采取2(性别情境：单一性别 vs. 混合性别) × 2(利益：共同利益 vs. 无共同利益)的完全独立样本实验设计，并以中山医学大学的女大学生为研究对象(N = 80)，同时，采用错误记忆作业(false-memory task)为研究工具，并已于前置作业(pilot study)中验证此作业适用于测量从众行为，进而在正式研究中以此作为测量从众行为之工具。正式研究(main experiment)中发现，女性参与者在单一性别环境中比混合性别环境来得从众的(p < 0.05)；然而，有无共同利益及两变项间的交互作用均未达显着差异。进一步分析发现，从众行为在男女各半的性别环境比在混合性别环境少，单一性别环境下从众行为的比率最高。其他详细内容与结果请参见本文。

Abstract:  Conformity is a common social behavior that occurs during a decision-making situation. Women seem to be more likely to implement conformity behaviors than men. The main purpose of this research is to investigate how conformity manifests in female group. That is, to explore how female conformity behavior would alter when the sex of the people who they interact with is varied; as well as the effect of opposite sex on female conformity behavior. One supposed that “common interests” might strengthen the effect of conformity behavior in female, which set up another research interest that one would like to explore in this study. Our aim is to examine the situations that can provoke or eliminate conformity behaviors. In this study, 2 gender situations (single-sex vs. mixed-sex) × 2 common interests (presence vs. absence) were conducted. Participants are 80 female college students in Chung Shan Medical University (N = 80). In the meanwhile, false-memory task was employed, in which the pilot study had already confirmed it as an appropriate tool to measure conformity behaviors. As a result, the participants showed a greater use of conformity behavior when presenting in a single-sex situation, as compared with a mixed gender environment (p < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference showed at the situations with or without the presence of “common interests”; as well, the two variables had no interaction effects. Further analysis interestingly found that: conformity behaviors were less likely to occur when participants were situated in the group where genders were evenly divided. The highest rate of conformity was found when one was in single-sex situation. More details and discussion are in the article.