Effects of Peer Conformity on Students' Recognition Judgment: An Experimental Study in a Philippine University

Identifying how peer conformity can influence group-related tasks continues to be a relevant topic in cognitive psychology. This study explores the effects of peer conformity on students’ recognition judgment by allowing the students to engage in a simple task that requires memorization and verbal recitation. A quantitative within-subject experiment was employed, involving 22 participants from the first-year BA Psychology students at the University of Perpetual Help System Dalta-Molino. All participants were exposed to both task conditions and completed a memory-related task to assess if a participant's recognition judgment was affected by peer conformity. Descriptive statistics and inferential analysis, including paired t-tests and effect size computation, were used to differentiate recognition judgment. From the results, the controlled and experimental groups and individuals yielded p-values below .05, suggesting that the data for these pairs deviate from normal distribution. Additionally, the effect size of both comparisons is small, alluding to the fact that the magnitude of differences between conditions is trivial. Inferential statistics confirmed that there is no significant effect on the recognition judgment under the influences of peer conformity, implying that students can retain recognition judgment despite being in a group setting. Overall, the study highlights that peer conformity can appear in group conditions, however, it is not guaranteed.