KWEK MEI YINPSYCHOLOGY2018-09-112018-09-112018-04-13KWEK MEI YIN (2018-04-13). GRATITUDE AND CONFORMITY: DOES GRATITUDE INCREASE CONFORMITY TO GROUP PREJUDICIAL NORMS?. ScholarBank@NUS Repository.https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/147141The social alignment function of gratitude, established by Ng et al. (2016) claims that grateful individuals conform more to social norms. The present paper proposes that there are boundaries to the social alignment function of gratitude, specifically that its effect are limited by the prosociality and source of social norms (in/out-group) that individuals take reference from. The study seeks to examine this by investigating social conformity to prejudicial norms. It predicts that grateful individuals will display a higher magnitude of conformity to prosocial norms that come from an in-group. Participants first, went through a recall task to elicit feelings of gratitude. After which, a ‘profiling’ test was conducted to assign participants in either an in/out-group. To measure participants’ conformity to prejudicial norms, participants had to give hot/cold ratings to occupation groups presented on the computer screen, while being exposed to high and low ratings given by fake ‘participants’. Due to limitations of the study, the results did not support the hypothesis. However, significant effects of prosocial/antisocial norms and in-group/out-group membership on conformity to prejudicial norms were found. Thus, the study supported that these effects are indeed prevalent and remain important considerations for future studies on gratitude and conformity.gratitude, conformity, group, prosociality, prejudiceThesis