Conformity - Types and explanations

• What is conformity?

  A change in behaviour or opinions due to real or imagined pressure from a person.
• Types of conformity? (Kelman 1958)


  Compliance, identification and internalisation
• What is compliance?- Type

  conforming publicly to get approval/avoid disapproval but continuing to privately disagree. E.g, Ben not eating meat in front of vegetarian friends, but eats meat in private.
• What is identification?- Type

  We act the same as a group and share their values publicly and privately. This is temporary and stops when the person is no longer part of the group. E.g, someone else decides to stops eating meat as they agree with vegetarians but eat meat when at home for Christmas
• What is internalisation?- Type

  A person conforms publicly and privately because they internalise the views of the group. This is permanent and will exist even when the person is no longer a part of the group. E.g, person may become vegetarian after sharing flat with vegetarians and are now convinced by it and is vegetarian for the rest of their life
• What are the explanations of conformity? - Deutsch and Gerard 1955

  informational social influence and normative social influence
• What is informational social influence? - explanations

  We agree with opinion of the majority because we believe it's correct . We accept it because we want it to be correct. This may lead to internalisation. Most likely in: new situations, ambiguous situations, when there is an expert present and when there is a crisis and a decision has to be made quickly.
• Strength

  US research showed relationships between normative beliefs and likelihood of smoking. Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) found adolescents exposed to a message that majority of their age group didn't smoke were subsequently less likely to start smoking. Normative social influence also used to encourage responsibility to environment. e.g, schultz et al found hotel guests exposed to normative message that 75% guests reduce towels reduce theirs by 25%. Supports NSI
• Weakness

  Relationship between compliance and internalisation is complicated by how we measure public and private acceptance. Assumed person who publicly agrees but privately demonstrated by compliance. It is is possible they accepted in public but dissipates in private due to forgetting. This would be public and in private and is therefore internalisation. Therefore, may have just been complying in public, but because of self perception that they agreed they might subsequently accept that position as their own.
• Strength

  Research to support informational social influence. Lucas et al asked participants to answer maths questions ranging in difficulty and found greater conformity for more difficult. They looked to someone they thought had greater knowledge. This supports ISI.
• Weakness

  Dual process theory is out of date. developed in the 1950s when society used to be more conformist (McCarthyism). May need more reviewing. Lacks temporal validity and explanation may not be generalisable to todays society.