TYPES AND EXPLANATIONS OF CONFORMITY

• Conformity is a type of social influence that involves changing beliefs or behaviours to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined social pressure
• Compliance - 'Going along with others' in public, but internally or privately, not changing personal opinions - this results in only a superficial change and stops when the group pressure stops
• Identification - a person changes their public behaviour and private beliefs, but only while they are in the groups presence. This is usually a short-term change and the result of normative social influence.
• Internalisation - when a person genuinely accepts the group norms, both in public and private e.g. Jenny lives with vegetarians at uni and she accepts eating meat is wrong. This continues even after she leaves the group
• Deutsh & Gerard (1955) developed a two-process theory as to why people conform:

  • Informational social influence
  • Normative social influence
• Informational social influence (ISI) argues that you conform because you want to be right. This occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure how to behave.
• Normative social influence (NSI) argues that you conform because you want to be liked. This occurs when we want to be liked by a majority group.We go along with them even though we may disagree with them. This is just following the crowd to fit in.