Conformity: types and explanations

• What does conformity mean?

  Change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real/imagined pressure from a person/group of people.
• What are the 3 types of conformity?

  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• What does compliance mean?

  Going along with the demand even if you don’t agree with it in order to achieve awards or avoid punishment

  • Public behaviour changes but private doesn’t
• What does identification mean?

  Acting the same way as the group because they value it and want to be a part of it in order to be accepted

  • Public behaviour changes but private behaviour only changes when they value something about the group
• What does internalisation mean?

  Genuinely accepting the group’s norms and think that they are right in order to be right

  • Public and private behaviour changes
• What are the 2 reasons why people conform?

  • Informational social influence (ISI)
  • Normative social influence (NSI)

  
• What is a strength of explanations of conformity?

  Research support for NSI

  • Asch found that many participants conformed rather than giving the correct answer because they were afraid of disapproval – when participants wrote down answers instead of calling them out, conformity fell to 12.5% = conformity is due to a desire not to be rejected by a group for disagreeing with them
• What is the counter argument for 'research support for NSI' of explanations of conformity?

  He only tested on American male students, suggesting that this research support may only apply to a specific group of people, rather than the overall explanation
• What is a strength of explanations of conformity?

  Research support for ISI

  • Lucas et al found participants conformed more to incorrect answers when maths problems were difficult – for harder problems, the situation was ambiguous, so they relied on the answer they were given (they wanted to be right)
• What is a limitation of explanations of conformity?


  Individual differences in NSI

  • Some people are more concerned about being liked by others – nAffiliators have a strong need for affiliation (need to relate to other people). McGhee and Teevan found students who were nAffiliators were more likely to conform = explanation lacks generalisability