types of conformity

• Kelman (1958) identifies the following 3 types of conformity, going from weakest to strongest
• Compliance- compliance is weakest type of conformity, where a person publicly changes their behaviour and beliefs to fit that of a group and avoid disaproval
• compliance- privately, the person does not accept the behaviours and beliefs of the group- they just comply with them
• identification- stronger type of conformity than compliance because it involves the person both publicly and privately changing their behaviour and beliefs to fit that of a group that they want to be a part of. However, the person only identifies with these beliefs as long as they are associated with the group - upon leaving the group, the original behaviours and beliefs return. An example of identification would be adopting the same music and fashion tastes as your friend group but when you leave the group you revert to your old fashion sense and music taste
• compliance- shallowest form of conformity, temporary, only with group, due to normative social influence
• identification- intermediate conformity, may or may not privately agree, desire to be associated with the group, social identity- sense of value
• internalisation- deepest level of conformity, both publicly and privately agree, permenant change, continues when group is not present, due to ISI
• normative social influence- the desire to gain approval by a group, one explanation for conformity, to avoid rejection due to real or imagined pressure from a group
• the reason why we conform in normative social influence is for an emotional response
• normative social influence- temporary compliance
• informational social influence- ambiguous situations, the belief that others are more knowledgeable, cognitive process of thinking
• asch- overall percentage of people who conformed at least once, 75%, and conformity rate overall in the clinical trials being 32%, Asch's findings support NSI, if they are correct we can use the study as an evaluation, conformed for social approval to an obvious unambiguous task,
• group size asch- conformity increase, task difficulty- increase, unanimity- decreased
• counter research to Asch- perrin and spencer- (1981) argue that Asch research lacks temporal validity as the high levels of conformity may have been to a 1950s cold war america, in their 1980s replication with british students, they found conformity in one trial out of 396, they therefore suggested that societal changes, including a possible shift towards more individualistic values might explain the lower rates of conformity they observed
• Aschs study lacks mundane realism- in real life instances of conformity it would be more likely to be around people we know well such as friends or family due to NSI, Asch's study was in a room full of strangers so this may be a limitation as we are not able to apply this to real life, also the topic of a line matching task is not reflective of anything in real life as well