types of conformity

• DEFINE CONFORMITY

  type of social influence where we chose to go along with the majority eg. peer pressure of fashion trends, we can do this publicly or privately
• COMPLIENCE

  • going along with others in public but not changing behaviour or opinions privately
  • superficial and temporary type of conformity
  • change in behaviour lasts as long as were in the presence of the group
• IDENTIFICATION

  • conforming to opinions of a group because membership of the group is desirable to us
  • moderate type of conformity
  • involves some private acceptance
  • usually temporary, not maintained when we leave the group
• INTERNALISATION

  • person genuinely adopting a groups opinion/ behaviour, we believe its right
  • true conformity
  • maintained even when we leave group, public and private acceptance
• AIM OF SHERIF

  • investigate whether people are influenced by others in a situation where the answer is not clear
• METHOD OF SHERIF

  • lab experiment, repeated measures
  • asked to estimate distance the spot of light moved, first individually then with a group where they spoke aloud
  • did this 7 times
• RESULTS OF SHERIF

  • answers converged and they gave more similar answers than their original
  • person whose estimate was greatly different conformed to the other people in the group
• SHERIFS CONCLUSION

  • people conformed to majority view
  • in ambiguous situation people are influenced by judgement of others
• ASCHS AIM

  • investigate whether people would conform to the majority in a situation where the answer was clearly wrong (unambiguous)
• ASCHS METHOD

  • male students, study on visual discrimination
  • group of 6-8 people, one naive person (participant) the rest were stooges or confederates
  • decide which line was same length as reference line, participant answered second to last
• ASCHS RESULTS

  • participants conformed 37% of the time
  • 25% - correct answer every time , no conformity
  • 75%- at least 1 wrong (conformed at least once)
  • 5%- incorrect every time (conformed every time)
• ASCHS CONCLUSIONS

  • people conform to the majority even in situations where the majority give a clearly wrong answer
• Main reason people complied in Asch

  • NSI, wanted to fit in despite knowing the others were wrong
  • more of the others so they must be right
• strength of Asch

  • lab experiment, high control over EV, more confident of cause and effect relationship and about conformity levels, high in internal validity