Explanations of Conformity

• Normative Social Influence - Copying another persons/groups behaviour because we want to be liked or accepted by others
• Informational social influence - copying another persons/groups behaviour because they have more knowledge or understanding of a situation
• Research support for NSI (Asch's line study) - after interviewing his participants, some said that they conformed because felt self-conscious giving the right answer and were afraid of disapproval
• Research support for ISI (Lucas et al Maths problem) - found that participants conformed often to incorrect answers when the maths problems were difficult. Since the situation became ambiguous, the participants did not want to be wrong and copied the answers from what they believed to be correct. This shows that ISI is a valid explanation of conformity as the results is what ISI explains