conformity

• Conformity - when a person changes their opinions or behaviour as a result of pressure from another person or group. This pressure can be real or imagined
• Kellman identified 3 types of conformity: compliance, identification, and internalisation
• Compliance - changing behaviour to fit in with the group. They may not agree with the behaviour, but they go along with it in public
• compliance is not permanent
• internalisation - permanent change in behaviours and attitudes become way of thinking
• identification - conforming to a role or to fit in with a group e.g police. Public and private change when in the role
• identification is temporary conformity. not permanent
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) suggested people conform because of 2 basic human needs: to be right and to be liked
• informational social influence (ISI) is when people conform to be correct
• ISI is more common in ambiguous/unclear situations or when a task is hard
• Normative social influence (NSI) is when people conform to be accepted by the group, gain social approval and be liked
• NSI can happen around strangers and people you know
• Lucas et al asked students to give answers to maths problems that were easy or more difficult and found greater conformity to incorrect answers when the questions were difficult. This supports ISI
• NSI does not affect everyone’s behaviour in the same way
• some people who are less concerned with being liked, will be less susceptible to NSI, but other people have a greater need for affiliation
• McGhee and Teevan (1967) found students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform. This shows the desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others. Therefore there are individual differences in the way people respond
• Deutsch and Gerard proposed behaviour is either due to NSI or ISI but a more plausible explanation is that ISI and NSI work together
• conformity is reduced when there is a dissenter in the Asch experiment because it may reduce NSI as they provide social support, and reduce ISI, as there is an alternative source of information