Types of Conformity

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eden

Cards (33)

Conformity
“ A change in behaviour or beliefs as a result of ‘real’ or ‘imagined’ group pressure “
Kelman (1958) identifies the following 3 types of conformity, going from weakest to strongest:
Compliance
Identification
Internalisation
Compliance
where a person publicly changes their behaviour and beliefs to fit that of a group and avoid disapproval.

However, privately, the person does not accept the behaviours and beliefs of the group; they just comply with them
Identification
it involves the person both publicly and privately changing their behaviour and beliefs to fit that of a group they want to be 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.
Internalisation
Where a person both publicly and privately changes their behaviour and beliefs to those of a group – but permanently.

Individuals who internalise beliefs and behaviours maintain those beliefs and behaviours even after leaving the social group.
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
People often conform simply because they don’t know what is the right thing to do so they look to others for guidance. It is about who has the better information
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
where a person conforms in order to be accepted and belong to a group. They do this because it is socially rewarding and/or to avoid social rejection.
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) explain why people conform by identifying 2 motivating forces:
Informational social influence
Normative social influence.
ISI is a cognitive process because it is what you think and can lead to permanent change.
Normative Social Influence usually causes:
Compliance
Informational Social Influence often causes:
'private acceptance' or internalisation
Strengths of explanations of conformity
Evidence to support Asch (1951)- interviewed participants who said they felt self-conscious and afraid of disapproval. When writing answers conformity dropped by 12.5%
Lucas et al (2006) participants more likely to conform when given a tough mathematical question. They did not want to be wrong.
Weaknesses of explanations of conformity
Individual differences : NSI does not predict conformity in every case. Some people care about what others thinks and more likely to conform compared to those that are not as concerned.
Sherif (1935) : Autokinetic Effect Experiment
tried to show that people conform to group norms when they're performing an ambiguous task.
Sherif (1935) : Autokinetic Effect Experiment Method
Participants were led to believe that someone was moving the light. They were asked to guess how far the light moved.
They were tested in three phases.
Phase 1 - Participants made guesses individually.
Phase 2 - Participants made guesses in groups of three.
Phase 3 - Participants made guesses individually.
Sherif (1935) : Autokinetic Effect Experiment Results
In phase 1, individual guesses varied a lot (by 20cm - 80cm).
In phase 2, participant's guesses tended to converge to a common estimate.
In phase 3, individuals made guesses closer to the common group estimates than their initial estimates.
Sherif (1935) : Autokinetic Effect Experiment Conclusion
The experiment showed that people look to others for guidance when they face ambiguous situations (like the autokinetic effect).
When people don't have all the information they need, they look to others for information (ISI)
Autokinetic Effect
This is where a dot of light is projected onto a screen in a dark room.
The light appears to move even though it's not moving.
The dot appearing to move is a visual illusion.
Weaknesses of Sherif's Auto-kinetic Effect
Deception - participants believed the stationary light was moving.
Narrow sample - only males participated. This reduces the generalisability of the results.
Artificial situation - participants made estimates about the movement of a stationary light. This is not a natural situation, so the experiment has low ecological validity (it cannot be generalised well to real-life situations).
Asch (1951)
Conducted an experiment looking at normative social influence.
He wanted to see if people would conform to a group's wrong answer even if the answer was unambiguous.
Asch (1951): Method
A group of participants were shown a series of printed line segments of different lengths: a, b, and c, and then a fourth line segment: x.
They were asked to identify which line segment from the first group most closely resembled the length of line segment x.
Each group of participants had only one true, naïve subject. The remaining members of the group were confederates of the researcher.
Asch's Baseline Study Results
On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials.
74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial
26% of the participants never conformed.
Variations of Asch's study:
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
Group Size
Wanted to know if the size of the group was more important than the agreement of the group
Asch found with three confederates' conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
Addition of further confederates made little difference
2. Unanimity
Asch wanted to test of the present of another non conforming person would affect the naïve participants conformity
Found that the presence of a dissenting confederate reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous
The influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous
3. Task Difficulty

He made the line judging task more difficult by making the stimulus and comparison line more similar
He found conformity increased under these conditions
Suggesting informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder
Weaknesses of Asch's Study
Biased sample: 50 American male students for Swarthmore College. Therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations
Low ecological validity: line judgement task is deemed as an artificial task which doesn't reflect conformity in everyday life
Ethical guidelines: broke several including: deception and protection from harm as he deliberately deceived participants saying they were taking part in a vision test
Strengths of Asch's Study
Reliable: procedure was controlled w/ standardised instructions, same behaviour from the confederates and researchers, unambiguous task means that they aren't accidentally testing something else.
Application: It can be applied to the past to explain the behaviours of conformists in Nazi Germany.
Research to support Asch's study
Lucas et al (2006) asked ppts to solve hard and easy math problems. Ppts were given answers from confederates and conformed more often to the wrong answer when the problem were harder. (supports task difficulty)
Strengths of NSI
Research support for Normative Social Influence - Asch (1951) did a study in which the participants wrote down their answers instead of speaking aloud. Conformity fell to 12.5% suggesting people conform to fit in.
Strengths of ISI
Research support: Lucas et al (2006) study found conformity rose when problems were more difficult as they could not rely on their own capabilities to support their answer, so looked to others for help and relied on the wrong answers given by confederates
Weaknesses of NSI
Individual differences: it does not always predict conformity. Some people (“nAffiliators”) want to relate to others and be included in the group. NSI is more prevalent in some individuals than in others, which makes them more likely to conform due to NSI than others.
Countering support for ISI
Its unclear whether ISI or NSI are occurring in Asch and Lucas’ studies. It is hard to separate NSI and ISI as in many situations, both work together.