Conformity

• Conformity 


  a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people (social environment)
• Types of Conformity

  • identification
  • compliance
  • internalisation
• Compliance

  • going along with others in public
  • private beliefs do not change
  • results in a superficial change
  • behaviour stops when group pressure is gone
• Internalisation

  • occurs when a person genuinely agrees with the groups norms
  • private beliefs change as well as public beliefs/behaviour
  • permanent change as beliefs have been internalised
• Identification

  • conforming because there is something that we value about a group
  • private beliefs may not change but can
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) - Explanations for conformity

  • two-process theory
  • normative social influence (NSI)
  • informational social influence (ISI)
• Normative social influence (NSI)

  • what are the 'norms' / typical behaviour of a group
  • emotional instead of cognitive
  • usually leads to compliance
• Informational social influence (ISI)

  • who has the better information?
  • cognitive process - what do we think?
  • most likely to happen when in new situations - we don't know what is right - ambiguity
  • leads to internalisation - permanent change
• Strength of NSI

  • evidence to support it as an explanation of conformity
  • Asch - people wanted to agree with the group even if they personally knew the answer
• Limitations of NSI

  • Individual differences
  • some people are greatly concerned with being liked by others (nAffiliators)
• Strengths of ISI

  • Research support for ISI as an explanation for conformity
  • Lucas et al. - hard maths questions, people conformed more than when questions were easy
• Limitations of ISI

  • some situations are unclear as to whether it is NSI or ISI
• Asch (1951)

  • aim - assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others
  • baseline - later studies are compared to this one
• Asch - procedure

  • 123 American men
  • in groups of 8
  • 1 naive participant, 7 confederates
  • asked to compare lines

  
• Asch (1955) - Variables affecting conformity

  • group size
  • task difficulty
  • unanimity
• Group size

  • curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity
  • tested groups of 2-16
  • conformity rates increases up to 3 people and then it levels off
• Unanimity

  • when there is the presence of a non-conforming confederate
  • when there was a non-conforming confed. conformity rates decreased - felt free to give opinion
• Task difficulty

  • made the lines more similar in size
  • conformity increased
  • ISI - people conformed as they didnt trust their own mind
• Asch's Baseline Findings

  • participants conformed to incorrect confeds. on average 36.8% of the time
  • individual differences - 25% never conformed
• Limitations of Asch's study

  • artificial task - the task lacked mundane realism - cannot generalise to the real world
  • Limited application due to population validity - all male participants
  • Individual factors e.g. confidence affects conformity - shown in Lucas et al. (2006) - people who were confident in maths were less likely to conform
• Strengths of Asch's Baseline study

  • support from other studies