Conformity

• Social influence


  The influence of other people on our everyday thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
• Conformity


  • Outcome of social influence
  • The change in beliefs, opinions, and behaviors as a result of our perceptions about what other people believe or do
  • The change to match the attitudes and behaviors of the people around us
  • Important for people's adaptation
  • Determined by the person-situation interaction
• Conformity


  • Cognitive goals: Forming accurate knowledge about the world, Other people have info we do not hence, we rely on norms
  • Affective process: We want to be liked and accepted by others
• Types of conformity


  • Simple and Unconscious imitation to the people around us
  • Obedience created by powerful people
• Normative influence


  Go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them, Motivated not to be a target of criticism, camaraderie, and compliments
• Informational influence


  We rely on descriptive norms to determine what society expects of us, We often have an information gap about where we are situated, We sometimes rely on flawed assumptions (misperceived norms/descriptive norm info)
• Obedience


  Directed by a more powerful person to do things we may not want to do, Leads to disturbing implications of our capability to behave under the right circumstances
• Seeing others refuse to obey and interacting with others diminishes the authoritative influence on our behavior
• Factors to refusal to obedience


  • Compassion
  • Ethics
  • Recognition of problematic situation
• Social group


  • Set of individuals with a shared purpose and who normally share a positive social identity
  • Dyad or set of people interacting and influencing one another over a period of time
• Sociometer model


  Indicator of acceptance into groups and not just on personal value
• Nearly all human activities are performed in groups because of their gregarious nature
• Autonomous individuals seeking their own pursuits are constrained by our group's collective desire
• Reasons for joining a group


  • Satisfy our need to belong, seek inclusion, membership or acceptance over exclusion/isolation/rejection
  • Gain info and understanding through social comparison
  • Define our sense of self and social identity
  • Achieve goals that are impossible to do alone
• Entativity


  Perception by the group members not by others that the people together are a group (perception of members of a group as a single entity)
• Determinants of entativity (SCIGSG)

  • Similarity
  • Communication
  • Interdependence