Conformity Flashcards
3 types of conformity
compliance, identification, internalisation
compliance
publicly conforming to behaviours/views of others while privately maintaining your own, different views
identification
publicly and privately adopting the behaviour/views of a group to identify with and fit in
temporary and not maintained after leaving group and pressure is removed
internalisation
a real, premanent and usually deep change of private views to match a group
social influence
process by which a person’s ttitudes, beliefs or behaviours are modified by the presence of others#
conformity
process of yielding to majority influence and changing behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure (myers)
compliance cause, duration and depth
- NSI - need to fit in
- brief
- shallow/superficial
identification cause, duration and depth
- need for group membership and to identify
- determined by membership
- somewhat deep
internalisation cause, duration and depth
- ISI - need to be right
- long lasting
- deepest
2 explanations of conformity
- normative social influence
- informational social influence
who proposed to two-process model to explain conformity?
Deutsch and Gerard
NSI
NSI is when we conform to the belefs or behaviours of a group because we want to be liked and respected and fit the norm
NSI is more powerful the more stressful the situation as we have greater need for social support
what might NSI leead to?
compliance
is NSI temporary of permanent
temporary
is NSI emotional or cognitive process?
emotional
ISI
ISI occurs when we conform to the beliefs or behaviours of a group because we believe the majority to be correct when we are unsure and we want to be correct
it is more likely to occur in ambiguous /unfamiliar situations or in crises when quick action is required
is ISI temporary or permanent
permanent
is ISI a cognitive or emotional process?
cognitive
what is ISI likely to lead to?
internalisation
how does Lucus et al. support ISI?
- asked students to answer maths questions of various difficulties
- greater conformity to wrong answers when harder, especially for students who said their maths skills were poor
- showspeople conform in situations where they don’t know the answer
outline Sherif’s study on conformity
- aimed to investigate group norms using autokinetic effect
- Ps given series of trials individually, where had to judge how far a (stationary) light moved
- then in goups of 3 asked to judge movement out loud
- found when alone, gave similar estimates each time and therewas variation b/w Ps
- when in groups, estimations converged until group norm appeared
weakness of explanations of conformity
- doesn’t account for individual differences
- doesn’t affect everyone’s behaviour the same
- Asch found students less conformist than other groups of people
- people less concerned about what others think about them less likely to conform
