Conformity - AO1 Flashcards
What are the types of conformity?
Compliance, identification and internalisation
What is compliance?
This type of conformity involves going along with others in public, but privately not changing our personal opinions.
This means the change in behaviour around the group is superficial and temporary, and will stop as soon as the group pressure stops.
What is identification?
This type of conformity is similar to compliance but with added motivation - you want to fit with a group because you identify with them.
Your public & private opinions change but the private change in opinion may not be permenant.
What is internalisation?
This type of conformity occurs when a person genuinley accepts the groups opinion/behaviours, resulting in a private and public change in the person conforming.
We internalise the view, so the chnage in opinion or behaviours persists even when the group is not there.
What are the explanations for conformity?
According to the dual process model by Deutsch and Gerard (1955), there are 2 explantions for conformity:
Informational social influence (ISI)
Normative social influence (NSI)
What is ISI?
Conforming to a majority because we want to be correct
- Most likely to happen in new situations or ambiguous, where we may not be sure what the correct behaviour to display is
- It is a cognitive process
What is the research on ISI?
Jeness (1932)
Used an ambiguous situation with a glass
- PPs - 101 psych students
- Individually estimated how many bears where in the bottle, then split into groups of three and asked to give a group estimate thourgh discussion
- After discussion, the PPs were given another opportunity to estimate the number of bears
- Nearly all PPs changed their original answer
- On average, male PPs changed their answer by 286 bears, female by 382 bears
These results demonstare the power of conformity in an ambiguous situation - the answer was not obvious, this is ISI
What did Lucas et al. (2006) do?
Asked PPs to solve both an “easy” and “difficult” maths problem, then gave them answers frim three other “students”
The PPs were more likely to conform to a difficult answer than an easy one, showing that people will conform to a given “majority” answer to a need for information - ISI
What is normative social influence (NSI)?
Conforming to a majority because we want to be liked or accepted - part of a group
Can occur in situations with strangers (concerned about rejection) or people we know (concerned about social approval of friends)
Its an emotional process
What must happen for NSI to occur?
The individual must believe they are under surveillance - that their behaviour is being noticed so they need to change to fit in. The person may not internalise this view over into private settings and generally doesn’t lead to a permenant change
What is research on NSI?
Mcghee and teevan (1967)
- Found that students who had a strong need for affiliation were more likely to conform to NSI - known as nAffliliators
- There are individual differences in how people respond to social pressures. Some people are more concerned with being liked by others and fitting in with them.
