social influence Flashcards
conformity
a change in a persons behaviour or opinion as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people
3 types of conformity
-internalisation
-identification
-compliance
internalisation
Making the beliefs, values, attitude and behaviour of the group your own
(the strongest type of conformity, and often occurs as a result of informational social
influence). An individual’s change of view is permanent e.g. being brought up in a religious
household, and becoming religious yourself.
identification
Temporary/short term change of behaviour and beliefs only in the presence
of a group (middle level) e.g. acting more professional and less silly when you arrive at your
office to work.
compliance
This means to follow other people’s ideas/to go along with the group to gain
their approval or avoid disapproval. You publically agree but privately disagree (lowest/
weakest level of conformity) An individual’s change of view is temporary and is likely to occur
as a result of normative social influence e.g. when friends pressure you into drinking alcohol
when you don’t truly want to, and will not drink outside of such social situations.
informational social influence
when someone conforms because they want to be right
normative social influence
when someone conforms because they want to be liked
isi evidence
Fein et al. asked participants to vote for a US presidential candidate after they saw
others voting for somebody else. Most of the participants changed their mind because they wanted to be ‘correct’, thus demonstrating the impact of informational social influence as a mechanism for conformity.
nsi strengths
+ There is evidence supporting the link between NSI and bullying, thus suggesting a real-life
application with an increased understanding of the different types of conformity. Garandeau
and Cillissen found that a boy can be manipulated by a bully into victimising another child
because the bully provides a common goal for the boy’s group of friends, the goal is to
victimise the other child, so the boy would most likely also victimise the child to avoid
disapproval from his friends.
+ There is also evidence to support the role of informational social influence. For example, Lucas
et al found that conformity to an obviously incorrect maths answer was greater when the
question was more difficult and the participant rated their own maths ability unfavourably. This
shows that individuals are more likely to turn to others when they lack the information to make
their own informed decisions i.e. in an ambiguous situation.
nsi weakness
research shows people differ in how much they want to be liked by others- some people are a lot less concerned about being liked by others whereas some people place great emphasis on being liked by others. such people are known as nAffiliators- they have greater need for affiliation/being in a relationship with others. this difference among peoples social intentions shows us the the desire to be liked by others causes conformity for some people more than others causes conformity for some people more than others demonstrating individual differences in the way people respond to a majority. therefore the nsi explanation for conformity cannot be used to understand the generic social behaviour due to the emotional differences among people that have been found.
isi strength
One strength of ISI is that there is research evidence for why people would confirm for the reasons to be correct. For example Lucas et al studied the degree to which participants would conform to when they were asked maths questions increasing in difficulty. He found that there was an increase in conformity rates to incorrect answers when harder questions were asked. These people rated their maths ability poor and looked to the majority’ others for guidance. This supports the idea that we conform in ambiguous situations where we are less knowledgeable and believe others around us know better.
isi weakness
One limitation of ISI is that there is counteracting research evidence supporting the idea of individual differences in the extent to which people might conform to a group. For example Perrin & Spencer studied 390 engineering students in a version of Asch’s lines. They found that conformity reduced a lot indicating that people who are educated and knowledgeable trust their own judgements of precision and less likely to seek guidance from others. Therefore there are individual differences to how people respond to the pressure of the majority.
