social influence - types and explanations of conformity Flashcards
Define conformity
- change in individuals beliefs/behaviours
- as a result of real/imagined group pressure
What are the 3 types of conformity?
Compliance, Identification and Internalisation
What is meant by compliance?
- Most superficial
- least permanent change in attitude
- publicly change beliefs and behaviours
- revert back to original belief/behaviours in private
- may not agree with what the group is doing
- Linked to NSI
What is meant by Identification?
- stronger type of conformity
- group membership seems desirable
- look to group for guidance
- may revert back to original beliefs when group no longer seen as valuable
What is meant by internalisation?
- deepest
- most permanent type of conformity
- involves public and private acceptance
- linked to ISI
What are the two explanations of conformity?
- Normative social influence (NSI)
- Informational social influence (ISI)
What is meant by informational social influence?
- driven by desire to be right
- when individual is unsure/lacks knowledge
- seek info from group
- assume it is correct
- cognitive process
- linked to internalisation
What is meant by normative social influence?
- driven by desire to be liked
- gain acceptance
- avoid ridicule
- emotional process
- leads to compliance
Research to support explanations of conformity - Jenness ISI
P - research to support comes from Jenness
E - asked ppts to individually guess number of beans in jelly bean jar
- then asked for group estimate
- then individually guess again
E - found that second individual guess was closer to group estimate
- compared to original estimate
L - supporting ISI
- ppts unsure
- looked to group for guidance
- changed answer to be in line with group
Research to support explanations of conformity - Jenness ISI
counter argument
- lacks eco val
- artificial environment
- difficult to generalise to real life ISI findings
- people may be less likely to conform irl as there are consequences for actions
- does not fully support ISI as explanation
Research to support explanations of conformity - Asch NSI
P - research to support comes from Asch
E - ppts placed with 7-9 confederates
- presented with stimulus line ‘x’
- asked which line A/B/C was same length
- confederates answered first
E - found that ppts conformed 37%
- to same wrong answer as confederates
L - supports NSI
- unambiguous task
- ppts later stated they knew answer
- conformed to avoid ridicule
Research to support explanations of conformity - Asch NSI
counter argument
- can be criticised for gender bias
- male only sample
- difficult to generalise to females
- neto 1995 suggests females more likely to conform
- to be liked by peers
- suggests NSI more likely in females than males
- weakens external validity and findings of NSI
