Conformity

What is conformity?

adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

What are the three types of conformity?

Internalisation, identification, compliance

What is internalisation?

Genuine acceptance of group norms resulting in both a public and private change of opinions

What is identification?

Conforming to a group because we value membership of that group, willingness to change views to fit in

What is compliance?

Going along with the group in public but privately not changing your views.

Very temporary and will stop when group pressure stops

Who made the types of conformity?

Kelman

Who made the Dual Process Model?

Deutsche and Gerard

What is normative social influence?

influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval

What is informational social influence?

when you defer to the judgement of people who you think have more knowledge of the topic than you

How does Schultz (1999) support normative social influence?

- research by Schultz shows the power of normative social influence in real life

- pps in the neighbourhood didn't conform when informative messages about recycling were handed out, but did once they were given data

- the data given to the pps wasn't real, but this lead to a sharp rise in recycling, as it feeds into the desire of wanting to be liked

- therefore, this shows that the pressure to be accepted into a group is significant enough to change people's behaviours

How does Asch (1958) support normative social influence?

- research by Asch shows the power of normative social influence when in a group situation

- pps in the study conformed to the answers given by a majority group of confederates when asked to estimate the length of a line

- what is significant is that the answer given was very clearly incorrect yet pps still went along with it

- this shows ghat the pressure to be accepted by the group is strong enough to change people's responses - even when they know they are right

How does Lucas et al (2006) support informational social influence?

- research by Lucas et al showed how informational social influence works in unclear situations

- pps were given a series of easy and difficult math problems and were asked to solve them

- as the difficulty increased, so did the conformity, as the pps trust the answer the last pp said as they think they know something they don't

- overall, this shows how the desire of working to be correct is strong enough to make people repeat/copy answers of other pps