1. Conformity: types & explanations

Describe internalisation

• When an individual genuinely accepts societal norms, resulting in a public & private change of opinions & behaviour change is permanent because attitudes have been internalised

Describe compliance

• Public acceptation of group norms, but privately not changing private opinions & behaviour (Superficial change) + a particular behvaiour/opinion stops as soon as group pressure drops

Who invented informational social influence & normative social influence?

Morton Deutsch & Harold Gerard 1955

Describe informational social influence

• Individual agrees with opinion of majority because individual believes in opinion & wants to be correct

• Cognitive process & may lead to a permanent change in opinions + behaviours (internalisation)

Describe normative social influence

Individual agrees with majority opinion in order to gain societal approval & avoid rejection → More likely to occur with strangers & more pronounced in stressful situations

Emotional process that results in compliance

Evaluate conformity (Research support for internalisation)

• Scott Bokemper et al (2021) investigated mask-wearing during covid

• One group of participants were told that other community members would wear a mask

• Informed participants later were more likely to wear a mask correctly & also were more likely to express disapproval towards those not wearing a mask correctly

• This disapproval suggests that one element of conformity involves genuine acceptance i.e internalisation & not just compliance with group norm

Evaluate informational social influence (Research support)

• Todd Lucas et al. asked participants to solve easy and hard math questions

• Participants were given incorrect answers from other confederate students

• Participants were more likely to conform to incorrect answers as problems became more difficult & situation more ambiguous

• This shows informational social influence is a valid explanation of conformity because results were predicted by ISL

Counterpoint: Often unclear whether NSI or ISI is at work

• Asch (1955) often found that conformity is reduced when there is one other dissenting participant

• The dissenter may reduce NSL because they provide social support or may reduce ISI because they provide an alternative source of social info

Evaluate Normative social influence (individual differences)

• NSL does not predict conformity in every case

• nAffiliators - individuals greatly concerned with being liked by others - ‘strong need for affiliation’

• Paul McGhee & Richard Teevan (1967) found that Naffiliator students were more likely to conform → individual differences in conformity cannot be explained by one general theory of situational pressures

Evaluate conformity (is the NSI/ISI distinction useful?

• It is difficult to separate ISI & NSI as both processes operate together in real-world conformity situations

• E.g an unanimous group is a strong source of disapproval. The possibility of rejection is a strong reason for conforming, therefore displaying normative social influence. However, it is also true that an unanimous group conveys the impression that everyone is more well-informed apart from the individual, therefore conveying informational social influence

Give 3 factors that can increase normative social influence

• With unknown group

• With known group

• Stressful/crisis situations

Give 3 factors that can increase informational social influence

• Expertise is present

• Ambiguous/difficult situations

• Stressful/crisis situation