NSI and ISI as explanations of conformity

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4 Terms

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AO1

  • Conformity is a type of social influence where a person changes their behaviour or beliefs due to pressure from a group.

  • There are two main explanations of conformity.

  • The first explanation of conformity is normative social influence which is when people conform to be liked, accepted and be part of a group.

  • NSI is an emotional process driven by the desire to be liked and often occurs when we are surrounded by strangers were there is great anxiety to be liked or to avoid the embarrassing situation of disagreeing with the majority.

  • This usually leads to compliance and a superficial change of the persons beliefs.

  • The second explanation of conformity is informational social change which is when someone conforms because they want to be right, they conform to a group because they believe they have superior knowledge. ISI is a cognitive process which is driven by the fear of making mistakes and often leads to internalisation where there is a permanent change of the persons private and public beliefs.

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AO3- Strength

One strength of the explanations of conformity is that there is research support from Asch’s study which provides evidence for NSI. Asch found that participants conformed to an obviously wrong answer on the critical trials even when the answers where clearly incorrect. In post experiment interviews, many participants revealed that they conformed to avoid social rejection or to fit in with the group not because they actually believed the group was in the right. This shows that people may publicly agree with a group even when they privately disagree which supports the concepts of NSI as a reason for conformity. Therefore Asch’s study supports the idea that conformity can occur due to the desire to be liked, reinforcing the validity of compliance as a type of conformity.

+++++ counter argument

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AO3- strength

  • Another strength is the research support for ISI by Lucas et al. He skied students to answer math problems that were either easy or hard.

  • He found that there was more conformity to incorrect answers when the problems were difficult especially among those that rated their math ability poor.

  • This suggests that individuals are more likely to conform when they are unsure of the correct answers, relying on others who they believe know better.

  • This supports the concepts of ISI where people conform because they want to be right, leading to internalisation.

  • Therefore, this research strengthens the theory that ISI plays a role in conformity especially in ambiguous or challenging situations.

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AO3- limitation

  • However, a limitation is that these explanations of conformity dont fully account for individual differences as people dont conform in the same way or for the same reasons.

  • Research conducted found that students high in need of affiliation were more likely to conform suggesting that NSI doesn’t affect everyone equally.

  • This challenged the idea that NSI is applicable uniformly.

  • Some people are more resistant to social pressures due to factors like personality, confidence, or cultural background.

  • Therefore this limits the explanatory power of NSI and ISI as it suggests that they aren’t universal processes and may not fully explain why everyone conforms