Social Influence - Conformity - Types of conformity (1)

What is conformity ?

• A type of social influence involving someone changing, adapting or taking on new behaviours to fit in with the group.

What can conformity also be known as ?

• Majority influence , as people tend to want to conform to larger groups (bringing safety in numbers)

• Minority influence does happen , but its less common.

What is compliance?

• A type of conformity which involves agreeing with or behaving like the group publicly but disagreeing with or having different opinions from the group privately, e.g.

• Eating only veg food with a particular group of friends , but continuing to eat meat when the group is not present

• Laughing at a joke which the person does not find funny (and may in fact find offensive) because everyone else is laughing.

Why is compliance the weakest type of conformity ?

• Because it only involves surface and superficial change , and stops when someone isn’t with group.

What is internalisation?

• A type of conformity that involves:

• accepting and agreeing with the group publicly and privately internalising the group’s norms

• eg. becoming wholly involved in the norms of a group renouncing former beliefs (e.g. political , religious ), possibly cutting ties with people from the past.

• Meeting a new group of people at college and changing personal styles , hobbies , attitude ,etc, to align with the group.

Why is internalisation the strongest type of conformity?

• As it leads to long - term change.