Psychology

Normative conformity

Changing behaviour, opinions, or beliefs to fit in and avoid rejection or social awkwardness.

Going along publicly with a group while disagreeing privately to achieve a favourable reaction.

Compliance

Conforming to be like an admired person or group to establish or maintain a self-defining behaviour.

Identification

Changing behaviour or beliefs to match a group during uncertain times because you want to be correct.

Informational conformity

Genuinely accepting a group's views because the context of the induced behaviour is intrinsically rewarding.

Internalisation

Searching for and remembering information that proves your views while ignoring contradictory facts.

Confirmation bias

Psychological discomfort experienced due to internal inconsistency.

What is cognitive dissonance?

By making yourself believe something is okay or that you deserve it.

How can cognitive dissonance be resolved?

Eating junk food and feeling bad, then convincing yourself that you deserve it.

Give an example of cognitive dissonance.

A schedule where rewards or positive feedback are given only sometimes and at unpredictable times.

Intermittent reinforcement

Learning from observing someone else receive a reward for a behavior.

Vicarious reinforcement

Learning from observing someone else receive punishment for a behavior.

Vicarious punishment

Solomon Asch investigated group conformity pressures using line-length judgment tasks in 1951.

Asch (who, what, when)

Herbert Kelman distinguished compliance, identification, and internalisation as types of conformity in 1958.

Kelman (who, what, when)

Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith studied cognitive dissonance in 1959 using a boring peg-turning task.

Festinger and Carlsmith (who, what, when)

Elliot Aronson and Julian Mills studied the effect of severe initiation on group attraction in 1959.

Aronson and Mills (who, what, when)

Albert Bandura formulated social learning theory and tested observational learning with the Bobo doll in 1961.

Bandura (who, what, when)

Breaking unanimity with a dissenter drastically reduces conformity, proving group consensus is vital.

Importance of unanimity in Asch's experiments

The cause of conformity is located externally in cultural expectations and social norms.

Sociocultural approach and cause of conformity

The cause of conformity is located internally in information processing and the desire to be correct.

Cognitive approach and cause of conformity

The cause of conformity is located in environmental rewards, punishments, and observation.

Behavioural approach and cause of conformity

Explains human behavior through environmental interactions, conditioning, and observable actions.

Behavioural approach definition

Focuses on internal mental processes like thinking, memory, perception, and information processing.

Cognitive approach definition

Examines how culture, social norms, and group dynamics influence human behavior and attitudes.

Sociocultural approach definition

Fit under social influence and sociocultural frameworks, involving public conformity, social roles, and internal attitude shifts.

Where Kelman's types fit (Compliance, Identification, Internalisation)

Normative conformity fits sociocultural/social norms; informational conformity fits cognitive information processing and the desire to be correct.

Where Normative and Informational conformity fit

Participants lied about a boring task for $1 or $20; the $1 group had insufficient justification, experienced higher cognitive dissonance, and rated the task as more enjoyable.

Festinger and Carlsmith $1 vs $20 experiment overview