Conformity types

Normative Social Influence

Normative Social Influence occurs when individuals conform because they want to be liked and accepted by others. This type of conformity is driven by emotional motivation, as people seek approval and belonging within a group. However, it is usually temporary, since individuals may privately disagree but outwardly comply to avoid rejection or social disapproval.

Informational Social Influence

Informational Social Influence occurs when individuals conform because they want to gain knowledge and be correct. This type of conformity is motivated by the desire to rely on others for guidance when uncertain. Unlike normative influence, it tends to be permanent, since individuals genuinely change their beliefs or behaviour after accepting the information as accurate.

Compliance

Compliance is the weakest form of conformity, it involves publicly agreeing with a group's views, yet privately disagreeing and remaining with original views. This type of conformity is emotionally regulated and is a superficial change, temporary, stops when the group pressure stops.

Identification

Identification happens when someone changes both their public behavior and private beliefs to fit in with a valued group. This usually stems from normative social influence, as people want to be liked and accepted. They adopt the group’s values and attitudes, invest emotionally. However, this conformity is temporary and stops once the group pressure stops.

Internalisation

Internalisation is the deepest form of conformity. People internalise group views because the person genuinely believes that is right. It has no emotional investment and permanent views don't change when the group pressure stops. This is because the person's views internally and publicly change to agree with the group.

Supporting studies - NSI

There is research support for conformity explanations from Asch’s study. Asch got participants to complete an ambiguous task of judging line lengths and found 32% of people conformed to a majority view.

Normative social influence, when people publicly agree with the group in order to fit in and gain acceptance, this is a temporary state of compliance, publicly agreeing but privately disagreeing, which explains the reasoning why the participant followed online with the majority answers.

Supporting studies - ISI

Jenness (1932) provides support for informational social influence in conformity. Participants first guessed the number of jellybeans in a jar individually, then discussed in groups before guessing again. Their second estimates shifted toward the group average, showing they conformed both publicly and privately to gain accuracy. The task had high mundane realism due to its discussion-based format, but lacked reliability as the group discussions weren’t standardised and varied unpredictably.

Other explanations

Other explanations of conformity focus on personality and culture. Smith and Bond found that collectivist cultures had higher conformity rates (25–58%) compared to individualistic cultures (14–39%), suggesting that people in collectivist societies are more concerned with group harmony. This challenges the idea that conformity is solely due to informational or normative social influence, showing that these explanations may be reductionist as they overlook cultural and dispositional factors.