Types of Conformity

Compliance, identification & internalisation

  • One type of social influence in A Level Psychology is conformity

  • Conformity is a phenomenon which involves someone changing, adapting or taking on new behaviours in order to fit in with the group

  • Conformity could also be known as majority influence as people tend to want to conform to larger groups (safety in numbers)

    • Minority influence does happen but it is less common

Compliance

  • Compliance is a type of conformity which involves:

    • agreeing with or behaving like the group publicly but disagreeing with or having different opinions to the group privately, e.g.:

      • Eating only vegetarian 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

  • Compliance is the weakest type of conformity as it only involves surface and superficial change as it ceases when someone is not with the group

Identification

  • Identification is a type of conformity which involves:

    • temporarily adopting the habits or attitudes and behaviours of a group if someone values the group and wishes to be included in it

    • conforming to the expectations required of a specific social role (e.g. police officers, nurses, teachers)

    • Some examples of identification include:

      • Dressing in the same style as a group of people at college

      • Using similar verbal expressions and body language as a group of social influencers

  • Identification results in short-term change as the individual is still not completely in agreement with the group (if only in private)

Internalisation

  • Internalisation is a type of conformity which involves:

    • accepting and agreeing with the group publicly and privately

    • internalising the group’s norms, e.g.:

      • 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, attitudes, etc. to align with the group

  • Internalisation is the strongest type of conformity, leading to long-term change