Types and explanations for conformity

Compliance:

• most superficial type of conformity
• individuals may go along with group to gain approval/avoid disapproval
• when exposed to views or actions of majority.
• social comparison- concentrating on what others say/do and adjusting own actions accordingly.
• does not result in change to person's underlying attitude
• only affects views and behaviours expressed when in that group
• e.g: when with friendship group, someone tells offensive joke, everybody laughs, you laugh too, underneath you do no agree.

supporting study: Asch

Identification:

• deep kind of conformity
• accept influence becasue they want to be associate with another person/group
• by adopting person/groups behaviours, feel more a part of it
• elements of both compliance and internalisation, as individual accepts attitudes and behaviours as right & true, but purpose is to be accepted into group.
• temporary or limited to certain situations
• e.g: new teacher may adopt views of teachers they are now working with (e.g "children are naturally lazy") these beliefs may only last until they go home.

supporting study: Zimbardo/Haney et al

Internalisation:

• deepest level of conformity
• when exposed to views of other members of a group, individuals undergo "validation process" - examining own beleifs and groups beliefs to see if they are right
• acceptaince of the groups views means that the individual agrees both inwardly and outwardly, all the time.
• e.g: student who becomes vegetarian at uni may retain those views for the rest of their lives

supporting study: moscovici

Evaluation: distinguishing between internalisation, identification and compliance:

+ compliance studies supported by lab based experiments, high levels of control & standardised procedure = high levels of reliability

- whilst studies such as Zimbardo & Asch interviewed P's afterwards, interviews rely on honesty, once someone knows the true aim of the study, they may suffer demand charachteristics and social desiriblity. Thus it is difficult to separate the 3 explainations in scientific, quantifiable way.

Explainations for conformity:

1- Informational social influence

2- Normative social influence

Informational social influence:

• when individual accepts information from others as evidence about reality.
• enables individual to feel confident that their perceptions and beliefs are correct by beinf reliant on the opinions of others
• more likely if the…