Types of Conformity - created from Mind Map

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Types of conformity (Kelmen 1958)

Explanations for conformity.

Strengths

Weakness

Compliance - The occurrence of when an individual accepts influence to gain approval. Attitude or behaviour is not developed due to it's content but due to the rewards from the approval of its adoption.

Conformity- a form of social influence that results from exposure to the majority position and leads to compliance with that position. It is the tendency for people to adopt the behaviour, attitudes and values of other members of a reference group

Internalisation - The occurrence of when an individual accepts influence due to both content of the attitude or behaviour proposed is consistent with their own value system.

Identification- The form of influence where the individual adopts an attitude or behaviour to become associated with a particular group or person.

Normative social influence - A form of infuence where an individual conforms with the expectations of the majority in order to gain approval or to avoid social disapproval (Niall, 1986)

Informational social influence - A form of influence, which is the result of a desire to be right - looking to others as a way to gain evidence for reality.

There is research support for normative influence. US research shows the relationship between peoples normative beliefs and the likelihood of them smoking. Linkenbach and Perkins (2003) found adolescents that were exposed to the message that the majority of their age group did not smoke were less likely to begin smoking. Normative influence had also been used to manipulate people to behave responsibly in energy conservation, which was observed in a study by Schultz et al. (2008) who found hotel guests exposed to the normative message that 75% of guests reused their towels each day - rather than getting fresh towels- reduced their own towel use by 25%. These studies thus represents the claim that people shape their behaviour out of the desire to fit in with the preferred group

There is also research support for informational influence. Studies as demonstrated by Wittenbrink and Henley (1996) found that participants exposed to negative information about African Americans later reported more negative beliefs about a black individual. It can also shape political opinion, as seen in Fein et Al. (2007) study which demonstrated how judgement of candidate performance in the US presidental debates can be influenced by the knowledge of other individuals reactions. This produced large shifts in the participants judgements of the candidates performance. These studies thus proves there is some evidence to prove the existence of informational social influence.

There is a difficulty when distinguishing between compliance and internalisation. The relationship between the two is due to how we define and measure public compliance and private acceptance. It is assumed a person who publicly agrees with the majority yet may disagree with them in private may be demonstrating compliance, however it is also possible that acceptance had occured in public yet may just dissipate later when in private due to forgetting information given by the group or because they have received new information. It is also assumed that that a person who agrees with the group in public and in private must have internalised the views of the group, however it is also possible that the individual may have complied in public, but as a result of self perception ('I agreed with the group therefore that must be what I really believe') so they may come to subsequently accept that position as their own. Thus one cannot simply define what is compliance and what is internalisation.

Normative influence may also not be able to be detected. Nolan et al (2008) investigated whether people detected the influence of social norms on their energy conservation, and when asked about the factors that had influenced their own energy conservation they believed their neighbours had the least amount of impact on their own energy conservation hwoever results showed that this had the strongest impact. This causes researchers to speculate whether individuals do recognise the behaviours of others as a casual facotr in their own behaviour. This suggests that people rely on beliefs about what should motivate their behaviour and so under-detect the impact of normative influence.

Informational influence is moderated by type of task.