Explanations of conformity. Conformity is defined by David Myers (1999) as a change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure.

Conformity is defined by David Myers (1999) as “a change in behaviour or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure.” This definition focuses upon the kind of experience that most people have had at one time or another: the feeling that others are putting pressure on us to change our minds or behaviour. However Zimbardo (1995) defined it as a “tendency for people to adopt the behaviour, attitudes and values of other members of a reference group.” This definition proposes that we tend to go along with those people that we compare ourselves to when evaluating ourselves.

According to the Duel process dependency model (Duetsch and Gerard 1955), there are two powerful psychological needs that lead people to conform to social norms. The Normative social influence involves conforming in order to be liked or accepted by a certain group, although not necessarily because a we believe the things they are doing or saying. The tendency to conform comes from the need to be some form of agreement as far as rules, morals and behaviours because otherwise there would be issues among the members. Over time we conform more and more to the ways other people do things and it becomes a social obligation to fit in. Those who decide not to belong to the group are often called strange and deviant. The Informational social influence is where we assume the actions of others reflect the correct behaviour for a situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where we are unable to determine the appropriate model of behaviour and are driven by the assumption that others possess more knowledge of the situation. The effects can be seen the tendency of large groups to conform to choices that may be either right or wrong. This social influence not only leads to public compliance where we conform to the behaviour of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct, but private acceptance where we conform because we have a genuine belief that others are correct. This theory is criticised as it does not acknowledge that it is also important to have a sense of belonging to the group which you are conforming to as you do need to feel comfortable when you are conforming to behaviours as it is not just about avoiding embarrassment.

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A challenge to the Dual process dependency model is the Social Identity theory as it relates to the claim that the Model underestimates the psychological importance that people attach to being part of a group. According to Turner (1991) this sense of ‘belonging’ to a group makes us conform to its social norms. In other words, we identify with a group, define ourselves as having category membership and then adopt the values of that group. For example, moving from a school to university and defining yourself as a student, observing how other students conduct themselves and behaving in a similar way is caused by a process called referential informational influence and Turner proposed that there were three stages involved in this process. The first stage is where individuals acknowledge their membership of the group; the second stage is where they then learn the group’s norms and the final stage is where they behave according to these norms. Therefore, reverent social influence sets the conditions for normative and informational influence to be most effective. With Turners theory, people will conform to the in-group behaviour as they don’t identify with the out-group and are more likely to discriminate against a group whose values don’t fit with their own group because the relationship and emotional ties to their own group are more important than that of the other group. This is supported by Hogg and Turner’s experiment (1987) where they found that people only conformed when the confederates were part of their in-group.

Another explanation for conformity is the Conversion theory by Moscovici (1980) who said that majorities and minorities achieve influence through different processes. He said majority influence involves public compliance where the person is more concerned with how they appear in front of others than with the issue itself. By contrast, minority influence evokes a process aimed at trying to understand why the minority influence holds its viewpoint. By focusing on the issue, the majority comes to examine the arguments put forward by the minority. In turn, this starts the process of conversion where, at least in private, attitudes genuinely begin to change, resulting in an influence that is more lasting than majority influence. Moscovici proposed that minorities produce a greater amount of cognitive activity that majorities. However, Martin (2006), looked at the effects of in-groups and out-group minorities on private and public levels of influence and found that in-groups have more influence in public however out-groups have a much, maybe even more, influence in private. He concluded that the effects of internalisation may be masked as people don’t want to publically align themselves with an out-group. Another criticism of Mascovici’s theory is by Mackie (1987) who claimed that we process more information about majority- false consensus effect.

Another explanation of conformity is the Social Crypto Amnesia effect when a group cannot remember when the majority was once the minority. This is when conversion takes place when the Zeitgeist has changed and by the time the change has occurred people have forgotten the original source of the change but it is actually due to the minority influence creating a Snowball effect which was created by Van Avermaet (1996). The Snowball effect is when the minority becomes the majority after people begin to agree with the minority.

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Jo Wilcox

17th of Feb 2012

The description of the various explanations in this essay starts very well, and there is some analysis through contrasting explanations. The second half may not be considered relevant by an examiner though, unless the question asks for a comparison of majority and minority influence. Instead, there could have been discussion of Kelman's types of conformity and how these interact with normative and informational influence. It is interesting that the writer has not chosen to discuss any research evidence for the theories - this would be a successful alternative approach to evaluation. Studies such as Asch, Sherif and Crutchfield could be used to illustrate the different processes and draw out issues with the explanations. It would also benefit from some real life examples to show how the explanations work in practice. Ultimately, despite the accuracy of much of the description, this essay lacks analysis, possibly because there wasn't an analytical title.

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