1.1 Explain concepts and/or theories associated with a topic: a) Conformity is a type of social influence which involves a change in behaviour and belief of a minority to fit in with the group concerning real or imagined group pressures. This behaviour could be defined as the pressure to behave in ways that are viewed as acceptable by a particular group, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked. The main factor that influences conformity are social norms. Social Norms are a pattern of expected behaviour in certain situations either implicitly or explicitly. Conformity exists in two categories, normative influence where the individual’s desire is to gain social approval and acceptance from the group to make a favourable impression. And informational social influence where a person is looking for guidance in an ambiguous situation as the individual listens to other member 's views and opinions to be guided to an answer. Conformity is distinguished in three different types; Compliance is the most superficial type of conformity. It refers to a person who conforms publicly with the views and attitudes expressed by the group but still continue to privately disagree. This temporary short term behavioural change which often results normative social influence. For example, It is a student 's first day of college, but has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of students filing off towards a corridor and
One subtle form of social influence is conformity. Conformity is a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. The aftermath of conforming ranges from heroism to tragedy. If we are uncertain about how to think or what do, we may rely on informational social influence. Informational social influence is the influence of other people that leads us to conform because we see them as a source of information to guide our behavior. We conform because we believe that others’ interpretations of an ambiguous situation is more correct than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action. Private acceptance is conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or
Conformity is a form of social influence, when we conform we act and think like members of our group. Often people even alter or change their personal beliefs to match those around them. When we conform we feel pressured to fit in with others, to be a part of the majority. While we may still have contradicting beliefs towards things, we change our behaviors and actions to match what everybody else is
According to Aronson (1985), conformity is “a change in a person’s opinion or behaviour as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people”.
Conformity, compliance with others, and standards, rules or laws and behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. Non conformity, Failure or refusal to conform to a prevailing rule or practice. These were the topic we talked about in my English II CP class. We read a lot of articles about nonconformity and conformity and watched videos on YouTube of experiments on the topic; One of the videos we watched was the elevator experiment where they tested if majority of random people would conform or not conform to what the group of actors in the elevator were doing. What they did to test this was they put a group of actors in a elevator facing the back of the elevator with a video camera and see when random people walked in the elevator if they would conform and face the same way the actors were out of pressure. Or if they did not conform. In this experiment majority ended up conforming. At the end of the video all the random people that participated were asked why they faced the same way the group of actors were.
Crutchfield, shares that conformity can be simply defined as yielding to group pressure which can take place as in many different forms, such as bullying,persuasion, teasing, criticism, etc. Conformity is also known as majority influence or group pressure (Crutchfield, 1955).
Conformity is a kind of social influence that occurs when an individual change his or her attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to match or imitate those of other people. Psychologist have conceptually split this of idea conformity into two major categories base on the social influences that causes them. The two categories consist of informational influence and normative influence. Informational influence occurs when one conforms to others because they believe that the group has accurate information that the person conforming does not have. Normative influence occurs when one conforms to others because one wants them to like and accept them.
The causes of conformity among individuals have long been debated and researched in recent decades. It is for this reason that conformity is an intriguing psychological concept. It causes sound-minded individuals to go against their best judgement, to engage in behaviour which they usually would not engage in, even accept and welcome an idea they internally disagree with, all in order to not be a deviant from the group. It is thus interesting to look at the factors which cause people to conform, to do what they see others doing, to rely on the judgements of the group, and to ignore their own senses and perceptions. It is the reasons for the individual's desire to conform that I will be discussing in this paper.
This small article was written to inform the reader about conformity and what conformity is. Conformity is the common form of social influence and is usually described as the way that someone thinks or acts similar to members of a certain social group in order to fit in with group norms. Although conformity can be seen as a negative thing, it is very common everywhere and is sometimes essential to have a working community. Conformity can usually be based off of obedience and compliance. Conformity can be subtle, unconscious, or can come from social pressure. Some motivators for conformity are normative influence (what seems normal or common) and informational influence (what we have been told by society or what we know).Both men and women will
Conformity is a phenomenon of society that penetrates all social levels, ages and genders. Conformity is the ability to adjust your behaviour or standards to fit in with a social group, anxiety could be felt by a person if they feel they are different or stand out from the group (Meunier & Rule, 1967). The study of social psychology allows psychologists to study the way individuals interact to others in groups of any size. The study of conformity will be analysed in this essay in particular Asch’s study into majority influence described as behaviours and beliefs of a larger group influencing the behaviour and beliefs of a smaller group. Additionally, Moscovici’s study into minority influences is described as the ideas and beliefs of a smaller group influencing the behaviour and beliefs of a larger group. Analysing both studies and also the details of Moscovici’s theory a conclusion will be written.
In some cases, it occurs with people’s knowledge of others, it happens without much of a person’s awareness. In some instances, an individual will do things that they do not agree with or even behave in ways they know are unjust. People go along with a group even when it is clear to them that the group is doing the wrong things. Cialdini and Goldstein (2004), are contemporary scholars who make a great contribution to understanding the theory of social conformity. They gave two major reasons that make people conform, namely the normative influence, which stems from a strong urge to gain rewards, follow the rules and avoid punishments. This makes a person get along with others by doing what they do even when he or she does not agree with it, to be liked by them. It entails following the norms. Cialdini and Goldstein stated that normative conformity occurs when a person changes or even modifies his or her behavior to fit in a group. The second one entails informational influence which occurs when a person changes his or her behavior to be correct. This occurs during situations where people are uncertain about what is correct and do what others are doing. In most cases, one looks at a person they perceive to be knowledgeable and imitates them. It entails agreeing with the judgments made by another person who is perceived to be highly intelligent. Informative conformity occurs when a person does not have the knowledge and looks for direction and information from another the
Conformity falls under the realm of Social Psychology as it deals with social interaction often exploring its roots, effects and influences. Conformity is an intriguing topic as it is not entirely visible but
The human society contains certain cultural and social structures. Throughout the lecture, means of cultural norms and structures take the role within groups, or clusters of individuals. In this act, the development of group norms and conformity begins to cultivate. Professor Terry reveals that categorizing norms can also provide a way for students to understand or interpret a certain situation (Terry, 2017). This brings in the factor of conformity, which is viewed to social psychologist as placing impact on social value. This is not seen as one-sided; instead means of positive or negative attributes can occur (Terry, 2017). Conformity is a very common form of social influence. It is when members of a group begin to act or even deliberate
Have you ever been at a social gathering and acted in a particular way in order to feed in? This is called conformity, it means a change in behaviors or beliefs due to real or imagined group pressure. Conformity occurs all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. There are three forms of Conformity. The first form is compliance, the second form is obedience, and last but certainly not least, the third form is acceptance. This subject matter relates to me because the three types of conformity has happened to me numerous of times with lack of awareness at the time.
In this study the goal is to explore some of the major forms of conformity, a social influence and explain how/ why people conform to perceived social roles in today’s modern society.
we to peer pressure? As individualistic as we may think we are, is it possible that we are more likely to conform to the people around us than we might have originally thought? In this paper, I mean to explore what conformity is and to share about how it works as far as social psychology is concerned.