is the degree to which members of a Group will change their behavior, views and Attitude s to fit the views of the group.
The group can influence members via Unconscious processes or via overt Peer Pressure s on individuals.
Group size, Unanimity , Cohesion , Status , prior Commitment and Public Opinion all help to determine the level of conformity an individual will reflect towards his group.
- Muzafer Sherif `s light dot experiment, which measured to what extent a participant, when asked to solve a difficult problem, would compare - and adapt - his answer to that of his fellow participants (a kind of conformity called informational social influence);
- the Asch Conformity Experiments of Solomon Asch , whose development of the Peer Pressure theory aided greatly in the modern disciplines of Psychology ;
- the Milgram Experiment of Stanley Milgram , which set out to measure the willingness of a participant to obey instructions from Authority , even when the instructions (in this case, to ' Torture ' others by means of electric shocks) conflicted with the participant's personal conscience.
Herbert Kelman identified three subtypes of conformity:
- '' Compliance '' - conforming only publicly, but keeping one's own views in private
- '' Identification '' - conforming while a group member, publicly and privately, but not after leaving the group
- '' Internalization '' - comforming publicly and privately, during and after group membership
Sociologists believe that
- '' Compliance '' is conformity that is usually a result of a direct order,
- while '' Internalization '' is conformity that comes from one's total and utter belief in one's act.
Another distinction can be made between
- informational conformity (or informational social influence) - occurs when one turns to the members of one's group to obtain information on an ambiguous situation (e.g. solving a difficult math problem, deciding where to go to escape a fire)
- normative conformity (or normative social influence)- occurs when one conforms to be liked or accepted by the members of the group
- Kelman, H. (1958). Compliance, identification, and internalization: three processes of attitude change. ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'', 2, 31-60.
- Aronson, E.; Wilson, T. and Akert, R. Social psychology
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