Normative Conformity

Conformity refers to an individual’s behavior that is performed because of group pressure, even though that pressure might not involve a direct request. Many people want to think that they are conformist enough so that they are not looked upon as strange to others and nonconformist enough to demonstrate that they are capable of thinking by themselves. For many years, psychologists have been interested in human conformity. Usually when people are in groups, they behave according to how those in the group behave. That indicates that conformity can affect a person’s behavior and make a person do things that may be against their ethics, attitudes, and morals. The study of

As social creatures, we are greatly influenced by our environment and more specifically, our social environment. Conformity is one type of social influence that we are subjected to, whether it is real or imagined, and involves the way in which we change our beliefs or behaviors in order to fit in with a certain group (McLeod, 2007). Typically, conformity is used to describe an agreement to that of the majority position. Aronson (2012), describes conformity using three levels: compliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance is used to describe the behaviors of a person who is motivated by a desire to either gain a reward, or avoid punishment (Aronson, 2012). On the other hand, identification explains how sometimes individual’s responses

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

Conformity is the social process by which people in a group or in a social circle engage in behaviour which appears to be socially acceptable, that is they go along with the social expectations apparent at the time. One of the key factors in conformity, however, is yielding to group pressure, as defined by Mann (1969):

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 refers to the likelihood that an individual will follow the unspoken rules or behaviors of the social group to which they belong. In the short video clip titled “Asch Conformity Experiment”, we learned that people can feel pressured into abnormal behavior because of the unanimity of the majority.

The article What is Conformity? By Kendra Cherry is about how society uses conformity to fit in and the different types of conformity. Conformity is to agree with or act like the rest of society, or behaving in a certain way in order to be accepted by a group/society. There can be numerous of influences that can make you conform such as informational influences and normative influences. Informational influence happens when people change their opinion just to be correct based on the opinion of people who are smarter or more informed. Normative influence happens when you want to avoid punishments. Not only are there many influences, there are also many types of conformity such as Normative conformity, informational conformity, identification,

Why do we conform? Two basic sources of influence: normative social influence, the need to be liked, accepted by others and Informational influence: need to be correct and to behave in accordance with reality.

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

In pyschology conformity can be descibed as an indiviual’s tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviours of the social group to which he/she belongs to or wants to be apart of. Many psychologists including , Jenness (1932), Sherif (1935) both experimented in psychology, investigating conformity and group pressure. However, perhaps the most famous conformity experiment was done by Solomon Asch (1951) and his line judgment experiment. (McLeod 2007)

Conformity is a concept that has been heavily researched in the field of social psychology. Conformity is defined as a change in behavior, beliefs, and attitudes due to group pressure perceived as real (encompassing the presence of others) or imagined (encompassing the pressure of social standards) (Myers, 2010, p. 192). The concept of conformity is a powerful influence on the tendency for people to arrange their thoughts, perspectives, and ideas with others, especially when in a group. This takes away from a person’s individuality because they want to feel accepted by others and therefore, a person will accomplish this basic need of approval through conforming.

Conformity is the way that most people do in accordance to their behavior in their society (Conformity 1). Group Conformity is the way that human beings are affected by the behavior of others around them. The first experiment that studied group conformity was performed by Jenness in 1932 (Conformity 4). Following this experiment many more were performed such as The Stanford County Prison Experiment, Solomon Asch Experiment, Candid Camera Elevator Experiment, The Milgram Experiment, and the Bystander effect (Reyes). Just like there are many different types of experiments, there are also many different types of conformity compliance, internalisation, identification and ingratiational (Conformity). This paper will go over some of the many experiments

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth"~– John F. Kennedy. For many years young adults have been pressured to do things that they might not want to go through, even though the situation might be harmful to them or others. However they go through with it anyway because they feel the need to fit in with their peers. Conformity is defined as the change in behavior that arises from social influences that may be put on one in different situations, in order to fit in with a certain group. Although people may indulge with people who encourage good behaviors, but it usually ends with kids being encouraged to act with inhuman and savage actions.

Often times in life people will feel it necessary to conform in order to fit into certain groups of people. When a person conforms it usually leads to them changing the way they behave. This

Conformity has been extensively studied in social psychology, and three central motivations for conforming behavior are suggested: a desire to be accurate by properly interpreting reality and behaving correctly, to obtain social approval from others, and to maintain a favorable self-concept (Elsevier 140)