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Conformity Esssay
Conformity Esssay Word Count: 1223 According to Leon Mann, conformity means ‘yielding to group pressures’. Everyone is a member of one group or another and everyone expects members of these groups to behave in certain ways. If you are a member of an identifiable group you are expected to behave appropriately to it. If you don’t confirm and behave appropriately you are likely to be rejected by the group. Like stereotypes, conforming and expecting others to conform maintains cognitive balance. There are several kinds of conformity. Many studies of conformity took place in the 1950’s which led Kelman to distinguish between compliance, internalisation and identification. Compliance is the type of conformity where the subject goes along with the group view, but privately disagrees with it. Internalisation is where the subject comes to accept, and eventually believes in the group view. Identification is where the subject accepts and believes the group view, because he or she wants to become associated with the group. Leon Mann identifies normative conformity which occurs when direct group pressure forces the individual to yield under the threat of rejection or the promise of reward. This can occur only if someone wants to be a member of the group or the groups attitudes or behaviour are important to the individual in some way. Apart from normative conformity there is informational conformity which occurs where the situation is vague or ambiguous and because the person is uncertain he or she turns to others for evidence of the appropriate response. Thirdly, Mann identifies ingratiational conformity which occurs where a person tries to do whatever he or she thinks the others will approve in order to gain acceptance (if you make yourself appear to be similar to someone else, they might come to like you). The first major research into conformity was conducted in 1935 by Sherif who used a visual illusion, known as the auto-kinetic effect. Sherif told his subjects that a spot of light which they were about to see in a darkened room was going to move, and he wanted them to say the direction and distance of the movement. In the first experimental condition the subjects were tested individually. Some said the distance of movement wasn’t very far in any directio, others said it was several inches. Sherif recorded each subjects response. In the second experimental condition, Sherif gathered his subjects into groups, usually of three people, and asked them to discribe verbally the movement of light. He gave them no instructions as to whether they needed to reach any kind of agreement among themselves but simply asked them to give their own reports while being aware of the reports that other members gave. During the group sessions it became apparent that the subjects reports strarted to converge much nearer to an average of what their individual reports had been. If a subject who had said that the light didn’t move very far when tested individually said ‘I think it is moving 2 inches to the left’ then another who had reported movement of 4 inches, when tested individually, might say ‘I think it may have been 3 inches’. As the number of reported movements continued the more the members of the group conformed to each others reports. This spot of light was in fact stationary so whatever reports were made was the consequence of the subject imagining they saw something happen. So they were not certain about the movement they observed and so would not feel confident about insisting that their observations were wholly correct. When they heard other reported judgements they may have decided to go along with them. The problem with this study, for understanding of conformity, as one aspect of social psychology is that it is a total artifical experimental situation - there isn’t even a right answer. Requested reports of imaginary movements of a stationary spot of light in a darkened room when alone, or with two others, hardly reflects situations we come accross in our every day lives. Generalising from its conclusions to real life might... This is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Academic Library. Please register below now!
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