Conformity: Social Behavior

1) Conformity is a social behaviour topic that looks at social pressure and influences that cause a change in an individual’s opinions, beliefs or attitudes in order to match those of others. Conformity is normally a silent influence that occurs due to many things. Some may include: Gender, Age, the need to be accepted within a group in order to not be the odd one out, or if the people in the group are individuals which you know.

An everyday example of conformity is a group verbal test in a school. Students could be asked to identify a correct answer in a multiple choice test and the majority of the class agree and choose one answer but one or two individuals may think another option was the correct answer. Those minority students will often

Internalisation is the most serious form of conformity of the 3 as it involves an individual having a true change of their views in a public and private basis, permanently. An example of this type of conformity is an individual within a group of people that are against animal research, being in this group the individual adopts the group beliefs and opinions, shaping her attitudes and beliefs on the subject on a permanent basis as this individual will still have these beliefs in absence of the group. Identification is the middle level of conformity. This type of conformity causes an individual to change their personal views as well as publicly, but this may only be temporary as when they are no longer in the group and dealing with group pressure they can return to their natural beliefs and opinions when they leave the group (temporary). An example of this particular type of conformity is an individual in their workplace, acting professional and serious when on duty, but when they’re no longer in the workplace their behaviour and attitudes change as they are not in that workplace environment, but, instead the individual’s behaviour becomes more relaxed and comfortable. Lastly, the third type of conformity is Compliance. This type involves public views, opinions and beliefs being changes due to group pressure but their private views stay unchanged. This type of conformity is very

Normative influences involve an individual being influenced by social norms and how they change their views or beliefs in order to be liked in a group. As this individual values their place within the group, they have a want and need to be accepted by others. If the majority of the group agrees on a subject that you, yourself don’t agree with such as liking a particular genre of music and you don’t really like that genre, to avoid being ridiculed by members of the group, an individual typically agrees with the rest of the group. Informative social influences include looking to others within the group and following their views, letting them take the lead as they are in doubt or just assume the person their following is