1. Social Influence
Conformity

2. What is Social Influence?
The way in which a person or group of
people affect the attitudes and behaviour of
an individual
(Brody & Dwyer, 2002)

3. What is conformity?
The tendency to change what we do
(behaviour) or think and say in
response to real or imagined
pressure from a group.

4. Types of Conformity
There are 2 types of
conformity…
Compliance Internalisation
Superficial and
Deep and private.
public.
Change in
Change in
behaviour AND
behaviour not
personal views
personal views

5. Research demonstrating
internalisation
Internalisation –
Sherif (1936)
- Deepest level of conformity
.
- Individual conforms both publically and
privately to the group
Autokinetic effect
- Conversion
Aimed to investigate whether participants would conform and
change their own individual prediction about how far a spot of
light moved

6. Sherif – A01
Sherif divided participants into 2 groups
• Tested individually • P’s were tested in
Group 1 in a darkened room Group 2 small groups
• Each P made 100 • P’s developed a group
estimates estimate
• Put into groups of 2
• P’s tested individually
or 3
• P’s reached a group • P’s estimates reflected
norm the group estimate

7. Sherif - findings
When put into groups,
Despite not being told to
participants estimates arrive at a group
converged towards a estimate
central mean
Participants also denied in post-experiment
interviews that they had been influenced by other
participants

8. Sherif - conclusion
Sherif concluded that within the experimental group
(group 2) that a group norm that participants conformed to had
emerged – changing their estimates to be more in line with the
group prediction.
Sherif suggested
that this was due to Rohrer et al (1954) replicated Sherif’s
the individual study and found that when participants
participants looking were re-tested individually up to a year
to other group later they continued to use the group
members for answer
information – - Showing that p’s had internalised
ambiguous task (taken on) the views of the group and
privately changed their beliefs.

9. Evaluation – A02
You should be able to think of 4 evaluation
points without anymore information than
the research outline
High degree of control over variables
Ethical issues – lack of informed consent
Lack of ecological validity
Ethical issues – use of deception

10. Compliance Vs. Internalisation
Change behaviour Change behaviour
not views and views
Public Private
Unambiguous task Ambiguous task
Not conversion True conversion