CONFORMITY

1. CONFORMITY TO GROUPSome Major Research on Group, Attitude, Group Conflict and Conflict Resolution From 1930 to the 1990s

2. CONFORMITY • A process by which a person's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people. The influence is seen in all kinds of group. The influence may be subtle unconscious or direct or indirect social pressure. Even implied presence of others can also lead to conformity. • It provides an identity to a person but he has to accept the norms.

3. CONFORMITY • Individual is not the island rather they are connected to each other. There is always a deep need to belong to a group. Conformity signals incorporation of group norms, acceptance of consistency and predictive group level behavior. Conformity helps to increase self-esteem.

4. CONFORMITY • Conformity provides a sense of security within a group and unwillingness to conform may result into social rejection. • It is group phenomenon and influenced by group size, unanimity, cohesion, status, prior commitment, etc. determine the level of conformity an individual.

5. CONFORMITY • Ingroup provides identity. Groups further can have 'core group' or 'inner circle' and 'peripheral group' . there is always some struggle to be accepted in the inner circle. • The individual can be 'conformist' or 'non-conformist'. Non-conformist retain their individuality while conformist tend to develop personality traits that resembles with the group. Conformist has some deep rooted personal needs that he wants to identify with the group e.g., family, political and religious groups.

6. EXPERIMENTAL CREATION OF CONFORMITY

7. CONFORMITY EXPERIMENT: Sherif in 1936 • optical illusion (the autokinetic effect in which a stationary point of light in a dark room appears to move) • Asked to estimate the movement of light. Personal characteristics norms, personal frame of reference when alone • When put in group situation their estimate seems to be similar • Later when placed in single situation the group norms developed previously were closely adhered • The group frame of reference (NORM) developed earlier was found to reinforce even in its absence

8. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY (Asch, 1952)

9. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 • Asch (1952) set up a series of innovative experiments in which the stimulus was not ambiguous. His research made impact on theorizing on group processes. •  The objective was 'to study the social and personal conditions that induce indivudals to resist or to yield to group pressures when the latter are perceived to be contrary to fact.

10. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 • Asch asked a group of male students to judge which of three unequal lines on a card matched a standard comparison line on another care. Is the standard line same as line A,B or C? Altogether 12 trials were conducted and 9 including the experimenter was in the expt.

11. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 Result: there was a marked movement towards the majority. With or in the direction of (deliberately) distorted judgements of the majority. Two points • Nearly two-thirds of the responses were correct in spite of the pressure of the group. • There were extreme individual difference * Most of the ‘yielders’ distorted their judgements to fit in with the group.

12. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 Result: there was a marked movement towards the majority. With or in the direction of (deliberately) distorted judgements of the majority. Two points • Nearly two-thirds of the responses were correct in spite of the pressure of the group. • There were extreme individual difference * Most of the ‘yielders’ distorted their judgements to fit in with the group.

13. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 o • Asch's experiments show that there are individual differences which lead some people to yield and others to remain independent. • Study has indicated that there can be 'conformist' or 'non-conformist‘ individual within the group.

14. GROUP PRESSURE TOWARD CONFORMITY: Asch 1952 o Conformity in US and Europe: some example • Larsen (1974), demonstrated significantly lower rates of conformity in American students than Asch had found. Larsen attributed this to the changed climate of opinion in the 1970s which encouraged independence of thought rather than conformity. • Perrin and spencer (1981), in a British study, found that in only one out of 296 trials did a subject join the erroneous majority, though, like Asch's subjects, they experienced tension and stress.

15. COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

16. GROUP COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE o • Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three major types of social influence • Compliance is public conformity, while keeping one's own private beliefs. • Identification is conforming to someone who is liked and respected, such as a celebrity or a favorite uncle. • Internalization is acceptance of the belief or behavior and conforming both publicly and privately.

17. GROUP COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE o • Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three major types of social influence • Compliance is public conformity, while keeping one's own private beliefs. • Identification is conforming to someone who is liked and respected, such as a celebrity or a favorite uncle. • Internalization is acceptance of the belief or behavior and conforming both publicly and privately.

18. COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE: OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY o • Words such as conformity (literally: alignment) or compliance denote 'acceptance of influence'. A dramatic offshoot from Asch's work was the research of Milgram who, by focusing on obedience to authority, explored another area of 'acceptance of influence'. • Milgram considered obedience a basic element in the structure of social life and a determinant of behavior of particular relevance to the modern world.

19. COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE: OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY o • Second World War millions of people were murdered in concentration camps • Extermination programmes of similar magnitude in the Killing Fields of Cambodia; • 'ethnic cleansing' through killings and dispersal in the former Yugoslavia; • Genocide by the Hutus of the Tutsis in Rwanda and later revenge massacres by the Tutsis of the Hutus. ACTIONS stem from pre-existing long-standing social tensions and 'racial', ethnic, religious or economic and class conflicts.

20. COMPLIANCE UNDER PRESSURE: OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY o • In one, the naïve subject, instead of being alone, was joined by other people. Two confederates of the experimenter participated with the subject but were instructed to defy the experimenter's authority and to refuse to punish the 'learner'. • This experiment testifies to the powerful effect of group membership and allows us to observe the extent to which support form fellow group members can release the subject from authoritarian control.

21. CONCEPT AND PROCESS OF CONFORMITY o • In one,

22. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Asch and Sherif’s studies tested hypotheses, they were not theory-led experiment There is no one theory which encompasses all the observed processes but we can draw on several theoretical positions to help our understanding. 1. Lewin (1951) conceptualized the person as a point in a psychological space, constrained to move in certain directions by the field of contemporary environmental forces.?

23. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Asch and Sherif’s studies tested hypotheses, they were not theory-led experiment There is no one theory which encompasses all the observed processes but we can draw on several theoretical positions to help our understanding. 1. Lewin (1951) conceptualized the person as a point in a psychological space, constrained to move in certain directions by the field of contemporary environmental forces.?

24. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Social Comparison Processes Small groups as system tends towards equilibrium (Festinger, 1950),. Disagreements are uncomfortable and disequilibrating and hence generate 'pressures towards uniformity'.

25. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Social Comparison Processes Festinger (1954) developed this approach into his theory of social comparison processes. He proposed that, in many areas of judgement, reality cannot be measured by physical means (as we have seen in Sherif's experiments) and must be socially defined. When people disagree with others, they will be motivated to address the discrepancy in some way; they can change their mind, they can attempt to persuade others to do so, or decide that they are irrelevant for purposes of comparison.

26. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Normative and Informational influence Deutsch and Gerrard (1955) distinguished between informational and normative influence. Normative influence results from the individual's need for social approval and acceptance, and the desire to avoid rejection by the group. Informational influence results from an individual accepting information as reliable evidence about objective reality; such influence is increased in ambiguous situations.

27. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Informational influence • Informational social influence occurs when one turns to the members of one's group to obtain accurate information. A person is most likely to use informational social influence in three situations: When a situation is ambiguous, during a crisis and when one turns to experts for help. Informational social influence often results in internalization or private acceptance, where a person genuinely believes that the information is right.

28. CONCEPT AND PROCESS o Normative influence • Normative social influence occurs when one conforms to be liked or accepted by the members of the group. It usually results in public compliance, doing or saying something without believing in it. • Normative influence is a function of social impact theory which has three components.[The number of people in the group, a group's strength, and Immediacy(proximity).

29. CHALLENGING CONFORMITY Minority Group Influence o

30. Minority influence: (Moscovici et al., 1969) o • Although conformity generally leads individuals to think and act more like groups, individuals are occasionally able to reverse this tendency and change the people around them. This is known as minority influence, a special case of informational influence. • Minority influence is most likely when people are able to make a clear and consistent case for their point of view. If the minority fluctuates and shows uncertainty, the chance of influence is small. • If the minority makes a strong, convincing case, it will increase the probability of changing the beliefs and behavior of the majority.

31. Minority influence o Minority members who are perceived as experts, are high in status, or have benefited the group in the past are also more likely to succeed.

32. GROUP Why group strongly affect the people? o

33. Group Pressure and Change o What happens to people's identity (their sense of themselves) and then to their motivations, judgments and perceptions when they become members of groups?

34. Group Pressure and Change o • People's self-definition change in groups • Personal identity gives way to social identity. • But in groups there are also new identity possibilities – we can perceive ourselves as a member of a social group and as someone with the characteristics of that groups. • This transition from personal identity to social identity is clearest when considering small to large-scale groupings

35. Group Pressure and Change o • Instead of simply being a person with particular characteristics, we can begin to think of ourselves in terms of our group memberships and say about ourselves, for instance, I am a Congress; Brahmin, Nepali, Maoist, etc.

36. What does happen, psychologically, when a person begins to categorize him or herself in group terms? o

37. Psychological consequence of Group membership o First, the person's self-esteem becomes bound up with the fortunes of the group. According to Tajfel and Turner, to think well of themselves, people have to be able to take a positive view of their group. Second, Tajfel and Turner suggest that the bases of the kinds of comparison processes identified by Festinger. Some people (out-group members – those who do not belong to the in-group) become less relevant sources of information and social pressure.

38. Psychological consequence of Group membership Turner (1982) has argued that when people identify with their group, they begin to process of what he calls depersonalization and self-stereotyping. We are used to the idea that we stereotype others, especially members of other groups, by focusing on only a few of their alleged characteristics and ignoring variations and diversity. One stereotypes oneself and think in terms of social identities (collective image) . may come to dominate the self-perceptions and understanding of how s/he should behave in situations where these group identities are relevant

39. Psychological consequence of Group membership This process of self-stereotyping (categorizing) suggests that people may have very different responses to people at different times. For example, we may respond to our close one in terms of their and our personal identities and treat them as friends. But, on another occasion, when we think in group terms, in terms of social identity, the fact that we belong to very different social groups, such as different religions for example, may govern our actions and feelings.

40. Psychological consequence of Group membership o • Normative and Informational form of influence guides most of the group level behavior. This is normal influence processes • Both Normative and Informational processes synthesizes to create what Turner (1991) called referent informational influence. • This is the influence which occurs as people adjust their sense of identity, their thoughts and their behaviors to match the collectively defined attributes of their social groups. Referent informational influence in itself, turner argues, could produce conformity to group norms.

41. WHAT IS GROUP?

42. GROUP PSYCHOLOGY o WE CAME TO KNOW THAT… • Various social influence processes operating within groups. • Such presence of others may have an effect on judgements (Sherif) that can be carried over to later situations (becomes norms). • Then we saw that the majority may be in a position to sway a minority (Asch). • Finally, we saw that group membership may lead individuals to re-categorize themselves and adopt what they see as a relevant social identity (Rajfel, Turner and others).

43. GROUP PSYCHOLOGY o By using the word 'group' social psychologists are looking at a specific context, one in which it seems more appropriate to say 'we' rather than 'I and they', and one in which members can be shown to have psychological effects on each other. Compliance, internalization, identity (Herbert Kelman) Normative or Reference (Deutsch and Gerrard, 1955)

44. GROUP PSYCHOLOGY • Physical presence to relate psychologically to a reference group or social category or, indeed, to ever meet any members of reference groups is not required. • People's imaginative capacities enable them to identify with or have sympathy for those they have never met, even those who lived in previous centuries. • The power of the written word or images can bond us with others. • Nations, religions or ideology may unite people and create a sense of belongingness but at the same time they may create discord with other groups.

45. GROUP PSYCHOLOGY Groups can be of any duration and of deep or superficial meaning to those involved in the relationship. Furthermore, Sherif and Asch experiments showed that one need not be consciously aware that one is being influenced by your group membership.

46. DEFINITION OF GROUP Groups can be of any duration and of deep or superficial meaning to those involved in the relationship. Furthermore, Sherif and Asch experiments showed that one need not be consciously aware that one is being influenced by your group membership.

47. DEFINITION an aggregate of people as a group if we can discern two aspects. First, that individuals think of themselves as being group members ('we' rather than 'I' and 'they') experiencing a sense of belongingness and a common sense of identity. Second, participants have psychological effects on each other, such as: • affective aspects (positive feelings about others in the group); • cognitive aspects (coming to think more sympathetically about others in the group and about issues of concern to the members) and behavioral aspects.

48. DEFINITION an