Revision:Is there a conformity personality?

TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Psychology > Is there a conformity personality?

Crutchfield (55) people who tend to conform are intellectually less effective, have less ego strength, less leadership ability, less mature social relationships, feelings of inferiority, tend to be authoritarian, less self sufficient, more submissive, more narrow minded, more inhibited, less insight into their own personalities.

Conformity is a means of fulfilling a variety of psychological needs - a means to an end, a means of satisfying certain needs traditionally females more conformist than males (Crutchfield 55).

Willis - independence (a lack of consistent movement towards social expectancy) and anti-conformity (a consistent movement away from social conformity) are different.

Kelman: Processes of social influence:

• compliance - in which the person publicly conforms outwardly to the wishes of the influencing source but does not change his/her private beliefs or attitudes;
• internalisation - the person changes his/her beliefs, attitudes or behaviours because he/she genuinely believes in the position  advocated by the influencing source;
• identification - person changes beliefs/attitudes in order to identify with the influencing source that is

respected/admired

Social impact theory

Summarises many phenomena of social influence by proposing that

1. the social impact or effectiveness of influence on a target individual increases with the number, immediacy and importance of the sources of influence and
2. the social impact of the source of influence decreases as the number, immediacy, and importance of targets increase.

When a source of influence obtains compliance by setting an example, it is called conformity. When the source obtains compliance by wielding authority it is called obedience. Asch found that a unanimous group exerts strong pressure on an individual to conform to the group's judgements - even when those judgements are clearly wrong. Much less conformity is observed if the group is not unanimous.

Comments